Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-07-04
Sudeten Technique


Parliament yesterday that intensive
measures Of military character"
are reliably reported to the British
government as being under way in
Danzig. Innumerable scraps of news
that have been coming out of the
Corridor port left no doubt that
Danzig NaziS and uniformed Storm
Troopers posing as Free City citizens,
but actually functioning as advance
guards of Hitler, were Systematically
turning DanZig into an armed camp
There were circumstantial accounts
of Free City" artillery emplacements
commanding the approaches from
Poland and of other maneuvers
which can only have the intent and
effect of assisting Nazi military oc-
cupation. Gauleiter Albert Forster,
Danzig Nazi leader, told mass
meeting of his followers as recently
as Sunday that this Danzig Ger
man population (95 per cent of the
Free Citys totaD will stand together
as one man in brazen faith to the
Fuehrer and Germany"
That is precisely the tone and
technique which Gauleiter Konrad
Henlein, Nazi henchman in the Su-
detenland, adopted last September
on the eve of Hitler's demand for the
German provinces of Czecho-Slo-
vakia, soon to be surrendered to him
on the Munich altar of appeasement,
All signs indicate that the Nazis, if
and when they are ready to demand
Danzig, will attempt the strategy
successfully essayed in the Sudeten-
land. They will masquerade as the
"liberators' of a suppressed and
oppressed German minority entitled
by self DIFFERENTIATION to return to
its racial moorings. Making every
allowance for the argument that
Danzig's anschluss to the Reich is
ethnographically reasonable and
that the separation of East Prussia
from the rest of Germany by the
Corridor is politico-geographically
indefensible, all the world, including
Hitler, knows that Danzig is coveted
because it is an integral link in the
Nazi scheme to dominate Eastern
Europe by force-because it is as true
today, as when Frederick the Great
said it-that whoever holds the
mouth of the Vistula lis more mas
ter of Poland than her own govern
ment."
While Hitler may be pursuing the
Sudeten technique at Danzig, Neville
Chamberlain is not. Unless the
Kings English on the lips of respon-
sible statesmen is idle chatter, there
will be no Polish Munich. To 10000
National Service volunteers Sunday
night, the Prime Minister, in warn
ing Enthusiastically directed to Berlin,
said: Let no one make the mistake
of supposing that we are not ready to
throw our whole strength into the
scale, if need be, to resist aggression,
whether against ourselves or against
those whose independence we have
undertaken to defend"
twenty-five years ago this month,
Hohenzollern Germany threatened
general European conflict just as
Hitherto Germany threatens it to-
day. If Sir Edward Grey had ad-
dressed Berlin in the stern, uncom-
promising terms of admonition that
have been emanating from London
for week, the first World War might
we'll have been averted Man
kind awaits anxiously, if none too
hopefully, for signs that the Third
Reich takes Neville Chamberlain Sc
riously. He is carrying something
this summer far more lethal than
the umbrella he unfurled at Codes
berg and Berchtesgaden.