CORRIDOR OF COMEDIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21784, 25 October 1932, Page 11

CORRIDOR OF COMEDIES

POLISH ACCESS TO THE SEA FRONTIER THROUGH DUCKPOND. The incongruities of the " corridor" driven through East Prussia for Polish access to the sea, and their reaction on the ancient German port of Danzig,* are described by Mr H. J. Greenwall, in the Daily Express. Writing from Danzig, he says:—

I have-been motoring.around the countryside looking at the strange things that have happened all because of those gentlemen of Paris who were in a hurry to get rid of the Polish frontier question. Strange things have I seen, too. I have heard of Danzig cows straying across the frontier—they never heard , oi President Wilson, poor things—and eating Polish grass. Please do not laugh. They impound the cows, and you can guess what that leads to in the way of trouble. Then quite often a Polish hen .will Jay eggs, in Danzig territory—the hens,: poor things, never heard.of M. Clemenceau — and the Poles'claim the eggs, but do not .get them. ' ' j FRONTIER LINE THROUGH A COTTAGE.

I followed the line of the frontier in a hamlet called Grossweide, where it actually runs through a duckpond in a' back garden; there are wooden stakes in the water, linked with barbed wire. Part of the pond is therefore Polish and part Danzig. I have seen the frontier demarcated through the kitchen of a peasant's cottage, and I have watched the self-same frontier reeling about like a late returning reveller, so that it waß impossible to be sure whether/iny right foot was in Poland or Danzig. This state of things cannot possibly continue, because neither the Poles nor the Danzigers are satisfied with things as they are. Both sides bombard the High Commissioner with long Notes; the life of the High Commissioner is no bed of roses. There have been two British High Commissioners, who must have been thankful when their time was up. The present one is an Italian, Count Gravina. and the Poles hate him. Their cpmic journals lampoon him, and the press attacks him and accuses him of. wanting to further Mussolini's policy for a revision of the Treaty of Versailles. " The Treaty gave. the Germans "free access" to the Tliver Vistula. The Poles have interpreted this by putting a turnpike of their own across a ,13-foot road at Weichsel, and this is the only access to the Vistula the East Prussians possess. In order to rub it in. the Poles have put up a ■ notice board—in Polish only, although the notice is entirely for the benefit of German-speaking people—which says that access may bo obtained between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on production of a pro-perly-made-out pass, obtainable in Dirchau, which happens to be more than 40 miles away.

GREAT BRIDGE DESTROYED. I have seen big grievances and small grievances, but for many people the small grievances are the worst, such as making an old peasant woman get her pass stamped in order to go to church on Sundays, because her cottage happenß ,-to <be in Poland and the church iu Danzig territory. And I have seen all that is left of a splendid railway and footbridge at Munsterwalder, built by the Germans in pre-war days at a cost of 9,000,000 gold marks. It was one of the biggest in Europe- and/the Poles destroyed it just as they destroyed every statue of a German they came across in the Polish Corridor.

This nationalism gone berserk is something unbelievable. Until recently one had to ask for a railway ticket in Polish in a Danzig station! Both parties are in many cases to blame for the present situation, _ but the time must come when an end is put to that dreadful work the late President Wilson, the late M. Clemenceau, and the present Mr Lloyd George carried out in Paris on that fateful afternoon when they drew a circle in red ink around the uew cockpit of Europe. '••....•