Indian titles stand searching inquiry quite as well as most of those sold in America. 'In 1925 there were twice as many "dukes" and "princes," and three times as many other "nobles," in the French Republic as there were under Louis XVI.' When, in 1909, the French Foreign Office decided to look into the alleged titles of the members of its staff and diplomatic corps, it discovered that, of some forty, only six or seven were able to produce documentary proof of the validity of their claims. 'Of course,' Le Quotidien observes, 'American girls may marry these men, so far as we are concerned. It brings dollars to France. But we do consider it bad, and frankly say so to our American friends,' for republican America to let the vanity of its rich citizens be played upon to supply financial support for reactionary and monarchist intrigues in France itself.

WHEN a passenger left Berlin on the North Express before the war, he paid little attention to the sombre country through which he passed in Germany, and felt that the Russian frontier must be very close. His train rumbled through avenues of evergreens, while he drowsily meditated on two great names: Schopenhauer, born at Danzig, and Kant, born at Konigsberg. If he was impressionable and inclined to indulge in generalizations, he may have asked himself if the skull capacity of these Nordic coast dwellers was not unusually large. But the appearance of the first Russian gendarmes quickly put an end to these reflections.

Had we then, in those former days, completely forgotten the partition of Poland? Were we utterly ignorant of the fact that the banks of the Vistula were not peopled by Germans? Of course not, but the German Empire as it then existed appeared indestructible. It seemed inconceivable that anything could happen revolutionary enough to restore Poland.

To-day a Westerner who makes this journey has several new experiences. He knows about the Treaty of Versailles; he examines the map; he recalls that in order to create a new Poland the Peace Conference has divided Germany asunder, cutting the main part of the country completely off from the Germans of East Prussia.

Germany cut in two! Even after all that has happened during the past ten years this thought is so disconcerting

1 From L'Illustration (Paris illustrated literary weekly), March 7

that it immediately arouses apprehensions of what Germany will do about it. But one need hardly wait even for that, since the Germans are already making the welkin ring with their threats. They declare roundly that whatever else they may consent to under the Treaty, they will never tolerate the permanent separation of Berlin from Konigsberg. If you ask anyone at the German capital to-day, either a native or a foreigner familiar with the country, to name the most irritating and dangerous question in international politics, he will instantly reply, "The Polish Corridor.'

On the other hand, when you examine the considerations that moved the diplomats at Versailles to make such a grave and menacing decision, you will discover that they merely drew political frontiers to correspond with the ethnographic map. They simply gave Poland territory inhabited by Poles. Was that a crime?

Only five or ten minutes by the railway along the sea from the heart of Danzig are districts where the Poles form eighty-five per cent of the population. This Polish coast, which you will find marked on your map just west of Danzig as the coastal extremity of the corridor, has not been christened Polish by political caprice. When it was part of the German Empire it was invariably represented in the Reichstag by a Polish Deputy. Its geographical name is Polish Pomerania, and Pomerania comes from the Slavic words po morie, meaning 'on the sea.' If you draw a straight line from Cracow to the coast

When you point this out the Germans answer: "That does n't affect the fact that ever since the Congress of Vienna, or for more than a century, the King of Prussia was Grand Duke of Posen. The incorporation into Germany of this part of Poland was an accomplished fact, sanctioned by a hundred years of custom, labor, and administration. Prussia's final borders had been fixed to accord with this situation. To-day you are trying to revive, without consulting the population by a plebiscite, ancient historical boundaries that had been forgotten. You have destroyed overnight the work of a century. You have cut our country into two fragments without reliable communication between them. You have You have inflicted upon it a mutilation that the future will not accept. The superior necessity of preserving Germany's territorial unity should justly have taken precedence of the vague and questionable aspirations of two hundred thousand Kachoubs who live in the little district called to-day "the Corridor.""

The more one studies these opposite contentions, the clearer it becomes that

we are dealing with one of those controversies that, to the eternal distress of mankind, have become so complicated that both sides have equally potent reasons for their opinion. Let us admit at once that the resentment the Germans feel at having their two Prussias separated by a belt of Polish territory is perfectly natural. On the other hand, the desire of the Poles to recover a district inhabited by their own people, and to control the entire course of their national river, the Vistula, to the sea, is likewise justified by arguments so obvious that no sane man can dispute them.

In fact, this controversy is many centuries old. In 1433, when the Poles, temporarily victorious, reached the sea near Danzig, they jubilantly filled their canteens with its water as a trophy of their triumph. It would take us too far afield to recite the checkered history of the long struggle that has since ensued between the Teutons, obstinately defending the coast from Danzig to Reval, and the Slavs, with equal obstinacy fighting for access to the sea.

