FREE CITY OF DANZIG

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 67, 21 March 1933, Page 12

FREE CITY OF DANZIG

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Having spent some six months in that wonderful old Hansa city, I appreciated the fairness of your leading article on the free city of Danzig. You, however, state that Danzig had belonged to Polartd till 1792, when it along with the rest of West Prussia was annexed by Prussia. This statement has been made by Polish propagandists in support of Poland's claims to the city, but is not in agreement with the facts. Danzig did indeed acknowledge for many years the suzerainty of the Kings of Poland, but this was only nominal. Danzig first appears in history about 1000 A.D. as the seat of the Dukes of Pomerellen, rulers of the Slav race, now known as Kassubans, the Germanieised inhabitants of the area comprising the Polish Corridor. These rulers invited German monks, merchants, and artisans to the settlement, which gradually developed into an important German trading town, receiving the rights o£ self-government according to German customs in 1224. About this time the Teutonic Order began to build up a powerful State by civilising the heathen Prussians in that region, and the growing city came under its rule. Under its protection the city developed into one of the most powerful members of the Hanseatic League. It had a strong fleet, and I have read that it once had a war - with England and blockaded the Thames! But the Teutonic Order was a rival in trade, and when the Order was dealt a ciushing blow by the Poles at the Battle of Tannenberg, the powerful city was able to throw off the irksome yoke of the weakening Order, and accept the suzerainty of the Kings of Poland. It was at the same time that Poland seized from the Order the area now forming the Corridor. It would take too much space to show how purely nominal the suzerainity of Poland was. Indeed, when King Stephan Bathory attempted to make it more than nominal, the city successfully resisted, and defeated the Poles in a decisive battle. In the eighteenth century the prosperity of Danzig was fading, the time for free city States was past. Danzig was not, however, annexed, as you state, with West Prussia in 1792. It was not till the next year in the second partition that it fell to Prussia to the general satisfaction of its citizens, though many would resent that, even "the shade of that which once was great should pass away." After actually visiting those parts of Europe, I have come to appreciate better the history of those times. I think that of the countries that partitioned Poland, Prussia had the best claim to what it seized. The Polish Kings had invited German colonists into that area, and flourishing German towns, centres of trade and civilisation, had arisen in a countryside still tilled by Polish peasants. Such cities were Thorn, Bromberg, Graudenz. One must remember that Poland was itself the cause of its own downfall. When Poland was the granary of Europe, Danzig used its share of the profits of the grain trade to build up a strong, wealthy, and cultured city, but the Polish nobles were wasting the weath in insensate luxury, while the peasants sank deeper in servitude and misery, and the country drifted inevitably to anarchy. To come to present times, I think that the main reason why the creation of the. free city has not been a satisfactory solution is .that the Poles, blinded by their intense nationalism, have never accepted it, have put every difficulty possible in the way of the smooth working of the treaty, and look only to the time when the city will be theirs. "You speak of new AlsaceLorraines. Actually, there is not much danger of the areas occupied by Poland , being new Alsace-Lorraines, for the areas v are being made irrevocably Polish. To . do this a million Germans have had to ln leave their homes, and begin life anew in the Reich. German towns such as Thorn c- and Bromberg have become Polish, much :io to the economic injury of Poland. And < Is. Danzig realises that the same fate threatx . ens it. It is not a danger' only of gov(.jj ernment by a foreign Power, but of comL rj plete annihilation.—l am, etc., in ■■■ S. HI WILSON.