NEW UKRAINE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19887, 15 March 1939, Page 13

NEW UKRAINE

LEADERS MEET “HITLER on: FRIEND” LONDON, Feb. 21. Europe’s Foreign Offices are keenly watching Chust, the village capital of the Czechoslovakian autonomous province. now known as CarpathoUkraine, and formerly Ruthenia. The province is under the control of a semi-military Nationalist organisation, known as “Sitch,” the members of which wear Nazi-like grey uniforms and employ Nazi-like drill gestures. Ukrainian Nationalists from Poland, Rumania,, and Russia are assembling at Chust, and preaching and planning the creation of an independent Ukraine, including parts of Poland and Rumania, and eventually expanding to include the Soviet Ukraine, thus extending to the Black Sea. They claim that there are 40,000,000 Ukrainians throughout the world. The population of Carpatho-Ukraine is only half a million, and the Government at present is in the hands of school teachers, because they are almost the only educated people available. Practically all trading is in the hands of the Jews, who are not allowed to take part in the government, although the Government is not antiSemitic. The Nationalist leaders believe that no war is needed to achieve their immediate aims, which they consider can be won by a most intense propaganda campaign. Thereafter, it is declared, Soviet Russia will be compelled to grant freedom to her Ukrainians. The Premier of Carpatho-Ukraine. Father Volosin, told Mr. Wedgwood Benn, M.P. (Lab.), who has just returned from Chust: “It is true that Herr Hitler has been our friend. The ethnological principle laid down at Munich has been our charter, but we do not desire to be Germany's tool. Why could not England be our friend?” The fate of the movement depends chiefly on German policy towards it, because Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia strenuously oppose it. The question is whether Germany considers that the movement may be useful or is likely to prove a handicap to die achievement of her own drive to the south-east. Whether big changes come or not, it seems certain that the present frontier cannot last, because the Vienna award (concluded by the German Foreign Minister, Herr von Ribbentrop, and the Italian Foreign Minister. Count Viano, last November) gave to Hungary Carpatho-Ruthenia’s only two towns. Hence Chust became the capital. [The two towns were Ungvar (Uzhorod), the former capital, and Munkacs (Mukacevo).]