Holiday Spot

The proud old Hanseatic City of Danzig and its small surrounding hinterland worked and played last week so normally that uninformed visitors could scarcely have guessed what international storms were gathering about it. Churchgoers went in and out of St. Mary's, the great brick Gothic Cathedral, nicknamed "Stout Mary" because of its square plump tower. Foreigners (Danzigers not allowed) played roulette at the elegant casino at Zoppot. Thousands played on the gloriously white sands or swam in the cool waters of Danzig Bay. Up in the heavily wooded section south of the city, picnicking still went on. Couples promenaded on Danzig's patrician avenues lining the canals. City Hall was open as usual and the Nazi-operated radio station invited listeners to "come and see Danzig and spend your summer holidays here."

There was a Nazi demonstration last week at Tiegenhof, in the rich meadow land across the Vistula, but it scarcely compared to the turnout which had already been staged for such Nazi bigwigs as Field Marshal Hermann Goering and Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess. Against the Poles, who are outnumbered by Germans 24-to-1 but who run the public services in Danzig, Adolf Hitler can never lay the complaint that they suppressed Germanity in the Free City. But despite the surface calm, Poles could list last week numerous serious complaints against Germans. It was these which caused so much apprehension in Poland and a first-class European scare.

Filtering into the Free City by air (Danzig is two hours by commercial plane from Berlin), sea and land were German "tourists," all men between 25 and 40. By week's end the Poles estimated there were 7,000 of them. They were housed in the barracks at Langfuhr, northwest of the city, and soon were observed installing machine guns and building fortifications on the Bischofsberg, the hill to the city's southwest. Moreover, Danzig itself started a local Nazi Heimwehr of some 10,000 men. Authentic reports had it that boatloads of artillery and anti-aircraft had arrived by German ships. In the Danzig shipyards German employers were ordered by the political leaders to dismiss Polish workers. Out beyond on the fortified Hel Peninsula, which is Polish, antiaircraft guns took a shot at a German plane after giving it a warning salvo.

Obviously Danzigers were not raising an Army for attacking nearby Poland; what they hoped to be able to do was to stave off the Polish Army until German forces from East Prussia could cross the Nogat and come to their relief.

Massed by the thousands outside Danzig were Poland's troops. But they scrupulously stayed on the Polish side of the border. The Free City of Danzig's government is supervised by a League of Nations High Commissioner. Poland's rights there are limited to the administration of customs, railroads, and foreign relations. Internally Danzig is autonomous. Thus the treaties which gave Poland an outlet to the sea through Danzig prohibit Polish military occupation of that outlet. On the Westerplatte, a low bank at the entrance to Danzig Harbor, however, is generally harbored a small garrison of Polish troops which guards a Polish ammunition warehouse. Behind those troops is an incident of 1920, when German Communist dock workers held up a shipment of arms to Poland, then fighting for its life against Bolshevik Russia. It was then that Poland saw the light and began to plan at Gdynia, 13 miles northwest, a new port. Poland knows that an occupation of Danzig would give Germany a stranglehold on Gdynia. To keep Danzig alive (the city always depended on the Polish hinterland for its business) Poland continues to allot almost half her sea cargo to the Free City. Last year Gdynia handled 8,173,400 cargo tons, incoming and outgoing, almost twice as much as New Orleans handled; Danzig's share was 7,127,200 tons.

On the face of it, the seizure of Danzig by Germany would mean no more than another Hitler conquest, another large Baltic seaport (of which Germany already has three), another 791 sq. mi. and 407,000 more Germans added to the Reich. To Poland the loss of Danzig would probably eventually mean the loss of the Polish Corridor and landlocked economic if not political domination by Germany.

Despite the fact that the Free City's inhabitants are 96% German, Poland has an argument against their incorporation in the Reich. The vital interests of a nation of 35,000,000 persons must come before the sentimental desires of less than half a million persons to return to their homeland.

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