PROBLEM OF DANZIG

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1939, Page 3

PROBLEM OF DANZIG

♦ BASIC FACTS OF GEOGRAPHY. Of all the difficult problems confronting us that of Poland is at the moment the most immediate and the most intractable, says Sir John Marriott, the historian, in a letter to “The Times.” Intractable, indeed; and emphatically not soluble by war. No war can alter the basic facts of geography. But, unfortunately, on the possibilities of a solution geography speaks with uncertain, nay, contradictory, voice; nor does history help much toward a solution. On the one hand, no one who looks at the map recalls the past history of the Duchies of East and West Prussia can deny that to a patriotic Prussian the existence of the Polish Corridor must seem intolerable. Danzig, as Colonel Beck, in his truly admirable speech, frankly admitted, is today “predominantly German in population.” On the other hand, how can Poland be made to “live again” (to use M. Clemenceau’s phrase) without access to the sea? How can that access be secured without something in the nature of a “corridor”? Danzig, the "Corridor.” Gdynia—ls there not here a possible basis for accommodation? Herr Hitler frequently appeals to President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.” Does he remember that the thirteenth ran: —“An independent Polish State should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant?”. “Indisputably Polish populations” (like most of Mr Wilson’s formulae) raises, I admit, almost insoluble difficulties, but how does Herr Hitler propose to satisfy the condition of “free and secure access to the sea?” Does it command his assent? If so there is evidently room for that further effort to secure a peaceful solution of an'admittedly difficult problem.