"Deutsch Ist Die Saar!"

When resplendent Louis XIV deigned to found the city of Saarlouis, endowing it richly with his august name and commanding that it be fortified by his great Engineer Vauban, nothing would have seemed more preposterous to the Sun King than any question of whether the Saar is German or French. Having said "L'etat c'est moi," His Majesty would certainly have troubled no more about Saar nationality than to say "The Saar is mine!" Last week a lumpy lot of Teuton farmers and workmen from various parts of the U. S. enjoyed free passage on German ships as they were rushed Saarward to vote in the plebiscite of Jan. 13, 1935.

"Deutsch ist die Saar! The Saar is German!" roared uniformed Germans marching with brass bands up & down Manhattan docks as the voters prepared to sail. "We really won't vote when we get there!" giggled one young woman born in the Saar. "We are just taking the free trip--or at least I am!"

This remark was overheard by a beefy quartermaster of the S. S. Deutschland. "Let them say what they like," he grunted. "They will vote all right when they get there! Heil Hitler!"

"This is an American expedition! We are not chiselers!" excitedly shouted the leader of one group, Farmer Hans Dietz, a brisk little peasant with acres 60 miles south of Chicago. "Mr. Hitler is no more important than any American politician! We are Americans, first and last, and would go back to the Saar to vote even if the Kaiser was on his throne. There is nothing un-American about this!"

As reporters continued to question Leader Dietz, an excited mechanic from Pittsburgh finally became so upset that he seized a newshawk by the lapel, shook him vigorously and shouted: "So you are worried about whether it is un-American to vote for Hitler? Well, let me tell you this! A vote for Hitler--well it's all in one bag--Hitler and Germany!"

Bland amid Teuton bedlam was petite Miss Margot Vagi. She let other people explain that, although Japanese, she was a child of six living in the Saar in 1919 when the Treaty of Versailles took the Saar provisionally from Germany, handed it over to the League of Nations as trustee until 1935. Though Miss Yagi scarcely remembers the Saar and now lives in New York, her plebiscite qualifications are impeccable. Anyone who was a Saarlander in 1919 may vote. Disenfranchised are Saarlanders of later vintage, even though they may have lived in the Saar uninterruptedly since 1920, may have heavy investments there.

Christ or Hitler? Germany obtained the Saar in 1815, proceeded with a ruthless Prussianization which lasted over 100 years and enables Adolf Hitler to shout with substantial truth "Deutsch ist die Saar!"

That is to say, Saarlanders of today are racially and linguistically almost pure Germans. In Saarlouis they call their umbrellas Parplischirm, a bastard word, half French (parapluie), half German (Regenschirm), but not since the Paris Peace Conference have many intelligent neutrals believed that there were any great number of Frenchmen in the Saar in 1919.

At the Peace Conference grim Georges ("Tiger") Clemenceau, who would have much preferred simply to take the Saar by right of conquest, found that the best way to handle President Wilson was to tell him that President Poincare had just received a petition of loyalty and devotion to France from 150,000 French Saarlanders. There never were any such people. There never was any such petition. Its absurdity should have been obvious to Historian Wilson, but he yielded to the tall story of Journalist Clemenceau.

Paradoxically, the plebiscite issue today is not really the Saar but the doctrine called Nazi and its works. Before Adolf Hitler and his crew swarmed up from below decks and seized the German ship of state from Captain Paul von Hindenburg there was no doubt whatsoever that the Saar plebiscite would be a landslide vote to rejoin Germany.

The Saar is German. But is it Nazi?

The Saar is some 70% Catholic. Saar priests have been having their quiet say. Above many a recent Saar mass meeting has been flown a banner with the strange device Jesus Is Our Leader, Not Hitler.

From Berlin unlimited funds and the feverish energy of Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels have impinged for months like blazing searchlights upon the Saar. If what is called Nazi cannot win this nearby victory, what foreign victory can it ever win? To the disgust of millions of Germans, Der Fuehrer has not kept his campaign promises openly to rupture the Treaty of Versailles. He has not won for Germany a single scrap of territory, not even Danzig, much less the Polish Corridor. If the Saar, which, before Hitler, was considered all but in Germany's bag, should vote next week to remain under League trusteeship or to join France, the blow to Nazi prestige inside Germany would be titanic.

Nazi leaders of the "German Front" or Vote-for-Germany Party in the Saar incited Saar citizens last week to defy the League's order that all banners must be taken down before the plebiscite. After shouting for weeks "The swastika shall be kept flying!", these leaders, as zero hour approached, hauled down their own Nazi banners from German Front headquarters, did not even wait to be threatened by British, Italian, Dutch and Swedish troops of the League's Plebiscite Army (TIME, Dec. 31). As Commander-in-Chief of this Army, brisk Major General John E. S. Brind, D.S.O., had nothing but routine on his hands last week.

Saar police had plenty on their hands. After German radio stations broadcast charges that the Saar Catholic Party is "in the pay of France," Saar Nazis attacked a Saar Catholic Rally, beat several Catholics senseless. Meanwhile Saar Reds went into action and Saar Nazis soon screamed for police protection, alleged that the Communists had wounded several brownshirts with carving knives.

Plebiscite Procedure, Since the thing called Nazi does have marked appeal for the majority of Germans; since the majority of Saarlanders are Germans; and since the French are realists, Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin was entirely resigned last week to the prospect of a vote by the Saar to go German and thus Nazi.

By the Rome agreement of last month Germany will then have an opportunity to pay France handsomely in gold for the Saar mines as explicitly provided in the Treaty of Versailles. If Germany does not pay, then France will have every right to hold two of the mines, and Premier Flandin is a young man of tenacious resolution. If Germany does pay for the Saar mines, while continuing to welsh on her numerous prior debts to all the world, then indeed the name of Nazi will stink abroad.

Paradoxically the plebiscite, in which Saarlanders may vote to 1) rejoin Germany, 2) stay under the League, or 3) join France, will not in any sense be final. It will merely provide the League of Nations with data upon which to work out a settlement. According to the Treaty of Versailles, not only the majority opinion of the whole Saar but also the majority in each important district must be considered. Thus the plebiscite may easily produce no clear mandate. What is the League to do, for example, should Saarlouis alone vote overwhelmingly to rejoin France? Under the Treaty it is clear that to turn over Saarlouis, in such circumstances, to the mercy of the Nazis would be at least a base betrayal of President Wilson.

Coal & Iron, Ask any unsentimental economist about the Saar and he will postulate the essential truth: the iron of Alsace-Lorraine and the coal of the Saar exist in a Heaven-sent propinquity which it would be economic madness to disrupt. Here are mighty minerals, lumped together in mid-Europe, which the economist must call more important than shibboleths or frontiers. In an economic age the pragmatic Right is that the Saar and Alsace-Lorraine be kept together under whatever flag for fecund production of the Great God Steel.

Saar Dollars, Educational for Saar-landers arriving from the U.S. last week was a decision by the Saar Supreme Court. In 1925 and 1927 the Municipality of Saarbruecken sold to U.S. citizens two bond issues of $3,000,000 each, payable in gold dollars or their equivalent. In the U.S. such agreements to repay in pre-Roosevelt dollars were invalidated by act of Congress last year. Elated, the Municipality of Saarbruecken prepared to repay its bondholders in cut-rate Roosevelt dollars, at a saving of some 40%. Last week the Saar Supreme Court held that such chiseling may be legal in the U.S. but is not legal in the Saar, ordered Saarbruecken to fulfill its clear obligation to holders of Saar dollar bonds.

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