INCIDENTS IN DANZIG

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23353, 23 May 1939, Page 10

INCIDENTS IN DANZIG

The risk of explosive friction between Poland and Germany is materially increased by events in Danzig. Both incidents reported to-day indicate a serious growth of local tension, but it is obvious that the attitude of the Danzig Senate, now openly under Nazi control, is sponsored, if not directly inspired, by Germany; political happenings in the Free City, during recent years, admit of no other interpretation. Consequently, any grave development of the present quarrel between the Senate and the Polish Government must, it seems, precipitate active intervention by Berlin. This possibility is all the greater because of the diametrically opposite versions offered by the hostile authorities and the irreconcilable demands they have presented in their respective Notes. It now matters less what they each claim than that both of them, in demand and counter-demand, uncompromisingly assert the other to be in the wrong. Frontier incidents anywhere at this time are fraught with peril to peace ; in Danzig, with its contiguity to East Prussia and its relation to the "Polish Corridor," they may all too easily produce a major breach. A critical weakness in the existing international situation is the absence of any convenient and efficient tribunal for the judicial settlement of border strife, and in the case of Danzig there is the added danger created by a constantly provocative manipulation of political rivalries within. In this instance these threaten to end in trouble involving the two Powers most intimately concerned, and through them others tending to become aligned on opposed fronts in Eastern Europe^