(2 of 3)
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 Führer 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.