TENSION EASED

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 97, 25 May 1938, Page 3

TENSION EASED

BUT position still full of DANGLR TRANCE and RUSSIA SUPPORT CZECHS. LONDON, May 22. \ slight easing in the tension, a p„ r ted warning by Britain that she „lit support France if the latter k oU ](l honor her obligations to ze ,.(iii-Slovakia, and further reporti j S surances by France and Russia Czecho-Slovakia, were the features ,f Europe’s crisis. Concentrations of Czech troops on i. f frontier arc reported, hut at the nine time pressure of outside opinion ippenrs to have deterred Germany :_ inl hasty action. prance and Russia have assured Ip Czech Government that they will their Treaty obligations if ’zfchn-Slovakia is attacked, says the ‘,y P iv..-Chronicle’s” Prague correspondent. 1 phe Russian assurances are esJjally definite. WHERE BRITAIN STANDS. POLICY CLEAR. RUGBY, May 23. The "Times,” in a leader on the [ternational crisis, says that the j r iti-!i Government’s policy is clear oa ll ti e world. It is to urge modertinii and peaceful methods, to projnte i tua! understanding of diffiiltio. and, above all, to face the jjdan ital problem of unrest among E jnori ’ s and press for its soluXhc "Daily Telegraph” says that fter a week-end of . international jjiph is grave in its potentialities B any risis since 1914, the lessenng of e tension in Central Europe, priori.- to-day, deserved welcome nid ra lagement for the respite it lifers i conciliatory statesmanship. The "Daily Express” and the •lornt i Mail” both reiterate the | Koessi; for Britain to keep out of ] Ijrop quarrels. The ‘ News-Chronicle” says that | jtiscc: ;iin that in the present situa- | lion tl i.lerman Government could, ( fithon' iolence, obtain any reason--13!,. ci lit ions which may be de- ] landc. i Nothing but absolutely un- j iccepta i' 1 demands would drive the | Czfcho Sl rvakian Government to open ' jastam ■. If, in face of this fact, the | teat ' force is still maintained, ] itero c:i': he no question where the , rwpon- 'lity for the result will lie. | CZECH TROUBLES. ECONOMIC- DISMEMBERMENT. ] 1 Abandoned factories, mills, or ] mines, oflen in ruins, dot the land- ] scape of the Sudetenland just as ] tumbledown castles, symbols of a ] mre primitive kind of feudalism, dot < the landscape of the Rhineland, ] irites Edmond Taylor in the “Chi- ] cago Tribune.” ] Around Karlsbad and Eger it was j mostly gloss. Around Teplitz, once a j gay watering place frequented by ] Isar and Kaiser, now a grimy indus- ] trial town overhung with a genteel pauperism and scarred on the edges with traces of bestial misery, yon see abandoned glass works, too, but mostly coal mines closed down by their owners because they will never pay dividends again. Farther east, at Liberec (Reiehenberg), it is the textile industry which las been the hardest hit —07,805 out •f 11(1,739 looms were idle last year, and textiles occupy an important plaee in Czech industry. Throughout the whole Sudetenland it is the same story, and sometimes in other parts of the Republic as well. How did this come about? Roughly like this—the lands of the Bohemian Crown before the war accounted for about three-fourths of the industrial production of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the industrial equipment of pre-war Bohemia was mostly situated in the Sudetenland and was in tie hami - of Germans. Protected from competition by high tariff walls, ad from domestic competition by the fact that except for Bohemia and Austria proper the empire was nothing but a agricultural hinterland, the Sudeten industrials had a huge market almo t to themselves. OVEKL KED BY PEACE PACTS. The peai e treaties completely overlooked this economic reality. In earving .: > the Austrian Empire they performee an operation comparable to dividing one set of vital organs among so cral animals—imagine an organism whose stomach, lungs, brains, etc., are all walking around independently on different sets of legs. They avc Austria and Czechoslovak! ich farm lands and forests along wtih their industrial wealth so that these countries cannot buy in sufficien • quantity Hungarian and Humanoid wheat, Balkan live stock and wootK The r alts were what you would imagine. Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, R 1-aria (formerly an economic v ; i- - 1 of the Empire), worked frveri?h: tc expand or create the industria’ , , pment that they lacked. Czecho-Si, v.-ikia and Austria increased their . ricultural production to re duei‘ imports. High tariffs all around falsified the Horn ? i economic tendencies. Asrrimlturn! Slates, like Hungary, which ( ould not tjo far in developing a national industry, naturally sought the best outlets for their farm promts anil gave tariff-preference to industrial nations who could buy the from them. To-day nil the Danubian countries realist* thi policy is disastrous, that jalvation for them lies in union. Effort, to acheve this union advance oD ly at a snail’s pace, partly because of political difficulties and intrigues the great Powers, but also befause nobody is going to tear down factories that never should have “ een built and plough under fields that Dever should have been sowed if they c an help it. And No: Ruined factories and abandoned coal mines in the Sudetenjand, streets

of Vienna, Hungarian landlords grinding down their peasants worse than ever to pay interest on mortgages held by Jews. In Czecho-Slovakia Konrad Henlein, the Nazi leader, is the social and political consequence of this state of things. In Austria it is Nazism. In Hungary a sort of country gentleman’s Fascism. Add to the economic mess which the peace treaties made of central Europe the restriction of the German market due to the impoverishment of the third reich—Germany is Czechoslovakia’s first customer and exports fell from 3,319,000,000 crowns in 1924 to 1,183,000,000 crowns in 1935 —and Japanese competition—Czecho-Slovak goods are aimed chiefly at the lowprice market-—and it is easy to understand why, politically, all is not well in Czecho-Slovakia.

CZECH PREPAREDNESS. PREVENTS ANOTHER COUP D’ETAT. LONDON, May 23. “It is now possible to say that when the Czech Cabinet met on Friday reports left no doubt that Germany was planning another week-end coup d’etat on the lines of that in Austria,” states the Prague correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.” The courageous action of the Czechs in manning their defences without excitement but with clockwork precision, combined with diplomatic support from abroad, proved a successful deterrent. It is reliably estimated that the number of men still under arms in Czecho-Slovakia is 400,000.