THE QUESTION OF GERMAN COLONIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 29 March 1938, Page 4

THE QUESTION OF GERMAN COLONIES

IN opening the election campaign ! in Germany Herr Hitler made a I remarkable speech, in which ocj curred the following passage, j “Already we suffer from the fact j that our territory in the world is j j so small that we lack supple- ■ mentary colonies.” That is not ! an absolutely clear statement, and | possibly it has suffered in transI lation or transmission; its mean- | ing seems to be that without | colonies Germany is unable to : regain her economic position in the world, lost during the war ' which she wilfully started in 1914 I by invading Belgium and France. | There is nothing left of the Ger- [ man Colonial Empire—it has been I divided up among various nations. Owing to the influence of the late President Wilson at the Versailles 1 Conference the mandatory system was adopted in relation to the disposal of Germany’s captured colonies, and technically they are vested in the League of Nations which has endorsed the mandatory system. With the decrease of the League’s prestige, it is a question how far its mandatory power survives, while the Powers which are in possession . of Germany’s lost colonies show little or no inclination to return them to her. We have already mentioned the fact that some of the nations which have occupied the territories in question, have annexed them. But there is another and equally significant reason against their being returned. Germany’s treatment of the Jews ' has been shocking, and now that she has incorporated Austria in I the Reich, the treatment of the Jews in Vienna is equally shocking. What chance is there that the British Government will shut its eyes to the bad treatment of the Jews in Germany, or agree to j the recession of such territory as German East Africa? Even if .the British Government were inI dined to condone the harsh treatment of the Jews in Germany land Austria, it is a foregone coni elusion that the British people will :! resent such treatment, not because it is meted out to Jews, but ; . because it is meted out by people who consider themselves civilised. ’ The German Minister of Economy i | (Field-Marshal Goering) in his -} recent speech “violently attacked

I the Jews, declaring that Vienna must be freed of its 300,000 Jews, and become forever a German city. T have commissioned the Chief of Police,’ he said, ‘to see that all Jewish businesses are ! taken over legally.’ “ It is an easy ithing to treat the Jews in Vienna in that manner—they are without influential friends, they have been deprived almost of their citizenship, they are despised as non-Aryans, and they may be made to disgorge their wealth. Is it in keeping with Nazi ideas that I the Jews of Vienna should be plundered? If the Germans were reinstated in Africa, as Herr Hitler evidently desires, would they treat the natives any better than they | treat the Jews of Vienna?