Corridor

In the unseeing night, a train steamed across the Polish Corridor* on its way from Berlin to East Prussia. Between the German town of Stargard and the Polish town of Dirschau, the engine ran off the tracks, the two front coaches telescoped, the remainder of the train, except the last two coaches, toppled over a 20-ft. embankment, 25 persons, including 12 women and 2 children, were killed, some 30 others were injured. The accident occurred in exactly the same place as a similar wreck in 1920.

When morning came, it was discovered that the spikes had been removed from the tracks for a short distance and the fishplates unbolted. Thereupon, the Germans accused the Polish of mismanagement, charged that the incident was indirectly due to the Versailles Treaty, "bewailed the fact that Germans had to entrust their safety to "Polish management," a German term meaning mismanagement. They held that the Polish boundary must be revised so as to join East Prussia with the Fatherland.

The Poles conversely charged the accident to the Communists or the Germans who wish to point out the impossibility of maintaining the Polish corridor.

There was a fair chance, however, that the accident was caused by bandits; but the fact that several members of the Bolshevik Economic Committee were aboard gave the disaster a political complexion.

* A strip of Polish territory leading to :he sea, west of the free city of Danzig, which strip separates East Prussia from the rest of Prussia, traversing purely German land.