Separatists Go

For months the question of whether the Lower Palatinate* should be made an autonomous State has plagued the world.

With the undoubted connivance of the French, the Separatists (those who favor an entirely independent State) have been in control of the whole area since last November and much blood has been shed. At one time the whole affair seriously threatened Anglo-French relations, but, despite British investigations, the Separatists remained.

During the past week the workers of Pirmasens, a little manufacturing town, rose in the night and, armed with hatchets, scythes, guns, cudgels, etc., they took terrible vengeance upon the Separatists who had been terrorizing them for months. Twenty-two were killed and more than 40 were wounded.

At Zweibruecken the Separatists were driven from the town by the infuriated populace.

At Kaiserslautern a desperate fight took place between loyal Germans and the Separatists. The casualties were conservatively estimated at two killed, ten wounded. The fight was eventually stopped by French Moroccan troops who fired upon the populace.

Three days after the "Pirmasens affair" the green-white-red flag of the Separatists was hauled down by order of the Allies amid the indescribable joy and relief of the people, and the government of the area was placed in the hands of a Palatinate Kreistag Commitee. Great Britain, who, through ex-Foreign Minister Lord Curzon, was the first Nation to protest energetically against the Separatist activities, and who caused an Interallied Special Com-mission to be formed to study the Separatist question, was hailed by the Palatinate populace as their saviour.

In a proclamation issued by the President of the Kreistag Committee, it was stated that the Committee 'did not in any way consider itself a Government set up by the Allies, but as an intermediary between the Allies on the one hand and the population of the occupied Palatinate, Bavaria and the Reich on the other. It was specifically stated that this provisional regime would last until peace and order had been restored and until all the administrative machinery had been started. A warning was issued to the people to keep the peace and to refrain from reprisals against the Separatists under severe penalties.

*The Lower Palatinate was part of an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. As now known, it is a province of Bavaria.