Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-03-17
RACE MINORITIES PROBLEM
THREATENS WORLD PEACE
Presence Of Germans i'm Polish Corridor
Bringing Protest Shows Question
Dangerous to Handle.

! been taking place. migration of
Germans fleeing before the forcible
Polarization. migration of Magyars
induced alike by persecution and by
the alienat ton of the land. And this
steady stream of exiles. this visible
process of uprooting German and
Magyar populations, awakens roper
customs which cannot be ignored by
German or Hungarian statesmen.
In theory the League is responsible.
It is a body to which. by the very
peace treaties, the minority question
must be referred. But in practice what
can the League do? In the recently
notorious case of the Germans in Upper
Silesia, how is it possible to decide
between the Polish claim that the Ger
man minority is an agency of Ger
many-Seeking to resist the conSolida-
ton of Polish territory. TO keep open
the question of Upper Silesia, against
later German attempt to recover it
and the equally impressive proof of
fered by Germany that the Poles are
prosecuting the German population in
thousand ways, always possible to
the ruling race?
In all the larger minority issues you
are faced always with the double fact.
The subject minorities resist abSorp-
ton and look for liberation through
reconquest. This purpose and the
fashion in which it feeds the aSpira-
tons in Berlin or Burapest stimulate
persecution. Nothing is more inevita-
BILE than that the Poles and the Ru-
manians, seeing their minorities re-
sistant and their neighborS resolved TO
regain the lost lands. should spare no
pains to force the emigra ton of these
unwelcome and patiently perilous mi
noritieS.
AIsace Situation Different.
The situation is slightly different in
Alsace, where the Teutonic population
is resisting assimilation but shows no
desire to return to Germany. And since
the Germans signed the Locarno pact,
renouncing the aspiration to recover
Alsace-L Lorraine, the difficulty becomes
one of French domestic administration.
1t is slightly different in CZechoslovakia,
where MaSSyrk has been wise enough to
bring about measurable fusion of in
terests. The Germans of Bohemia and
Moravia. while they would certainly pre-
fer to be German rather than CZecho-
slovak citizens, would have to face utter
economic ruin we're new frontiers drawn
on ethnic lines and, as result, bar
riers set up between them and their
natural markets.
Were it possible to bring about stu
alton such as exists in the case of
Alsace; were the Germans prepared to
undertake to recognize as permanent
their eastern boundaries, as they have
their western, the problem of the Ger
man minority in Poland would rapidly
disappear Once assured of territorial
security, the single reason for oppress-
ing and forcibly assimilating the Ger
man minority would come to an end.
But. on the other hand, for the German,
Upper Silesia and the Polish Corridor
have the same value as Alsace- Lorraine
had for France.
And, in this situation, what can the
League do? Certainly it can order the
Poles to provide more German schools
in Upper Silesia or old West Prussia, but
how can it do that without ordering the
Germans to provide similarly adequate
Polish schools in East Prussia, where
there is large Polish-speaking popula-
ton? And how can 1t make either the
Poles or the Germans obey?
If and when the Germans and Poles
decide to accept voluntarily some state
of fact as to their common frontiers, to
agree upon status quo, then the
minority question will lose importance
for both peoples. But today. while it is
clear that the German minority in Po-
land has suffered much hardship, has
been subjected to much stupid and even
brutal persecution since 1919, the
fundamental fact is that the presence
of this minority offers Germany the
necessary opportunity to prevent Polish
consolidation and to keep alive German
hopes.
And when Germany appeals to the
League of Nations to protect the Ger
man population of Poland it is at the
same time endeavoring to enlist world
opinion against Poland, to keep alive the
idea that the frontiers of Paris were
unjustly drawn and that the German
determination to recover the corridor
and Upper Silesia is founded upon
justice. It is also calculated to fortify
the opinion, very current in Britain and
not unfamiliar in America, that there
can be no peace in Europe until the
frontiers~of Germany in the East are
revised.
tCopyrisht, 1927