The Strategic Value Of Ruthenia

Southland Times, Issue 23680, 1 December 1938, Page 4

The Strategic Value Of Ruthenia

Yesterday’s message quoting a report “from a reliable source” that Germany is secretly mobilizing three army corps on the Czech frontier has been denied by the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin; and although denials from that source have not always been reassuring it is hard to believe that the Nazis would take military action at the present time. They are too close to the Munich Agreement to precipitate a new crisis, especially since Britain is now committed to intervention in Central Europe as a guarantor of the npw Czech frontiers; and campaigns—even if they promise to be short —are not usually opened at the beginning of winter. But this does not mean that Germany is likely to be indifferent to what has been happening in Ruthenia. It is possible, indeed, that this little-known patch of territory—the fourth province of Czechoslovakia —will at a future time become the focus of world politics. Although Ruthenia is quite small, and is inhabited by only about 750,000 persons, mostly Ukranian peasants, it occupies a position of great strategic importance. Its-three frontiers lie against Poland, Hungary and Rumania, and the country tails off within easy reach of Russia. As a connecting link between Bohemia and the Russian Ukraine it nrovides the obvious route for

troops moving either eastward from Germany or westward from the Soviet Union. Now that the great mountain barrier of Bohemia has been levelled in a strategic sense there is a clear gateway for German expansion eastwards. It is here, if anywhere, that the theory of a German colonizing war in the Ukraine will be tested in the future. Are the Nazis seriously planning to seize the rich lands of the east, or will the trend of their foreign policy prove that Herr Hitler was sincere when he said that he had no more territorial ambitions? It could be argued, perhaps, that the answer has already been given. If Poland and Hungary were allowed to achieve a common frontier across the widest part of Ruthenia a solid bloc of Central European States would lie between Germany and the Ukraine, a useful barrier for a Government that is supposed to fear the march of communism. But recent reports indicated that Germany' intervened decisively when Poland and Hungary showed signs of taking the law into their own hands. The common frontier has not been attained; and the way to the east is still open.