North of Suez

From. Bucharest, from Budapest, from Paris--to which all grapevines lead--came reports last week of marching men:

Four divisions of German troops, about 60,000 men, moving southeastward into the Russian-held portion of old Poland. How far were they going? What were they going to do?

In the Balkans 50,000,000 people, in Turkey 16,000,000, in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq 5,400,000 more had, whether they knew it or not, an acute interest in these questions--and many of them knew it, 'for hundreds of thousands were under arms and being called to arms. From the Adriatic to the Caspian the little nations of eastern Europe and western Asia trembled and prepared for the worst--not knowing what the worst might be.

The reported transfer of so many German troops (reported as three armored divisions and one mechanized) from "Germany" into "Russia" was an important move in Europe's enormous battle of power politics. That battle has been in full swing much longer than the actual military maneuvers of World War II. Waged by diplomacy, by finance, by trade treaties, by propaganda and racial tensions, any day it might break into actual man-killing war on new fronts because in the wings of the Near East stand huge armies stationed there as potentials to back up the war of wangling.

Ever since the rape of Poland Rumania has been in a resigned state of war jitters and martial law. The railroads have been jammed to bursting with soldiers on the move night & day. German and British agents campaign furiously from headquarters on different floors but under the same Bucharest roof (Athenee Palace Hotel). While Bucharest enjoys a superficial building boom topped off by a fancy new palace, King Carol has taken his country's whole life into his own hands in a desperate effort to save his Kingdom.

Military preparedness against threats from the north and east is, for King Carol, no more important than lining up his neighbors on the west and south. For Rumania was a gainer by the last war. Not only does Russia want back Bessarabia, but Hungary wants back Transylvania, Bulgaria wants back Dobruja--Rumania's northeast, northwest and southern provinces. Security against his Balkan neighbors until after the Red menace is past is the object of King Carol's earnest conversations with Regent Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and of next month's meeting of the Balkan Entente (Rumania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey) over which Rumania's Foreign Minister Gafencu will preside.

The new and badly feared presence of Soviet Russia on Hungary's northeast border is a controlling factor in the present tentative Balkan lineup. If that line-up holds and Rumania has to fight Russia, Hungary will not grab for Transylvania, nor Bulgaria for Dobruja. Hungary may even remain benevolently neutral and let Italian and Yugoslav war supplies cross into Rumania. Never were the Balkans more united than they seemed last week against Russia. A cordial exchange even took place between Bulgaria and her old enemy Turkey.

It was Germany that raped Poland, but Stalin has replaced Hitler as the author of jitters among the little Balkans, for judging by Finland, Stalin is land hungry. But Germany's interests now appear best served by a policy of scare-&-squeeze rather than one of seize-&-exploit. Peter F. Drucker pointed out in his book The End of Economic Man that the Balkan countries are tremendously overpopulated in relation to their capacity to produce the things Germany needs: oil, cereals, metals. If Germany grabbed any of them she would have to feed and rule them. Far better to threaten them into supplying the goods and taking aspirin, cheap cameras and mouth organs in return, and to let them kick against their own rulers when their standard of living suffers.

With Germany at war in the west this argument is doubly strong, for to invade Rumania would mean fighting over and ruining the Rumanian oil fields and wheat fields on whose 1940 output Germany is counting. To no one so much as Adolf Hitler is peace in Rumania important, but if anyone should upset it, he would like to be on the scene. Thus last week's Nazi troop movement toward Rumania was not construed as direct aggression. Stalin had apparently agreed to let Hitler establish martial law to pep up production in the old Galician oil fields south of Lwow (for German technicians were reported on hand there). It looked, too, like a move to guard against sabotage, better than Russia's slovenly troops might do, the rail route by which much Rumanian oil reaches Germany (via Cernauti and Lwow). For this week dispatches from Bucharest stated that the Germans turned up on the Rumanian border. If any one, friend or enemy, moves into Rumania, Hitler will doubtless have troops on hand. Meanwhile they serve as a troop concentration in Eastern Europe.

Competition between Great Britain and Germany for Rumania's exports is an old, old fight, intensified now by the Allied blockade of Germany on the West. Last autumn Britain managed to cut Germany's supply of Rumanian oil by one-third, but oil is still moving north at the rate of about twelve trains (430 tank cars) a day. Since King Carol must preserve a semblance of fairdealing with Herr Hitler under their new trade agreement, last week all oil companies in Rumania, which are largely controlled by British, Belgian, Dutch and French capital, were placed under a commission empowered to dictate exports "in accordance with the nation's interest." A pro-German mining tycoon, Ion Gigurtu, is Communications Minister to see that Rumanian exports at least start for Germany. These moves coincided with the return to Bucharest last week of Hitler's trading field general, Dr. Karl Claudius, who is ably assisted in his work by a beauteous blonde, Edith von Koehler.

