The Pahiatua Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1938. MINORITIES IN EUROPE.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 13887, 21 June 1938, Page 4

The Pahiatua Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1938. MINORITIES IN EUROPE.

It is not only in Czechoslovakia that there is a German minority on whose be hall Herr Hitler 1 is interesting himself. As the, “Economist” has lately, pointed out, there are' German minorities in a dozen European countries, and in one of them, Denmark, the “outlanders” are politically active. There are Germans in Switzerland, but they do not, constitute a problem because their national sentiment centres in Berne and not in Berlin; and there are German-speak-jmg Alsatians whose sentiment is strongly French. Some 6.500,000 Germans are scattered over the Continent outside Germany, more than three millions of them in Czechoslovakia, a million in Poland, almost as many in Rumania, half a million in Hungary, another half-million in Yugoslavia, and so on The outlander Germans with the worst giievances politically are those in the part of Tyrol that was annexed to Italy, where two hundred thousand are virtually disfranchised, and those of western Poland, who suffer pronounced disabilities. There are only 35,000 Germans under Danish rule, but in spite of tile fact that they are on a footing of exact equality wilh the Danes as citizens a persistent agitation concerning them is kept up by the German newspapers The “Economist” suggests that if Herr Hitler decided to use these minorities as an excuse for the territorial expansion oi the Reich he would he merely following the example Mr Joseph Chamberlain set when he brought about the invasion of the Dutch republics of South Africa, where thgrievances of the British outlanders madei the excuse for intervention. 'The immediate demand of the minority in Czechoslovakia is that an autonomous State should be set up within the country and that the German population should be at liberty to institute a Nazi system of government. This would obviously make annexation to Germany easier when the moment came for the Germans to move. And i: might provide a precedent for intervention in Hungary, in Poland, in Latvia, in Yukoslavm and in Rumania if Germany ever became strong enough to make a bid for the domination of central Europe