THE BALKANS: Grab Crazy

The national frenzy to grab neighbors’ territory was started by Adolf Hitler’s Sudeten grab. The rest of Central Europe thereupon went grab crazy, Hungary getting 4,800 sq. mi. of Czechoslovakia, Poland getting 400. Like the 1937 U. S. sit-down fad, the grab craze has now infected people who have less & less excuse to be infected by it.

In Hungary last week the Cabinet fell (and rose again four days later) as a result of demonstrations in Budapest by grab crazy mobs who did not think that Hungary’s 4,800-square-mile grab was enough. In Sofia, Bulgaria, grab fever rose high at week’s end, the 19th anniversary of the Treaty of Neuilly. Through Sofia’s streets day before the anniversary milled a defiant crowd of 20,000 who demanded land back from Rumania, Yugoslavia, Greece. Martial law was declared, firemen turned their hoses on demonstrators, 1,000 were arrested. Chances are that the Bulgarian grab fever will simply have to subside without treatment. Bulgaria is fenced in to the south by Yugoslavia, Rumania, Greece and Turkey. Military leaders of these nations were meeting last week at Athens.