THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1938 DANZIG AND EUROPE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23205, 26 November 1938, Page 14

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1938 DANZIG AND EUROPE

So much has lately happened elsewhere in Europe that Danzig has slipped into the background of thought, if not altogether outside thought. These happenings seemed to make finally inapplicable Marshal Foch's words, not long before his death : "Keep your eyes on Danzig," he said to a visitor, "should trouble reappear in Europe," and proceeded to give his reasons for believing that along the frontiers of the Corridor the next war would start. He knew his Europe. It was a different Europe from to-day's, and the difference has partly removed the particular grounds of his belief; but significance must be attached to the emergence of Danzig again as a focus of attention. From a source apparently authentic it is reported that Professor Karl Burckhardt, Danzig's High Commissioner acting for the League, will resign his post, and that the post will be "liquidated," Danzig becoming independent of the League, whereupon the statute setting up the Free City will be replaced by an agreement between Poland and Germany. One doubt occurs: who will do the liquidating? It is highly improbable that the League will so act. Does the news mean that Germany and Poland, in spite of Poland's membership of the League, will agree to deal with Danzig regardless of opinion at Geneva? If so, there will be precipitated a clash of purposes between the League and these two Powers, with Russia deeply resentful of Germany's new challenge to the established order. The outcome may at least be perilous friction. Danzig seems fated to remain the centre of a knotty problem. When it was made a free city—a city without a State —under the direct care of the League, this solution was regarded with hope. The new position was unusual, but circumstances compelled a departure from accepted ideas of statecraft. Poland, newly possessed of restored nationhood, had a good claim to access to the Baltic. So the Corridor was cut; it divided East Prussia from the rest of Germany. From Poland's point of view, this was satisfactory. However, Germany's view of the matter had to be considered. The severance of East Prussia created an anomalous break in territorial continuity. * f 'The shame of the Corridor," a German phrase soon coined to express and intensify a grievance, could be said to exist. Much was heard about the necessity laid upon Germany's President Hindenburg to travel across Polish territory whenever he took a holiday from official cares and went to his home in East Prussia; there was current a rumour that for part of the journey his railway compartment was locked. Too much could be made, evidently, of the offence of the Corridor ; but there it was, and tho map did some of the talking for the malcontents. Some of them remembered that, at the time of the first partition of Poland, Frederick the Great cherished a scheme to turn what had been a Polish Corridor into a German one cutting Poland off fi-pm the Baltic, and they demanded a revival of that scheme.

In- the independence given to Danzig, nevertheless, was a consolation. Its extensive port facilities were made available to East Prussia as well as Poland, and precautions ■were taken against abuse, by the local government, of the denationalised status of the city. German use of the port was valuable ; Poland's spending of millions upon similar national facilities at Gydnia, westward of Danzig, gave this use greater opportunity. But to make Danzig German again, and to wipe out the Polish Corridor, making it German too, have continued tinder the Nazi regime to be German aims. Recent history witnesses to this persistence. Professor Burckhardt's resignation, the abolition of Lis League post, and the displacement of the statute of independence by an agreement between Poland and Germany, would be but the latest of a long series of efforts, inspired py Germany, to redraw that part of the map of Europe. This movement, to be fully understood, should be viewed in relation to others now in progress: Germany's gesture of friendship to France, German antipathy toward Russia, German reluctance to co-operate in League plans for a wider peace. Together they indicate a wish to create a new situation, in which the pact between France and Russia would be inoperative, a wedge be driven between France and Britain, and Geneva become still less able to

proceed with any practical programme. The upshot would be a strengthening of Germany's position at the expense of influences now being exercised with a view to more general understanding and friendship. At the present moment there is only a very incomplete and shapeless web of agreement in Europe, and efforts to weave it into an j adequately organised scheme may be seriously obstructed by political manoeuvres on Germany's eastern frontier. Much depends upon the degree of reliance that can be safely placed upon the agreement reached between Britain and France in the

course of the visit of Mr. Chamberlain and Viscount Halifax to Paris. They have been well received, and a joint statement of the outcome of the conversations declares that a "complete identity of views in the general policy of Britain and France" has been made plain. It is understood that the GermanFrench declaration, with which Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Halifax have expressed satisfaction, includes a clause providing for mutual respect of treaties, France thus being left free to maintain her pacts with llussia and Poland. But quite as significant is Mr. Chamberlain's remark that "the situation is always changing." This, after all, is the supreme fact to be borne in mind.