Europe

ON THE WORLD TODAY

FRANCE is worried; and the disclosure of the contents of Hitler’s last will and testament, calling upon Germany to prepare for revenge, has added to her concern. Fears grow in Paris that the British, American, and Russian attitudes toward the Germans mean repetition of the diplomatic follies of the nineteen-twenties.

From the French point of view, the parallels are ominous. This view merits attention, for it is shared by most of France’s neighbors. Significant consequences of the attitude of Paris, moreover, are beginning to appear in French relations with several states on the Continent.

At Versailles, and persistently thereafter, the cornerstone of French policy in Europe was security against the Germans. That policy has remained unchanged. To see “ egoism or any form of imperialism ” in the French proposals concerning the Rhineland and the Ruhr, says Georges Bidault, French Foreign Minister, would be to overlook the obvious fact that individual security depends upon international security. “ Central administration in Germany might be convenient,” he declares in a bitter reply to the insistence of the Big Three that Germany be given political unity swiftly, “ but we refuse to sacrifice lasting benefits to the convenience of the moment.”

France admits that administrative unity may be desirable for the German state, under Allied direction, but maintains that no attempt should be made to build up a new German nation with centralized political agencies, at least until settlement has been made of the status of the Rhineland and the Ruhr.

After World War I, France demanded control of the banks of the Rhine. She was thwarted by the British, who, true to their policy of balance of power, sought to weaken French authority on the Continent by supporting a defeated Germany. This policy continued into the thirties, reaching its disastrous climax at Munich.

At Versailles French security was invested in a fifteenyear hegemony over the Saar coal fields and in the creation of a demilitarized zone fifty miles deep along the banks of the Rhine. Hitler had no difficulty in erasing both when the opportune moment arrived.

Germany’s war base

Today, France demands that the Rhineland be set up as a separate state, under Allied supervision, and that the Ruhr be internationalized with the Allies in charge. Britain’s recent action expropriating the German steel and coal barons in the Ruhr suggests that the Labor Government at London may yet find substance in the French demands. So does the promise that a strip of the British zone of occupation will be handed over to the Belgians sometime in the spring.

Yet so far there has been no real move toward internationalization. Up to mid-January, ten months after the downfall of Germany, French proposals regarding Germany’s western boundaries still awaited adequate examination by the Big Three, though there were signs that the impasse might end.

After World War I, France urged that Germany’s war power be throttled. But, under British lead, and with American support, Germany was nursed toward recovery and eventually fortified by foreign loans. The Americans withdrew in haste; then the Allied Commission established to control German armaments fizzled out.

Today, France watches the steady diminution of the American armed forces and cocks an anxious ear toward hints from Washington that the whole American occupational army will be out of Germany by the end of five years.

With grim attention Paris also observes that the powerful German I. G. Farben is close to 80 per cent intact; that its staggering $6,000,000,000 in assets has by no means been uncovered, thanks to financial legerdemain in Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and the Argentine; that its vast web of more than 2000 cartel ties, reaching into 173 firms abroad, has still to be wiped out effectively; that American military experts who have explored the ramifications of this gigantic economic base of German fascism are protesting in vain against the slow pace of Allied attack upon I. G. Farben; and that British and American business spokesmen increasingly champion preservation of “ a substantial part " of the German industrial machine as “ essential " to making Germany selfsupporting.

Only about 9 per cent of I. G. Farben’s assets are in the American zone. Fewer than half a dozen of its 55 industrial plants and 25 administrative structures had been destroyed by the end of 1945. What, ask the French, does this mean? If Germany is to retain any important part of her industrial base, — which means her war base, — especially in the Rhineland and Ruhr, her power for aggression is preserved.

Concentration in western Germany of several million Germans driven from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other areas adds to that potential. Russia is settling the question of Germany’s eastern frontiers to her own satisfaction, with the assent of the two other major Allies. Why is the dangerous question of Germany’s western frontiers evaded or postponed? Does the Moscow directive on framing peace treaties with Axis satellites mean that this momentous problem is to be allowed to drift during the next six months?

It was over her western borders that Germany struck in 1792, and again in 1870, and again in 1914. It was here that she opened her first full-scale drive for conquest of Western Europe in 1940.

Hints from Secretary of State Byrnes that the Big Three may seek to frame political unity for Germany without including France, like the criticism leveled at the French position by General McNarney, Byron Price, and others, elicit barrages of counterattack in all sections of the French press regardless of party lines.

Suggestions from Washington about withdrawal of military control confirm predictions made long ago by the worried French and sharpen their demands for a speedy clarification of Allied-purposes with respect to western Germany. What will happen, they ask, when the Americans leave? Do the Allies assess at their true proportions recent revelations of renewed activity by the Nazi underground?

The “Pity Germany” campaign

Contributing to the growing stubbornness of the French, and to the unease of their neighbors as well, is the progress made by the “ Pity Germany ” campaign being waged in England and the United States. Here, again, our allies in Western Europe see a parallel to events after World War I.

Norway, turning to the task of restoring 6000 farms burned flat by the retreating Germans in the Finnmark, surveying the 12,000 homes and other buildings in ruins in that Arctic province where the long night now complicates the tasks of reconstruction, counting the bones of her slaughtered herds, and remembering her reward for giving shelter to thousands of German children after World War I, dismisses the “ Pity Germany ” campaign as the product of “ optimism ” and a failure to distinguish properly between justice and revenge.

