SECURITY IN EUROPE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19022, 20 May 1925, Page 11

SECURITY IN EUROPE.

ATTITUDE OF GERMANY. EASTERN FRONTIERS LINE. PERMANENCE OPPOSED: NO RESORT TO FORCE. POSITION A GRIEVANCE. t Bv Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received 5.5 p.m.) A. and N.Z. BERLIN. May 10 The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Herr Strasemann, made an important statement in the Reichstag. Ho stated emphatically that tho Dawes plan will bo carried out punctiliously by Germany, but said she could not acknowledge the present eastern frontiers as Xiermanent Those frontiers, said Herr Stresemann, were opposed to the rights of selfgovernment, and no guarantee pact which acknowledged them could receive Germany's assent. Nevertheless Germany was not desirous of changing the eastern frontiers by resort to force, even if she had the power to do io. The Observer recently published a communication from the Polish official in London, M. Jcrzy Szapiro, in which he said: "The inviolability of tho present frontiers of Poland is the cardinal condition of our existence. The proposal to alter them lias evoked great popular indignation throughout Poland, which may again divert the efforts of the nation from productive economic work to defence of the threatened frontiers. In Upper Silesia tho Polish workmen demanded union with Poland. Then there followed the division of Upper Silesia, which was not altogether favourable to Poland. Tho Polish workmen protested against such treatment, but Poland accepted.. decision, made no further claims, and entered upon her work of reconstruction. The so-called Polish Corridor is essentially Polish. Eighty-five per cent, of tho population is Polish, and they have always sent Poles as their representatives to the German Parliament from 1871 to 1918. Moreover, access to tho sea is an absolute necessity for economic Poland, a country with a population of nearly 30,000,000, and with great natural wealth and well-developed industries and agriculture. The argument used against tho so-called corridor is the impracticability of dividing Germany into two parts. In any case. Prussia is a German colony, rather than an. integral part of Germany, from an economic and even from a political point of view. It barely accounts for 3 per cent, of the population of the Reich, and, as compared with Poland, it is ten times smaller in "area and thirteen times smaller in population. Nevertheless, it has a coast line twice the length of that of Poland. The corridor in no way hampers the communication of East Prussia with the rest of Germany. At the present time, and in spite of the existence of the corridor, there is a larger volume of railway traffic via Polish territory than before the war."

The German viewpoint was stated at about the same time by the Berlin correspondent of the Morning Post, who said: "Only the Nationalists have anything to say on the subject of the German proposals on the security question, and they object to any pact that requires of Germany that she shall now renounco of her own accord the territory that she was previously compelled by force to renounce, and any pact in which Germany gives without obtaining any return. They think that it. is asking too milch of Germany to expect that she shall offer security to ' the robbers of German territory in the East.' The Deutsche Tageszeitung, which furnishes this choice phrase, declares, 'Wo can meet Poland only when she definitely abandons the plan of conquest, and when a revision of the Eastern frontier becomes a condition of real peace.' Statements obviously based on official Berlin inspiration are appearing in the leading provincial newspapers, especially those with a Nationalist tendency, the tenor of which is that the German Government has not expressed its readiness'to offer an official guarantee of the' Eastern frontiers, but has reserved the right to accomplish an alteration of these frontiers by peaceable means. It is added in the statements that the German Government is of opinion that the question of the frontiers may quite probably soon enter an acute stage, for Ihe view is already very widespread in Europe, that the present status of the Eastern frontiers cannot be final."