DANGER AT DANZIG.

Evening Star, Issue 21092, 3 May 1932, Page 6

DANGER AT DANZIG.

A Polish plot for forcible seizure of Danzig is something that the world does not want at the present time. Economic distresses, which are general, and new provocations to war in the Far East are enough to go on with. Yet the Free City of Danzig and the “ Polish Corridor ” which adjoins it, as those were set up by the Peace Treaties, have always been recognised as one of the thinnest parts of Europe’s political mist, where an eruption would bo as natural as it would be destructive. In creating a new Poland the Allies had no option but to give it an outlet to the sea. That could only be done at the expense of Germany, and the “ Polish Corridor,” which was the means of doing it, still infuriates Germans by its division of their territory, the Allies’ consideration for Poland, however, stopped short at the point of giving her the only port which was available. Danzig had been too long a German city; its people were nearly all Germans. The Allies compromised, making Danzig a “ free city,” under the general control of the League of Nations, but with reservations which favoured Poland in no small degree. The Germans were not satisfied; they had lost their city. The Poles were not satisfied, because all the sympathies of Danzig remained German. The Poles, out of nothing and at great expense, built another port, Gdynia, a few miles from Danzig, which is stealing its trade, and makes an offence to both the Free City and Germany. And though the Free City is German in blood and sympathies, it lives entirely on a Polish hinterland. The inhabitants of the “ Corridor ” are divided between Poles and Germans. No just settlement could over have been made between these contending interests. Anyone who puts himself in the Germans’ place, it has been said, will take the German view of them, or if ho imagines himself a Pole will take the Polish. Dissatisfaction will only be ended when each nation can forget its nationality, which is a long process.

Europe has just escaped from a serious peril. Poland was sending eight warships, it is reported, to seize the Free City. The raid was only called off at the last moment because France, who has been a protector of Poland, forbade it. That veto would appear to have been the best service of France to Europe for a long time past. A war for possession of Danzig would not easily be confined to the first belligerents. The “ eight warships ” of the cable message form a grandiloquent presentation of Poland’s naval strength. Twelve small gunboats on the Vistula and two seagoing gunboats constitute the naval might of Poland. Less than those might be sufficient, however, for the reduction of Danzig, because the Free City has no navy.