Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-02-15

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cember dined with forme
Secretary Of State Kellogg in &
H. Berlin hotel, as he returned
from his trip to get the Noble
Prize, and late into the evening we dis
cusSed the question of European peace
and the Kellogg pact. Just three weeks
later, in the little town of Torun, CAPT.
tai of the Polish Corridor, listened to
a discussion of the next war. imminent
and inevitable to the minds Of my Polish
hosts.
1T will be a war of humiliation, -
they agreed This time We were able
to hold out against Prussian rule for a
century and half, next time they will
make no mistake. This city, all cities,
will be deluged with gas and the sur
Vivors will be driven before the army
into the wilds Of Russia
Over against this Polish forecast set
the German statement: when the
Corridor was torn from us by the
treaty of Versailles, there was, outside
of Danzig, a German population of
half million. Today it hardly counts
100000, tomorrow it will be gone alto
gether. And as for DanZig, it still
holds back the flood, but now that the
Poles have built Gdynia, they can starve
Danzig to death at pleasure. More
\ than three-quarters OF a million of
since the war.
Here, then. in this relatively narrow
area is the danger zone Of all Europe.
Upon this region the eyes Of hundred
millions of Slavs and Teutons are
fixed day and night. Read the press
of Berlin or Warsaw. Every day the
scareheads go TO the Polish Corridor
issue. Moreover. from one end OF
Europe to the other, at Geneva, in all
men concerned with European recon-
struction and tranquility, this issue out
ranks all others.
Question Stated Simply.
Stripped of all propaganda details,
this question IS as simple to state as It
appears hopeless to adjust. Geographic
cally this Corridor is an area, mainly
on the west bank of the Vistula con-
meeting Central Poland with the Baltic,
in shape and size not unlike my own
State Of New Hampshire, with popu-
lation of a million and half. In this
area Germans and Poles have always
been mixed, at least since the thir-
teenth century when the Teutonic
knights conquered it and colonized it
with Germans But in the country re-
gion the Slavs have always outnum-
bered the Teutons, while in DanZig the
Germans have tolerated no Polish
minority.
Roughly speaking, the Germans and
Poles have prevailed here about the
same length of time in the past six
centuries. the Germans from 1905 to
the middle of the fifteenth century,
the Poles from the middle Of the
fifteenth century to It'll, the Germans
from It'll to 1919, and now the Poles
are back again. Each time the nation
in power has brought with it q new
wave of colonization, but today, the
Polish flood surpasses anything in the
past. Within a brief decade a whole
century and a half of German patient
development has been swept away.
forum. which had 10000 Germans in
1910. has 5000 now; Brombere. which
had 10000, has today barely 5000.
Always through the centuries, how
ever, the question of the Corridor has
remained the same. Shall Poland have
access to the sea over its own territory?
Shall Prussia have land communication
with East Prussia? If Poland is cut
of from the sea she is economically at
the mercy of Germany, If Poland holds
the Corridor, East Prussia Is isolated
from the Reich, exposed, indefensible.
Always, too, when the Poles have been
strong and united they have held the
Corridor, but, by contrast, when they
have been weak and divided it has
fallen to Prussia. Inescapably there
have been two solutions, German or
a Polish, utterly irreconcilable, and at
the Paris Peace Conference the Polish
solution was adopted by Woodrow
Wilson'S personal insistence.
Issue More Than Territorial.
The issue of the Corridor is not,
however, merely territorial. After
centuries of strife IL is impossible to
exaggerate the apssionate griefs which
divide Pole and German. To the Ger
mans the Pole is an inferior. lacking
culture, civilization, unentitled to the
rights which are recognized for Britons
or FTenchmen. To the Pole, the Ger
man is an oppressor. the architect of
the ruin of his country, the foe to its
present existence. In addition the
religious issue comes in, for the Prussian
Is Protestant and the Pole Is Roman
Catholic
The idea of the transfer of 10000
square miles Of former Prussian terri
tory to Poland was for the Germans a
crime without palliation, the subsection
Of a million and a half of Germans to
Polish rule, a sin against civilization.
But for the Pole 1t was only a partial
redressing Of the old wrong of the par
tition. And since the German continues
to insist upon revision, the presence of
a German minority in Poland becomes
a direct menace to Polish security; thus
by every conceivable means the Pole
would hasten the passing of the Ger
mans. But as the German of the
Reich sees these hundreds of thousands
of Germans flowing out of the Corridor,
their places being taken by an even
vaster number of Poles; as he watches
the Slav majority increase from day to
day. as he sees German country estates,