The League of Nations today is holding a special session on the problems of the Saar plebiscite. Mr. Philip Carr, an international journalist of high reputation, outlines in this article the motives which may induce the members of the Council of the League to hesitate before consenting to a return of the Saar to Germany. One of these motives is the protection of the safety of the Jews which Mr. Carr thinks cannot be neglected as a matter of justice.
The Saar basin, as it is called in the official English version of the Versailles Treaty, occupies an area of about 800 square miles, south-east of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg and of Belgium, north-east of Lorraine, and north of Alsace, of either of which two ancient provinces it is only one-tenth of the size. To its east lies Germany.
Most of the country is thickly wooded, and the hills and valleys of the landscape are not without a certain charm. But there is hardly a wooded prospect which does not include the slag heap of a coal mine or the chimneys of a steelworks, and there are whole districts completely urban, where the factories, the pitheads, the rows of small houses, and the smoke-laden atmosphere recall the industrial parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Saar is, in fact, more thickly populated than any other area in Europe—427 persons to the square kilometre, or 1,150 to the square mile.
FRENCH INTERESTS CONTROL THE MINES
The coal mines are at present owned and worked by the French government. The steel industry, on the other hand, is privately owned, and its ownership is in no way protected under the Versailles Treaty, although a considerable amount of French capital—roughly rather more than half of the total—is invested in it.
French economic interests in the Saar are therefore considerable. So are French historical associations. The little town ### Sarrolouis—still so called—was built by Vauban. The charming name of Vaudrevanges, the village where Herr von Papen has his country house—for his wife belongs to a Sarrois family of French origin—was only recently changed by the Germans into Wallerfangen.
Nevertheless, it must not be supposed for a moment that the Saar is anything but German in its language, in its social and political structure, or in its national sympathies. More than a hundred years of Prussian colonization and military development—for Saarbrucken was a key position in road and rail mobilization and carried a heavy garrison—have done their work.
From the moment you walk down the street from the railway station you know you are in a German town. German not only in language, as Zurich is German, but German in feeling and with inhabitants who in many cases actually retain their German nationality, as they are entitled under the terms of the treaty to do. This helps to complicate the problem.
THE PLEBISCITE AND RACIAL SENTIMENTS
This German population is to be asked, early in 1935, to say which of three fates it prefers—incorporation with Germany, with France or maintenance under the present international control. The League of Nations is then to decide the sovereignty under which the Saar shall be placed; and although the actual text of the treaty only requires it to “take into account the wishes of the inhabitants,” the reply of the Allied Powers to Germany’s observations distinctly states that “at the end of fifteen years the inhabitants will have a full and free right to choose the sovereignty under which they are to live.”
If racial and national sentiment alone were to guide the voting, there is little doubt as to how the issue would go. “If you were a native of the Saar,” to me, a municipal official, who had won the Iron Cross during the war, said, “you would hardly elect to be governed by a committee consisting of an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Jugo-Slav, a Finn, and only one of your fellow countrymen. We are Germans and we want to be governed by Germany.” He did not even mention incorporation with France, which indeed is assumed by everyone to be out of the question.
Until the middle of last year there is little doubt that this attitude would have been taken by the enormous majority of the Sarrois, and that a plebiscite, then taken, would have shown more than ninety per cent. of votes for Germany, in spite of the fact that, as I shall show in a moment, the territory would materially be better off by remaining as it is.
But since that date there has been the political revolution in Germany, which has ended in the Hitler dictatorship, and this has had several effects in the Saar.
GERMAN MAJORITY IN VOTING CERTAIN
On the surface, it has had the effect of making a large German majority seem more certain than ever. There have been Nazi demonstrations, Nazi flags and badges, as well as campaigns for Nazi funds, which has induced the Government Commission—a virtually autocratic body—to draw up certain severe ordinances.
The difficulty of performing the duty definitely laid upon the League Council of securing impartiality is already being cited by the Socialists of the Saar to justify the suggestion that the plebiscite be postponed, and the present provisional regime continued for a definite or indefinite period. “There are thirty-five per cent., who will vote for Germany anyhow,” I was told by a leading Socialist, “another thirty-five per cent., would have voted for Germany a year ago, but will not vote for a Nazi Germany, and thirty per cent., would like to vote against the Nazis but will, perhaps, be frightened by Nazi terrorism into not doing so.”
THE POSITION OF THE CATHOLICS
The position which will be taken by the Catholics is more uncertain. Ecclesiastically, the Saar comes under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Treves and Speyer, who may be expected, since the signature of the Concordat in Germany itself, to exercise their influence in favor of a German vote. But although the Catholic party in the Saar—which at the Landesrat election in 1932 represented sixty per cent., with thirty per cent. of Communists and twelve per cent. of Socialists—has recently been dissolved as a political organization, the decision was only taken by a narrow majority, and there is evidence that the Saar Catholics are not in complete sympathy with the attitude of their coreligionists across the frontier.
The outward effects of Nazi propaganda are considerable but its real power in turning votes may appear less when it is remembered that the middle classes, through which it has elsewhere operated so successfully, represent hardly fifteen per cent. of the population of the Saar.
Consequently, the fact that all the photographers’ shop windows in Saarbrucken are full of portraits of Hitler and Goering may not be so significant as it appears to the visitor. The inhabitants of the Saar consist in the enormous majority of factory workmen and hardly at all—only two per cent.—of agriculturalists; and the great majority of those workmen are Catholics.
I have not spoken at all of the economic considerations which might be expected to influence the vote, for it is generally taken for granted that political, religious, and national sympathies will weigh heaviest. There can be little doubt, however, that the economic interests of the Saar would suffer by less close trading with France and would gain little by closer trad-
The League of Nations today is holding a special session on the problems of the Saar plebiscite. Mr. Philip Carr, an international journalist of high reputation, outlines in this article the motives which may induce the members of the Council of the League to hesitate before consenting to a return of the Saar to Germany. One of these motives is the protection of the safety of the Jews which Mr. Carr thinks cannot be neglected as a matter of justice.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
