POLAND AND THE SEA

Evening Star, Issue 23373, 16 September 1939, Page 11

POLAND AND THE SEA

GERMANY'S OLD DESIRE TO CREATE A BARRIER DANZIG AND HISTORY When one talks of Danzig one should always think of Poland, wrote J. B. Firth in the London ‘ Daily‘ Telegraph ’ recently. That is Herr Hitler’s view. Danzig, he told Colonel Beck last January, is only a “ provincial town, not worth fighting about.’ But it is a seaport of the Baltic, and Poland’s future as a great Power depends largely upon her little strip of Baltic coast. , That gives the Danzig controversy a world-wide importance such as the Meinel controversy never -possessed. Lithuania is not Poland. It has been Poland’s misfortune for centuries to excite the appetites of the rapacious. Someone once described Poland as “ un bercoau sanglant.” Those who made the peace at Versailles hoped that they had cleansed the cradle of blood when they re-established the ancient kingdom of Poland m its new form and—as a happy compromisehad restored to Danzig the modern counterpart of its old status as a Free City State, autonomous in its internal administration though united to Poland by economic ties c and with the. League of Nations as its guarantor. When the aegis of a guarantor loses its protective power the would-be aggressor approaches with confidence unless others step in and bar the way. Danzig would by this • time have been reincorporated in the Reich if Poland s friends had not intervened, not to prevent Germany from acquiring another Baltic port, but to save Poland from a blow which would speedily be followed by others. PARTITION CONTEMPLATED. Germany still thinks of Poland as a country made up of numerous provinces eminently suitable for distribution. That was Frederick the Great s conception, and Herr Hitler has adopted it. “Conquer and Divide was his motto, or preferably “Take and Divide.” The partitions of Poland, the greatest crime, perhaps, ever committed against nationality, were mainly of his devising. . . ~ One of his political maxims is worth recalling. “ Whoever,” ho said, holds the mouth of the Vistula and the city of Danzig wields more mastery over Poland that he who is its ruler.’ Hence Germany’s unremitting concern with Another saying of Frederick admirably illustrates his attitude towards the Poland of his day, as a carcass to be divided among the strong. A suggestion had come from St. Petersburg that as Russia, Prussia, and Austria were all so deeply involved in perfidy towards Poland and one another, it might be well if they made a clean job of it and fell together upon the feeble and the innocent. , “ An admirable idea, replied Frederick “ That will unite our three religions, Greek, Catholic, and Protestant, for we shall communicate with the same eucharistic body, which is Poland, and, though it may not be for the good of our souls, it will be a splendid thing

for our respective States.” So the three empires fell together upon Poland and perpetrated the partition in 1772. KAISER’S SELF-CONFESSED AIM. Prussia took 644 square miles of Polish territory and 600,000 inhabitants. Maria Theresa, “ who wept but took her share,” got 1,400 square miles and 3,000,000 new subjects; Catherine, untroubled by tears of conscience, 1,975 square miles and a population of 1,800,000. When the deal was through Frederick pleasantly observed that “ the bargain opened a new era of international justice and good feeling.” He did not get Danzig for Prussia at that distribution of the spoil, but he did secure the Polish districts which the statesmen of Versailles took for their Polish Corridor, and Poland was cut off from the sea. Those who have been propagandised into believing that the Corridor was a freakish outrage upon German national susceptibility should revise their opinion in view of the fact that it was all .Polish territory till the real outrage in 1772. ! It is one of the guiding principles of German policy to keep the Poles from the sea. Hence the intensive system of German colonisation prosecuted by Frederick the Great and continued by Bismarck at great expense to settle German families in the Polish districts of West Prussia, the object being to extirpate Polish traditions and influences in the lands which had once been Slav. The Nazi propagandists of to-day would have the credulous foreigner believe that the old Polish provinces were never anything but German. But the facts can be read in books which were written before Dr Goebbels got on the air. After the Russo-Japanese war, when Russia seemed to be threatened with revolution, the Kaiser explained to Baron von Jenisch, of the German Foreign Office, what he meant to do if Russia went to pieces. He said:— “ I could never leave the Balts to their fate. The Poles will naturally try to extend their territory northwards to the sea, and to that I will never consent. They can expand as much as they like eastwards and southeastwards, where they have economic interests.” IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION. Prince Bulow, who tells the story in his memoirs, censured so flagrant an indiscretion of his Royal master, but in no way disavowed the policy of (keeping the Poles from the sea. If Germany recovered now the sovereignty of Danzig, how long would it be before its harbours were converted to their old naval uses? And if they were, a thoroughly impossible situation would be created for Poland as a nascent naval power. Again, the commercial developrnent of the port of Danzig would certainly proceed on very different lines if Danzig belonged to Germany from those on which it has proceeded while it has been a Free City. The great Polish national 'effort made at Gdynia has naturally prejudiced the older port, and the younger rival would necessarily ! suffer severely if Danzig reverted to Germany in circumstances which would stimulate German determination to recover its lost trade connections with the Polish interior. It was those trade connections which filled Danzig’s wharves with merchandise.

