ANXIETY ABOUT DANZIG

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22461, 3 July 1936, Page 10

ANXIETY ABOUT DANZIG

Danzig is again a cause of anxiety at Geneva, and the League Council has decided to discuss its affairs. By the terms of a special section of the peace treaty Danzig was made a free city—that is, exempt from the dominance of any existing or future Power and placed under the protection of the League. It has a constitution of its own, drawn up by representatives of the city in agreement with a High Commissioner appointed by the League, and its citizens are nationals of the city only. Poland alone of the outside world has certain limited rights, sharply defined, and these relate to the conducting of the city's foreign affairs and the use of its facilities as a port. Save for these rights, it is under the League's direct and complete care, exercised by the High Commissioner. This arrangement was necessitated by the creation of Poland as a new State, partly at the expense of Germany, and in order to give Poland access to the sea, yet allowing the German nationals then in Danzig to choose between moving into Germany and remaining as nationals of the city. Germany, naturally enough, has not taken kindly to the arrangement, since the creation of the so-called " Polish Corridor," with Danzig as part of its Baltic shore, cuts East Prussia off from the Reich. From time to time there have been practical expressions of the German resentment, and especially since the rise of the Nazi Government this resentment has taken the form of attempts to influence political life in the city, particularly when local elections were in prospect. The possibility of German efforts to seize the " corridor " has grown under Hitler's regime, and the news from Warsaw and Genwa to-day suggests that the •strong Nazi element in Danzig may suddenly have the reinforcement of an armed German invasion of the region. The German Government, having asserted itself defiantly in the Bhineland on the west, may lie tempted by the present situation in Europe to make a move even more defiant on the eaßt.