GROWING TROUBLES

■GERMANY & POLAND

THE DANZIG SITUATION

The situation in Danzig grows steadily worse, wrote the diplomatic correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian" recently. It is even beginning to arouse some concern in Warsaw. Although Poland has friendly relations with Germany and has no objections to Nazi Government as such in Danzig, yet there are limits, for it is not in the interest of Poland that the Free City should be assimilated by the Reich. Recruiting for the German army continues in Danzig.

The Nazi Terror in Danzig is beginning afresh. There have been severe excesses at Phehnendorff, where Nazis fired twenty-five to thirty shots, wounding two persons. Three persons received cudgel or knife wounds at the hands of the Nazis. Incitement to renewed acts of violence goes on in the Nazi Press. For example, the Danzig periodical "Zwischen Weichsel and Nogat" (No. 11, March, 1936), which is issued by a high Nazi official, published an attack on the Conservative member of the Danzig Diet, Dr. Blauer, saying that persons "of his kind" ought to be "put up against a wall." The resolution passed by the League Council early >this year condemning the unconstitutional practices of the Danzig Government seems to have been forgotten.

Late information suggests that the Nazi leaders in Danzig are trying to place, some restraint on their terrorists for the time being. One of the principal objects of their animosity is the Conservative leader Dr. Weise. According to information received, secret instructions have been given that he is not to be assaulted for some time. In spite of the friendly relations between Germany and Poland, the PanGerman irredentist movement goes on, not only in Danzig, but in Poland itself. This correspondent has received the following details about the German irredentist conspiracy in Eastern Upper Silesia. Some 200 German irredentists were arrested and some 400 succeeded in escaping across the German frontier. The secret organisation of the irredentists seems to have been modelled on the S.A. A number of ex-servicemen belonged to it. ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE. The Poles seem; to have been informed, about their activities from the beginning. Their ranks were honeycombed with Polish spies, and the weapons which they possessed in considerable numbers were supplied to them by Polish agents-provocateurs. The Poles allowed the conspiracy to mature, and then suddenly carried out the arrests. The affair has received little prominence in the Polish Press, and has been completely hushed up in the German. Some of the arrested persons have been released. The others are to be tried on the charge, presumably, of treason against the Polish State in so far as they conspired to reunite Eastern Upper Silesia with the Reich. The German minority in Poland has never been so badly off as it is now. The Polish Government, as will be remembered,' repudiated the Minorities Treaty some time ago. No serious petitions have gone to Geneva since on behalf of the national minorities in Poland, the case of these minorities having become hopeless and no one in Geneva being interested any longer. Germany expects the Germans in Poland to hold out somehow or other, the argument being that nothing can be done now for fear of troubling German-Polish relations, but that the time will come when Germany will exact a drastic revision of her eastern frontiers, a revision that will restore the Germans in Poland to their own country. The attitude shows how precarious the. foundations of the new German-Polish friendship are. • UKRAINIAN QUALIFICATION. Relations between the Poles and the Ukrainian, minority are not as happy as they seemed a short while ago. The statements by Ukrainian leaders in support of the Polish military budget were qualified by the condition that certain elementary rights of the Ukrainian minority must be respected. This qualification was simply hushed up by the Poles, and it is only now that your correspondent has been informed about it. But it is all-import-ant, and puts the relations between Poles and Ukrainians in an unfavourable light. It is true that some effort at reconciliation is being made on both sides, but there has during the last few months been little real improvement m the treatment of the Ukr a h> lans, although a substantial improvement is a vital interest of Poland's ' eyen if for no other reasons than those of national defence. The existence of oppressed minorities in States that n«MCIi °" Ge™any is an invaluable asset to the Pan-German movement, even when these minorities are not £*« -^corresponding danger