Some say, “ Then why not compromise?” But the Poles have already compromised. The nominal status of Danzig is itself a compromise very reluctantly accepted by Poland in 1919. To compromise further, it is alleged, would prejudice the future of Poland herself. Either Danzig must be Polish or German or something betwixt and between, as at present. The Germans offer nothing, as usual, but demand al). The Poles yielded 20 years ago all they could safely surrender, even assuming Germany’s bona fide acceptance. They were pressed to yield what they did in the hope that the Germans ■would show what was then called “ a change of heart,” and accept Free City, Corridor, and the new State of Poland. That hope has vanished.

THE THIRTEENTH POINT. Nor let it be forgotten that No. 13 of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points stipulated that the Allies would require free and safe access to the sea for Poland. When the Germans v say that they asked for peace on the' basis of the Fourteen Points and charge the Allies with having infamously broken their pledge, they observe a guarded silence on this Thirteenth Point. When the Poles gut in .their claim for Danzig the Germans charged them with attempting rape.” Danzig was German, they said, and had not been in Polish hands for centuries. . The matter was referred to an International Commission, presided over by. M. Jules Gambon, which unanimously reported in favour of a Free City of Danzig, a League of Nations guarantee, and the Corridor. ; - In the end the Corridor was somewhat whittled down, mainly owing to the very, stiff position taken by Mr Lloyd George, who expressed concern at the size of the breach made in the principle of self-determination by the transference of so many Germans to Polish rule. This, however, was purely a question of degree. The breach was bound in any case to he large if a Corridor was to be made at all—and a Corridor was the only way short of including Danzig in Poland. Yet large numbers of Poles had also to be left under German control. Poles and Germans were inextricably intermixed. SEEMED BARBAROUS THEN. Perhaps it would have been better, as events have turned out, •if the Council had taken _ a more courageous line, given Danzig bodily over to Poland, and “transferred “ to Germany sufficient Danzigers to make a Polish majority secure. But in 1913 few suspected the degree of intransigence which the Germans in Danzigt and elsewhere would eventually display, and the methods of “ transference ” .with which the Nazis’ regime has since familiarised the world would have been scouted in 1919_as barbarous. The experience of Danzig remains a striking monument to the futility of an honestly-meant compromise. The Germans wrecked it when they got their chance. The collapse of Poland as a great independent Power would he a major disaster for the whole of Europe. Germany will say that she does not seek it. no; but German avowals of peaceful intent have ceased to carry conviction. . „ Poland is too big not to he a'Great Power in fact as well as in name: A secure possession of road, rail, .and river leading to the sea and secure possession of her few miles of Baltic coast are vital to her existence as a European Power now and at any future time. . . ..