Word: cken
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KARL THEO HEINRICH Saarbrücken, West Germany...
...German parties, legally barred from the polls, yammered against French "colonialism," urging the Saarlanders to stay away from the polls or cast blank ballots as a mark of German solidarity. Low-circling planes showered Saarbrücken with German leaflets; startled Saarlanders were assured that they are the victims of a "reign of terror." The Catholic bishop of Trier, whose diocese covers most of the Saar, advised Saarlanders that they had no Christian obligation to vote in an election that would separate them from "the German fatherland...
...most Saarlanders, prosperous beyond their wildest dreams of five years ago, let their stomachs-and memories-decide. In 1935, after voting-90%-to rejoin the Reich, the Saarlanders heard Adolf Hitler promise: "In ten years' time, you won't know your city of Saarbrücken." Hitler was right: by 1945 the entire Saar basin was a heap of smoldering ruins...
...from which they gladly separated in the graveyard days of 1947. Those in favor of Germany are at a legal disadvantage: only candidates known to approve the Francophile government will be allowed on the ballot. But German propagandists, dramatizing themselves as the "repressed German underground," are infiltrating Saarbrücken, urging the German-speaking Saarlanders to protest the French "police state" by casting blank ballots. They got a welcome assist from the German Bundestag in Bonn, which cheered through a resolution declaring the Saar election illegal...
...German case is simpler. Gist: the Saar is German, speaks German, feels German and long was German. The Germans can point to the Saarbrücken salesman who complained: "French shoes just don't fit German feet," to the shopkeeper who put up a sign after five years of selling France's matchless Burgundies: "At last, the good wines of Germany are back again." Nub of the German argument: let the Saar decide for itself, and it will rush to rejoin the fatherland...