THE A WEEKLY
VOL. 174 No. 5173
TABLET NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER
LONDON, JULY 1st, 1939
SIXPENCE
IN THIS ISSUE
THE STRENGTH OF THE SOVIET
I. THE RED ARMY
By Lancelot Lawton
THE FRUITS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
A Leading Article on the Doctrines o f 1789
THE ETHICS OF RENT STRIKES
By Michael Fogarty
ST. LOUIS AND THE CROWN OF THORNS
By George C. Williamson Full List o f Contents on page 4.
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Danzig and the Baltic
Events have begun to move fast at Danzig. The Germans are building up a Free Corps which is nominally no more than a kind of police militia, but which is in fact something very much more. Danzig is a danger as a symbol. I t is a German city, ruled today by the Nazis, and is in nearly every respect a completely Nazified city, in which the Nuremburg laws against the Jews, for example, are in force. It is its legal standing which Herr Hitler means to change.
The Press under Dr. Goebbels is so much a part of the German policy th a t it cannot be imagined that representations would be of any effec t; that language and the temper behind it are indeed a measure o f the increasing deterioration o f Anglo-German relations since March. Behind the anger sprayed by Dr. Goebbels may be seen something more than calcu la tio n ; there is also the realization that the present Government in Germany is repeating the worst blunders of the Hohenzollerns.
At the Peace Treaty it was recognized th a t Danzig could not be made part o f Poland, being a German city; on the other hand, as P o land’s only outlet to the Baltic, it was thought to need a special status under the League of Nations ; now that the League has become only a name, Danzig must be either German or Polish. Both countries claim a right to a decisive voice and the danger o f the position comes from its being felt to be a test case o f whether the Poles have, like the Czechs, to bow before the German power or not.
I t is common to write o f Danzig as P o land’s outlet to the sea without remembering that the sea in question is but the Baltic, in which Germany is far and away the predominant Power. In time o f war there would be no access through the Baltic, whatever the status of Danzig ; but in time o f peace, the Poles today enjoy and can enforce economic rights which they would only hold on sufferance if Danzig were formally reabsorbed in the Reich. The German Press Campaign
When questioned in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Mr. Chamberlain said that he does not propose to make representations to the German Government about the language in which the German Press now describes Great Britain and British policy.
The Nazi leaders are fond of saying that the Germany of today is not the Germany o f 1914. But the exKaiser, sitting in Holland, can reflect that when history has passed judgment upon him it will certainly be said that, in the quarter of a century before the final mistakes whereby he ruined his Empire, he had kept his people united. The Kulturkampf was forgotten, the German Socialists dismayed the friends o f international Socialism the world over by the vehemence o f their patriotism when war broke o u t ; the Jews, who had flourished greatly, while excluded from certain sides o f the life o f the State, were as thoroughly patriotic as anybody else in Germany. Nazi Germany, speaking a great deal about unity, cannot in fact show the same results, and one of the major preoccupations of the Nazi Government in a war would be to keep under control the secret enemies of the regime.
It is perfectly true that on the actual issues now being raised, most Germans see the matters in contention as their leaders see them. They cannot be expected to agree th a t the British and French are not encircling them in constructing a common front with Eastern European countries. Dr. Goebbels has an easy enough case in pointing to Britain and France as two countries which exercise sovereignty through vast Empires, but
