FUTURE OF POLES

Taranaki Daily News, 30 November 1932, Page 9

FUTURE OF POLES

PRECARIOUS POSITION.

THREATS OF DESTRUCTION. London, Nov. 20. Poland’s future is the most precarious in Europe, says the Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. He adds that only her alliance with France and the disarmament of Germany stand between Poland and the destruction that is threatening her both from within and without, and she is bound to act if the alliance is loosened or if Germany rearms.

After a tour of East Prussia, the correspondent describes the dangers to peace. He explains that both the German and the Polish standpoints are untenable. The Poles declare that the Versailles decisions are immutable, but nevertheless they are modifying them iff their own favour. They are systematically oppressing the German minority in the Polish corridor and are fostering their own port of Gdynia, thus involving the destruction of the trade of Danzig. Meanwhile, the Germans are militarising East Prussia, which, robbed of its natural markets and half surrounded by protectionist Poland, would die without German subsidies.

Nazi propaganda constantly magnifies the menace of a Polish invasion of East Prussia and emphasises the fact that Konigsberg’s defences are obsolete, owing to the Versailles Treaty.

Moreover, the authorities have ordered the whole of the men in towns and villages in East Prussia to undergo regular gas drill, the women rushing into shelters while German aeroplanes, purporting to be Polish, perform sham raids