A CHANGED EUROPE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 6, 5 December 1932, Page 2

A CHANGED EUROPE

3.45 P.M. EDITION

NEW POST-WAR STATES. SEAT OF MANY PROBLEMS. Changing features of Central Europe, with its post-war States, new economic unions and political intrigues formed the basis of an exceedingly interesting address delivered to the Palmerston North Rotary Club today by Professor F. P. Wilson, M.A., F.E.S.; of Victoria College, Wellington, when he dealt with the alterations in international boundaries.

Central Europe, he said, was a more or less expansive term. Before the last war it would have been taken to mean virtually the Powers of the Great Alliance, between Germany, the Austrian Empire and Italy. It was now just over a century since the close of another great war which caused similar reactions in the economic life of the community to those of tho recent World War, excepting that the whole of trade and finance in the years 1815-40 was localised, compared with its present world-wide scope. Another aspect was that the settlement of European boundaries a century ago by the Great Powers (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Great Britain and tho defeated France) was, on the principle of legitimacy, quite different from that of 1918 and the basis was the right of ruling sovereignty. The rights of the people were not taken into consideration in those days. Since 1918, however, very few reigning monarclis had been left in Europe. Thrones everywhere had tumbled.

THE CENTRAL POWERS. The definition of the Central Powers formerly embraced. Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey. Germany had now changed from a rather autocratic Empire into what was in theory a purely democratic republic, in which, iiowever, some of the characteristic features of the Empire had been retained. The menace of Socialism had become so strongly developed that _it had come into conflict with the militaristic characteristics of the people. There was a democracy, represented by the Hitlerite national Socialists, which wanted to gain control of the machinery of Government, but the President, an old-time militarist, did not consider the dominance of one party to be in the interests of all, and had established —merely in spirit —a military dictatorship. But the problems of Europe did not lie in Germany. Rather they were centred in the districts round the River Danube, where the Empire of Austria had formerly been held together by the loose ties comprising a dozen different languages and nationalities, but all branches of the same ethnic group. Germany had intruded into Austria proper. Across to the East lay Hungary, with a race of Asiatic origin. The Magyars had become the dominant aristocracy of the Hungarian plains, and had imposed themselves upon the Slavonic peoples who were akin in race to those of Russia. The Slavonic peoples were scattered through Europe down to Greece and formed by far the greater part of the population east of the Adriatic. They were divided into various nations with different languages. The Slovaks, for instance, had a different language from the Slavs of adjacent Bohemia. Held by the Magyars, Hungary was one of tire most difficult of the European States to deal with at present. Before the War it embraced a great Slavonic race in the south (Servia) closely akin to the Croats and Slovenes of Magyar territory, and after the War embraced in the Serbian Kingdom. The Roumanians, who were not Slav, flattered themselves upon their supposed Latin origin, and retained a Romance language, akin to Italian and French. Roumania had emerged from the Great War a much more expanded State than at the beginning. The defeated Bulgaria had lost territory to Roumania and Greece. Servia had absorbed the little Slavonic kingdom of Montenegro, but .Albania, a small Mohammedan principality on tho Adriatic, had retained its independence.

PROPOSED CUSTOMS UNION. Italy, mainly concerned with control of the Adriatic, had viewed with very, great dislike tho growth of Servia and had had a dispute with it over the territory including the harbour of Fiume, taken possession of for Italy in the wetl-remembered exploit of the poet and aviator D’Annuzio. Austria had been reduced to__ a small State one-fliird the size of New Zealand. Hungary, a little larger, was a republic with a strong leaning towards a monarchy. Czecho-Slovakia, in tho north, with a jiopulation of 12 million, was three-fifths the size of Now Zealand. Austria had a strong feeling of kinship and friendship with Germany and was top-heavy. Vienna was too great a city for the resources of Austria to maintain and Austria felt that her position economically, socially, politically and culturally could be improved by closer contact with Germany. A year or two ago a close Zollverein, or Customs Union, had been proposed between the two countries, but had been vetoed by the Powers, under the influence of France, who took a very close interest in the Danubian States. There was no logical reason why the German jieoplo should not be combined, except for the political reason that France was alive to a possible menace from Germany,

HUNG Alt Y UNDER A REGENCY. TIIO throne of Hungary was only being kept warm until tho time was opportune for the recall of a -Hapsburg prince, said Professor Wilson. There was a governing Regent at present—an admiral without a fleet —until the differences or indifference of Europe allowed the restoration of the monarchy. Czecho-Slovakia, formed one montli before the end of the War, took land with its Hungarian and Magyar landholding nobility, and even minorities did not like being taken

from what they considered to be their motherland and attached to another State. Smarting under tlreir treatment the Hungarians actually developed a bent towards Sovietism and established a Soviet government, not because of Communistic sympathies, but from resentment at its steady disintegration into the surrounding States. Roumania, with one Soviet Government on its borders, did not want another, and gave military assistance to the reactionary party to oust Sovietism in Hungary. Roumania had acquired the rich district of Bessa.rabia taken from her by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, and was now a well-rounded State, suggested as the most stable element in the East. ITALY’S EXPANSION. 1

Other countries in Europe had expanded since the War, the speaker added. Italy had recovered the Italian Tyrol (Trentino) to which it appeared that she had a political and geographical right, and had acquired other territory in the, north-east of the Adriatic, including Trieste and other harbours. Seeking to express their nationality the new States of Central Europe had thrown up trade barriers and, although agrarian in nature, had attempted to develop manufactures. Czecho-Slovakia was highly developed industrially, and Hungary was an industrial country. Roumania, Servia, and Czecho-Slovakia had formed an alliance known as the Little Entente as a restraint on Hungary and this alliance relied upon France politically and economically. France had lent capital to these States and was concerned with their development". It had been expected that the Great War would end petty political intrigues, but France’s policy in Middle Europe had been to maintain a block of States favourable to herself 1 and hostile to Germany.

It was evident that throughout the Danubian districts there were immense problems requiring statesmanship for their settlement, and that was hampered by the intrigues of France, tho most discontented and suspioious of the Allies at tho development of the European States, the speaker added. Poland, which had saved Vienna from the Turks in tho 17tli century and subsequently lost its independence to Russia,- had been reconstituted by the Allies sinoe the War, and its national feeling had found expression, but technically that part of Europe was tremendously mixed, Danzig, internationally controlled, was the outlet to the Polish corridor, Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania, on the Baltic,’ were other States carved out of Russia and which had rejected the Soviet system.

Professor Wilson was accorded a o,“£ rv'r as*.” thi > r V n, lto , rS '' r elc°med were Messrs W L. Black, J. A. Colquhoun, O. Doel, face** nt ° n ’ B " Grigors and S, Boni-