Clenched Noses

Loud, perennial squawks to the League of Nations about mistreatment of the German minority in Poland, have almost obscured the less-squawked-about fact that there is also a mistreated Polish minority in Germany.

Came last week to the Pole-peopled town of Oppeln in German Silesia, a traveling company of Polish opera singers. Tickets were scalped and the Opera house packed. Sure of tempestuous Polish applause, the beaming, bowing conductor achieved the overture, plunged into the first act.

Suddenly little glass balls, hundreds of them, hurtled from the gallery and burst among audience, musicians, actors. Rose a towering, awful stench. Choking and clenching their noses, the Poles fled from the opera house, to be met outside by German Nationalist students who clenched clubs.

No one was actually killed, but the local Polish consul was summoned post-haste to Warsaw, and Polish Foreign Minister August Zaleski announced that he was drafting a stiff protest to the League.