Census 100 Years Old

Northern Advocate, 23 January 1947, Page 5

Census 100 Years Old

Base Claims On

(Rec. 11.30 a.m.) LONDON. Jan. 22. Britain’s Lord Hood, at the Foreign Ministers’ deputies meeting today, challenged one of the grounds upon which Yugoslavia is claiming union with Slovene Carinthia. and Slovene areas of Styria with Yugoslavia.

Lord Hood said Yugoslavia's Dr Vilfan, estimated the sizes of the Slovene minority in Austria on the basis of a census taken in 1846, which estimated that there were between 120,000 and 140,000 Slovenes in Styria and Carinthia.

Records more than 100 years old could not be a basis for a future settlement.

He suggested that the census taken in 1910 should be used. Dr Vilfan refused to admit that the later census was preferable because the intensive progress of Germanisation had affected its reliability. Dr Vilfan claimed that the Paris Reparations Conference in 1945 failed to take into account Austria’s responsibility for German war damage to Yugoslavia which, in North Slovene areas annexed to Austria, Styria and Carinthia, amounted to approximately £132,000,000. IMPERIAL VANGUARD

These losses were presented as the basis on which Austrian reparation payments should be assessed. Austria became a component of the Nazi war machine as the result of her political traditions. Throughout the war she remained faithful to her age-long role in the vanguard of German imperialism. Dr Vilfan claimed that Austrian deNazification had hardly begun and that creation of any armed forces and para-military organisations there must lead to serious consequences.

Dr Vilfan, supporting a claim for incorporation of Carinthian and Styrian Slovenes, said the decision of the 1919 conference that two provinces should be left wholly to Austria, inflicted on Yugoslavia an injustice which foreshadowed Nazism in Austria.

Dr Vilfan agreed, following Lord Hood's objection, to present a further memoranda dealing with the census questions. REPARATIONS FOR GREECE

The Greek Ambassador to London (M. Thanassis Aghnides) today revealed Greece’s claims against Germany to be submitted to the Foreign Ministers’ deputies. Greece claims that Germany’s liability for damage sustained in Greece during the occupation should be fixed at the highest possible level. Greece wants reparations to include items from current production so that Greece can secure 500,000 tons of coal annually. Greece should be. permitted to employ specialised German technical personnel for specific tasks. Germany should bear the expense of necessary repairs and additions to industrial installations handed over as reparations, and all Greece's claims should be met within the shortest possible time.

Greece suggests that repai-ations should include a share of German property in Italy and Austria, also in countries which, although they formally entered the war, have not themselves substantial claims against Germany, such as Turkey and the Argentine.