Evening star., 1934-04-15
Europe, Ignoring League, Reverting
-. To Intrigue and Secret Alliances

! know Pilsudski's weak spot, the plum
is considered too tempting to resist
Especially since it costs nothing al
the moment.
As for eventual solution Of the cor.
ridor question, the Nazis are said tt
have proposition which inside from
intriguing Warsaw, is causing the
Baltic states more or less worry. The
Nazis would compensate the Poles II
they consent to give up the present
Corridor. by arranging access to the
sea through Lithuania. Pilsudski, al
though by blood a Lithuanian. doe
not take seriously the sovereignty oI
Kovno and would not hesitate to re-
peat the wilma grab if it were con-
venient The Poles can only SEE
Lithuania as a treacherous neighbol
(albeit their own action has made the
Lithuanians hate them), and one
which would not hesitate to join Rus
sia against them. Abandonment oi
the Corridor would create a serious
minority problem for the Germans, in
asmuch as 80 per cent of the popula
ton now is Polish, but transfer oi
populations has been done before (be-
tween Greece and Turkey and is not
impossible again.
One report-published widely in the
Baltic press-claims that the Germans
have suggested elimination of the Bal
tic nations through taking over Latvia
and Lithuania themselves, giving Es-
thonia and part of Lithuania to the
Poles and alloting Russia free hand
in Finland, which for generations was
a Czarist colony One thing is GER
tain-Nazi activities in this part OF
Europe are being intensified. EStho-
mia, which recently revised its consti-
tuition so as to give its President in
creased powers, has just learned that
the campaign for the supposed ere
form was financed by German
money. So serious has the situation
become that a state of emergency
with virtual martial law, has been
declared for a period of six months
Anything Declared Possible.
The intrigues-evidence Of which
appear daily-may seem fantastic. But
one needs only read pre-war history
and the revelations made by scores
of statesmen in memoirs published
after Versailles to realize that in a
Europe undergoing Kaleidoscope pc
litical changes anything is possible
1t is not at all surprising that gov
ernments, particularly those domi-
mated by dictatorS or relationships,
should revert to the old system of
ententes and alliances. They are in
finitely more exciting, and the odds,
both for and against obtaining ma
tional advantages, are intellectually
greater. Under the League system
the stakes are strictly limited and
the element of chance eliminated. Die
tators and the governments they pre-
side over, are gamblers.
Human nature, or rather political
psychology in Europe'S statesmen, does
not appear to have changed much
since the days of Louis XIV, who,
after rule of nearly three-quarters
of century, exclaimed: L'etat, c'est
moi" Unless it is to espouse the view
point of his great-grandson, Louis XIV,
who predicted: "Apres moi, le deluge"
1t is the Danubian entente, just Gre
ated by Mussolini, which is going to
cause the most serious complications
in European diplomacy. Had II
Duce wished, he could not possibly
have adopted policy SO fraught with
potentialities and which has so COM
pletely muddied political waters.
While France. on the surface, ap.
pears to have acquiesced to the nego-
tiations between MuSsolini. Dollfuss
and CONDOS, and De Chambrun,
French Ambassador at Rome, was vis-
tied by both the Austrian and Hun
garian chancellors, the stream of Wilt
fication that has appeared since in the
Partisan press (this followed Musso-
lini's annual discourse on foreign pol
icy which was made the day after the
signatures had been attached to the
tripartite agreement), indicates that
the Quai d'Orsay was merely seeking
to conceal its chagrin.
To those who are in a position to