BRITISH INTERESTS IN DANZIG

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 121, 15 February 1919, Page 8

BRITISH INTERESTS IN DANZIG

ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY.

Dr. Leon Litwinski, who read a paper on "Polish and British- Interests in Danzip:" before the London Chamber of chipping recently, pointed out that before the partition of i'oland, and whilst yet P an ! z ijr W as growing under the sovereignty ot tho Polish State, British shipping was one of tho earliest sources of its prosperity. Tho situation to-day was entirely unsatisfactory. It was true there were still at Danzig 6omo vestiges of the British presence, but as a- matter of fact the British shipping trade with that port, judged bv the number of ships entering and clearing there, was smaller in the twentieth century than it was m tlO fourteenth. - With the decline of the Polish State and its partition between the neighbouring autocracies. Britisli interests in Danzig declined, while German interests Increased to such an extent, owing to tho lack of British foresight, that Danzig had become all eftwtive German naval lmso and the cradle ot tne German Navy. • 1 • II; was open to the' British, if they backed up tho Polish claims for the yc' storation of Danzig to Poland, to realise 'a_unique opportunity for repairing these past mistakes. The opportunity would bo nil the more timely, as it would coincide with the desire, becoming ever more apparent nmong British financiers, .merchants, and business men generally, to take au active part in the economic re J construction of Poland during tho com* ing yeaili. Nowhere was it recognised more clearly than in Germany itself that 111 securing Danzig for Poland tho Allied would ho promoting the expansion oi their own trade. As a.writer in the "Dusfieldorfer Nachrichten" put it, i' Hie Peace Conference should satisfy the Polish claim, "Germany, would lose, o splendid market and (lie British would establish themselves among' tho IJoli6l> firms oil the Baltic."