With each Saar vote costing officially $3, and unofficially no man knows what,* the world's highest-priced plebiscite was held this week with these results:
477,119 ballots for return of the Saar to Germany.
46,513 for retention of League of Nations rule over the Saar.
2,214 for annexation of the Saar by France.
With these returns in, just where was the Saar? The Treaty of Versailles, under which the plebiscite was held, does not provide that the returns shall have mandatory force. The votes so expensively obtained have the status of information presented to the Council of the League of Nations which must arrive independently at its own decision. Last week that awful MUST had the Council thoroughly scared. In Geneva politicians jibbered about how they might be held to blame for a war, should they decide about the Saar unwisely or too late. All of a twitter, Sir John Simon, highest-priced lawyer in the British Empire and His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, begged his Council colleagues to hand the Saar instantly to Germany should the plebiscite turn out to be the Nazi landslide Sir John expected. In a terrific state of nerves the Council, as usual in cases of supreme emergency, adjourned.
Stormy Socialist Max Braun, the German who has risked his life a thousand times in the past few months to organize Saar Socialists, Catholics and Communists in opposition to Saar Nazis, declared in his final appeal to Saarlanders to vote for the status quo! "We are Germans and we want eventually to return to Germany. But we are determined that the Saar shall not go to Hitler! There is a difference between Germany and Hitler. The Nazis pass, Germany remains!"
To the League Council persistent Herr Braun reported that last week Saar Nazis: 1) told Saar Jews "you will be safe after the plebiscite if your passport shows that you spent the entire day of the plebiscite in Germany and so can prove you did not vote"; 2) circulated to all Saarlanders a questionnaire to be collected by Saar Nazis the day after the plebiscite with these queries answered: "Did you vote? If not, why not? If so, how?" 3) systematically subjected to beatings Saarlanders suspected of intending to vote otherwise than for union with Germany.
Dispatches from neutral correspondents checked with these charges by Herr Braun. Anticipating a Nazi majority, he appealed to the League Council to "take into consideration the terroristic conditions amid which the plebiscite is held," in deciding what to do with the Saar. In Germany brownshirt wrath boiled when His Eminence Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, defied Nazis who demanded that he order prayers for immediate return of the Saar to Germany. Instead His Eminence pointedly ordered two Pater Nosters and two Ave Marias "for the good of Germany."
When the Saar plebiscite commission asked France and Germany to desist from broadcasting Saar propaganda for 24 hours before the poll last week, Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin complied. Realmleader Adolf Hitler ordered every German station hooked into an unceasing day & night Saar broadcast, the usual time signals between programs being replaced by the first few bars of the plebiscite song, "GERMAN IS THE SAAR!"