Evening star., 1934-09-09
BY DOROTHY THOMPSON.

SAARBRUCKEN. Saar Territory,
September 8 (NAN.AD-Half a mil
lion men and women inhabiting this
little, complex country, about as big
as Manhattan Island, lying between
France, Prussia and Bavaria, will
vote upon their national destiny jan
uary 13, 1885, in a plebiscite which
may determine the fate Of Europe
The vote will be watched over by a
neutral League of Nations govern
ment, supplemented by an interna-
tional plebiscite commission, and in
all probably will be protected by in
terns tional police
The people who will vote are those
who Is years ago lived and had the
right to vote in this territory. For
IS years they have lived under a gov
ernment commission appointed by the
League of Nations and for Is years
they have looked forward to the day
in January, 1885, when they would de-
eide in a free and secret election
whether they wished to be German or
French or continue to live under one
form of government or another super
viSed by the League.
Today Nothing Certain.
When the Versailles treaty made
this arrangement and fixed this date.
no one could foreSee what conditions
would be Is years later. Two years
ago, even six months ago, the results
of the election seemed certain. Eight
hundred thousand Germans would
vote more or less en- bloc to join the
IS ,000,0 900 Germans of the Fatherland
Today, four months before the
plebiscite, nothing is certain. But in
France, England, Germany and in the
Saar itself apprehension has been
growing that the ballots which are
put into the ballot boxes in Saar-
brucken, Saarlouis and Neunkirchen
may be enough dynamite to blow up
far larger territory than the Saar.
The territory of the Saar is a wide,
green valley lying between low noun
tains, with the river which gives it its
name flowing through it's midst. Since
1870 it has been an economic entity
with Lorraine. Here, as in Alabama
coal mines and iron ore deposits lie
close to each other-the ore in French
Lorraine and the coal in the Saar-
and the same river carries the one to
the other. The great iron works of
Lorraine have bought Saar coal and
sold Lorraine ore to the great iron
works Of the Saar.
The whole of the Saar is dominated
by coal and steel. Out of the green
fields rise the steel towers of the coal
mines, whose wheels turn continually.
pumping air into the shafts beside
the black tunnels of the ventilators.
Villages cluster around them, and in
these villages live nearly half of the
population.
France Operating Mines.
The mines belong to the French
government. They were taken by the
French as compensation for those de-
northern France, and have been oper-
ated by the French government since
1919. The vote on January 13 will
decide the fate of these mines and
their workers. If the miners, with
ballots in their grimy hands, vote for
Germany, then Germany must pay
for these mines in gold-gold which
she has not got-and the coal which
has flowed unhindered into Lorraine
may be stopped at the customs border
And If the coal turns the other way
to go into Germany, it will pass into
a country which already has hundreds
of thousands of tons of better coal
which it cannot sell.
Will the mines go on working? Will
the miners have bread? They do not
know.
Amidst the mountains of nature,
other mountains loom, pointed as
Fujiyama, black as Montenegro. They
are the slack of the iron works which
belong to the great industrial barons
of the Saar. Here is a Voelkingen