The outspoken Dutch say that “ the murdered are being forgotten for the sake of the murderers.” The mood of the cold and hungry Netherlanders toward Germany remains grim. In the recent poll taken by the government to discover whether the time has arrived to moderate severity toward collaborators, more than 73 per cent of the Dutch voted to continue the death penalty.

A Dutch writer levels contempt at “ an invisibly organized campaign of pity for the poor German women and children who, themselves, did not show pity for the victims of their brutes of husbands and fathers — those hard-working, friendly people, who are still dressed in stolen clothes, sleep under stolen blankets, ride in stolen trains, and speak through stolen telephones.”

Comment in France is sardonic. It notes that no international pity campaigns work up concern over an infant mortality rate fluctuating between 60 and 75 per cent in the liberated areas, though tremendous flurries stir abroad because the infant mortality rate in Germany approaches 50 per cent!

What France and her neighbors perceive more clearly than those far from the shivering and starving continent is that the Nazi policy of biological warfare is still exacting its terrible toll among Germany’s neighbors in grisly death rates, shattered birth rates, malnutrition, a frightful spread of tuberculosis, and maternity deaths — a toll which gravely jeopardizes the future strength of them all.

The Danube and the Straits

As experts for the Big Three come to the task of framing peace treaties, one of the oldest, thorniest problems of European diplomacy edges to the front: waterways.

The Rhine affects the economic interests of Western Europe — Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Switzerland, in addition to Germany. It also plays an important part in the shipping economy of Italy and Britain. The Danube, winding through its 2855 kilometers to the Black Sea, is the veritable lifeline of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria.

The Moscow Conference directs the attention of treaty-makers to all four former enemy states. Since 1718, the question of free navigation of the Danube has been one of Europe’s perennials. Today the problem merges in the Black Sea with Russia’s interest in the Dardanelles.

Full utilization of the Danube as a traffic artery is impossible without settlement of the issue of the Straits, in Russia’s view. Moscow is the more insistent upon this since Rumania, Bulgaria, and to a certain extent Hungary, now lie with Yugoslavia in her Balkan sphere of influence. Since Soviet policy returned to the old Russian aims in this matter last spring, when Moscow notified Turkey of demands for bases in the Dardanelles, the most notable development has been the cooling of British interest toward the anxious Turks.

Does this mean that Britain expects, eventually, to yield to Russia’s insistence? Anglo-Russian disputes on this question date back to 1809. In 1806, 1829, 1854, and 1877 Russia fought Turkey to achieve control of the Straits. In 1915, the secret Treaty of London granted Russia’s demands in that area. Renewal of the ancient quarrel today finds Turkey isolated from her former European supporters, who have not forgotten Ankara’s slick game of following the main chance during the recent war.

Russia’s outlet to the sea

Russia watches closely Britain’s troubles in Palestine and Egypt, and is not averse to stoking fires under Turkey. The crisis in Iran and the threat of domestic revolution in the northern Russian-occupied zone of that oil-rich and ruthlessly exploited country fits into this pattern.

There are but two possible exits to deep water for the Russians in the Mediterranean-Middle East zone. One is by way of the Dardanelles and the greatest of inland seas. There Russia has already won the right to participate in the management of Tangier, opposite Gibraltar, at the Western Gate. She has also indicated her interest in the approaches to Suez — Tripolitania and Eritrea. Finally, she has served notice on Turkey that the question of the Straits must be settled acceptably to Moscow.

Proposals advanced last summer by President Truman to the Turks, urging liberalization of the Montreux Agreement (which governs the Straits), continue to have cool reception at the Russian capital. They do not go far enough. Besides, the Dardanelles is on Russia’s doorstep, not America’s; and the United States was not a signatory to the Montreux Agreement. Diplomatically, this means that Mr. Truman is out of order.

The real tussle now centers on Turkey. That is where the dispute in Iran comes in. An exit for Russia to the Indian Ocean via Iran is the Russian alternative to an exit via the Straits to the Mediterranean. Russia could not obtain access to the Indian Ocean short of war with Great Britain; and war is not included in Russia’s plans. But by adopting a tolerant attitude toward the aspirations of rebels in northern Iran for escape from control by the Shah’s British-dominated government at Teheran, Russia raises alarm among Britain’s oil interests and warms up a vital question of imperial strategic position.

The new oil peddler

If the Iranian rebels should overthrow the regime at Teheran that would not necessarily constitute a violation of the Teheran agreement made by the Big Three. That pact is not a pledge to back any Persian government against domestic dissenters. But success of the rebel maneuver might mean restoration to Russia of her old oil concession in northern Iran, to match the British and American concessions in southern Iran. This could bring another peddler of oil into world markets — a possibility both British and American oil interests dislike because Russia is bound by no marketing and price agreements.

Moreover, there is always the danger of a Russian thrust to the upper Persian Gulf. The Iranian contest has been waging between Russia and Great Britain since the beginning of the present century. Observe, however, that the region involved is directly behind Turkey, and Russian claims for extension of sovereignty into Turkish Armenia along the Black Sea raise the temperature in that quarter. With the cancellation notice given by Russia to the Turks, Turkey and Russia now have no treaty whatsoever. By warming things up in Iran and Armenia, Moscow is warning Turkey to act.

London has sized up this situation correctly and dispatched a note to Turkey proposing concessions by the Turks on the question of the Straits. As between choosing to yield to Russian pressure via Iran, and choosing to concede something at the Dardanelles, British interest lies with the latter course. There are several checks and balances available in the Mediterranean area — including good prospects for joint safeguards under the United Nations. No such expedients are available in Iran.