To outwit Dr. Claudius, Britain's emissaries are not above using sly methods. They have cornered most of the oil barges on the now-frozen Danube. A barge filled with concrete was mysteriously sunk at a point in the river where it might have impeded shipping. Oil well operators have been supplied with large quantities of cement to dump down their holes and gum the works should an invader approach. Rumanians would not be surprised if Allies subsidized a little attempt to blow up the Bucharest-Berlin railway. Fortnight ago their railway police were ordered to carry pistols.

For military reasons Rumania anticipates attack from across the Dnestr near Cernauti (see map) rather than from Odessa into Bessarabia. (In Bessarabia there are too many swamplands to cross.) There are now 18 Rumanian divisions massed around Cernauti as against four in Bessarabia, which Rumania might even yield under stress, taking her stand along the River Prut. But meantime Rumania is frantically strengthening her positions from the Black Sea, along the entire length of the Russian border, and back along the entire length of the Hungarian border--honor among Balkan nations cannot be trusted too far.

Meanwhile the peaceful status of the eastern side of the Black Sea is signalized by the presence of nearly three-quarters of a million men under arms. There may be no Near Eastern war in the spring but four great Armies are not kept under arms for the purpose of wrapping ribbons around May poles.

One is a Russian Army, estimated 200,000 strong, based on Tiflis and stationed throughout one of Russia's favorite training grounds, the Kura River valley. Through this valley from the wells at Baku to refineries at Batum (see map), runs Russia's prime oil pipeline. Another line runs north of the Caucasus from Grozny to Tuapse on the Black Sea.

The second Army is Turkey's, 200,000 strong, at present preoccupied with repairing the devastation of last month's monster earthquake. President General Inoenue visited the stricken region not only to comfort his panicked peasantry (see cut, p. 31),but for military reasons. The thorough wreckage of northeastern Asia Minor has destroyed the railroads, without which Turkey's eastern defenses can hardly be supplied. Whether or not he expects to be at war by spring, last week President Inoenue got from his adjourning Parliament emergency decree powers like those Premier Daladier of France got after Munich.

A third Army stands in French-mandated Syria and Lebanon, based on Beirut. This force is the one put together by France's fox-smart General Maxime Weygand. It consists of at least 150,000 men, mostly Colonials and Legionnaires, and its job, besides guarding against a Moslem uprising, is to go to Turkey's (or Rumania's) aid if needed.

Further south, based in Palestine and Trans-Jordan, is a fourth Army, of perhaps 100,000 British, Colonial and Arab soldiers. They are strung out along the pipelines from Kirkuk to Haifa and Tripoli and from Mosul to Alexandretta, guarding the oil that fuels the Allies' eastern Mediterranean naval forces. Their assemblage of air power headquartered at Aqaba (on the eastern finger-tip of the Red Sea), has auxiliary fighting bases scattered far up into Iraq.

Great Britain and France last week lent Turkey $174,000,000 (on top of $100,000,000 already lent by Great Britain). This loan for which no economic basis exists was to sweeten the defensive alliance which Nazi Ambassador Franz von Papen failed to prevent last autumn, and $100,000,000 of it is to be spent exclusively on Turkey's Army. That Army does not by the terms of the Allied treaty with Turkey have to attack Russia, but it stands ready to defend its country against Russian invasion.

The Turkish Navy is small but will probably be a match for Russia's Black Sea Fleet which consists of one battleship, one light cruiser, two old heavy cruisers, a half-dozen potent super-destroyers, 15-20 submarines, several minelayers. Lately Britain sold Turkey two good destroyers and two minelayers just in case. Control of the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara is the key to sending aid to Rumania against invasion. This key Britain and France feel confident their friend President Inoenue would let them use, whether or not Turkey participated actively in a northerly thrust.

When General Yudenich, under the Grand Duke Nicholas, attacked Turkey's eastern frontier in 1916, he succeeded partly because he struck suddenly in midwinter, and partly because Turkey had not collected herself after her strenuous defense of Gallipoli. At that, Yudenich did not penetrate beyond Trabzon and Erzurum, did not gain access to the grain-growing highlands of Anatolia. More successful was the penetration of Iran by Russian forces who drove the Turks out of that helpless, neutral country after the British took Bagdad. The routes used in that campaign (see map) would likely be the routes taken again should Russia strike south from Tiflis. Again Iran is neutral but now German influence there is strong. That would favor Russia and a Soviet push from the south shore of the Caspian Sea, down to Hamadan and Kermanshah, would gravely threaten the French and British oilfields across the border in Iraq even if it did not develop into a march on Basra and other Persian Gulf ports.

Fighting in this half-desert region would be open warfare and would provide a new scope for air campaigns and in some areas for mechanized ground raids. In such a war both sides can be aggressor. It might well be featured by an Allied attack on Russia's Caucasian oil lines and refineries, by sea and by air if not by land. Not beyond imagining would be Allied naval and air raids on Baku and on Russia's great port of Odessa where Caucasian oil now goes by boat for shipment into Russia proper.

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