I sit in the Berlin train for East Prussia. If I had intended to go directly through to that destination, I should have been put in a special car, properly sealed, and should have passed without interference across the Polish Corridor. But I am going to Danzig. Apparently it is an extraordinary expedition. What could a man possibly have to do in Danzig? So, at a station with an unrememberable name, Prussian officials, veritable border-wolves, question me, minutely scrutinize my documents, search my luggage, scan me with suspicious eyes. A Warsaw official, wearing a haughty mien and armed with an enormous rapier, follows these gentlemen down the aisle of the car, visas my passport, and we enter the Polish Corridor. A minute later another Pole stamps my papers and authorizes me to

leave the Corridor. Finally a Danzig employee again stamps my documents, so that I may leave the train at last at the station of the Free State of Danzig. Four visas to come here, plus the regular German visa and the regular Polish visa procured at Berlin before my departure! When I reach the hotel I find a courteous but reserved reception. People scan me out of the corners of their eyes.

But what is this languorous music? What! What! Here in a gorgeous room attached to the hotel people are drinking, eating, and smoking in a sort of music-hall atmosphere, where imitation English girls in tights and fictitious Russian dancers are performing on a stage. I confess I am surprised to catch the pious burghers of Danzig, the ultrarespectable city, thus in flagrante delicto. The same evening I visit a movie show. There everything is German. Pictures of prominent German politicians are thrown on the screen followed by the motto, Deutschland über Alles, which Theodore Wolff assures me simply means Vive l'Allemagne.

After the first of July, 1878, when Danzig was made the capital of East Prussia, it became one of the most important military posts in Germany. To-day it is not at all happy at reverting to its ancient status of a free city. One cannot walk many steps along its streets without running into some monument erected to the glory of the great men who followed the elder William. At the City Hall hangs a large canvas portraying French prisoners captured during the retreat from Moscow, surrounded by Prussian soldiers. The building also contains busts of Hindenburg and Mackensen, wearing the fierce military mien that the German people like to give their army

men.

I requested the privilege of presenting my respects to Herr Sahm, Presi

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dent of the Free State. It was readily granted. I found myself facing a giant of a man, whose formidable visage gazed down upon me from an intimidating height. This tiny country indulges in the luxury of the largest President I ever saw. Herr Sahm, however, is a courteous gentleman of impeccable official correctness, whom even the Poles respect for his integrity. I gazed with admiration on this superb example of the Danzig male, and asked if his good city found life supportable under the new régime.

'We should get along very tolerably,' Herr Sahm replied with deliberation, 'if Danzig's liberties were respected. But as a matter of fact, our rights are constantly violated. For example, Poland does not recognize that Danzig is an independent state. She insists that we are merely a free city, and since she is the only country to hold this opinion we feel justly indignant. For what is the idea behind her attitude? We ourselves stand by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. We simply insist that it be loyally respected. That is the only way we can get along. To illustrate, a tariff convention exists between Poland and the Free State of Danzig, under which Poland is not entitled to levy new duties without previously notifying our Government. Now Poland changes her export tariffs inside twenty-four hours to the serious detriment of our trade. To cite another instance, although the League of Nations has formally stipulated that we shall under no circumstances become a military centre of any kind, we are compelled to allot part of our harbor to Poland for a munitions depot. What is worse, we are ordered offhand and forced to pay part of the cost of its construction.'

After leaving President Sahm's office I visited the Polish officials stationed here and questioned them regarding

his complaints, which seemed to me plausible enough. They laughed in my face.

'Herr Sahm is not any more a Danziger than you are,' they said. 'He is merely a Prussian official born in Pomerania. Neither is Herr Ziehm, the Vice-President of the Senate. Herr Treichel, the President of the Volktag, is a Prussian born at Riesenburg. Dr. Srusen, the Minister of Justice, was formerly the chief legal adviser of one of the Prussian Ministries at Berlin. The trouble is that Danzig has no local official class, no native bourgeoisie trained in public affairs, with whom we can discuss these subjects. The city is merely a branch of Berlin, administered by Prussian bureaucrats who, while formally irreproachable in their political conduct, are constantly stirring up strife. That munitions depot is an old bone of contention. Colonel de Reynier, the Swiss Chairman of the Harbor Board, finally took matters in his own hands and designated a point near the mouth of the Vistula for a site. It was entirely unimproved; and if the city has to pay half the cost, that is because it obstinately refused to let us use some other part of the harbor. While the Senate of Danzig governs the city proper, it has no authority over the port. The Treaty places that in the hands of a harbor board consisting of five Poles, five Danzigers, and a Swiss chairman.'

Subsequently I talked with a foreignaffairs expert in the service of the President of Danzig. He gave the situation still another slant. 'You are aware, of course,' he said to me, 'that the inhabitants of the Corridor are not Poles, but Kachoubs. There is more difference between a Pole and a Kachoub than is commonly known. You are likewise aware, of course, that these people were never allowed to vote upon their separation from Germany. If you were

to take such a vote to-morrow you would find a vast majority anxious to return to Germany. They have had enough of Polish administration. They appreciate the superiority of the German administration to which they have been accustomed for years. They find their country overrun with officials trained in the Russian or Austrian school-gentlemen with certain peculiar weaknesses. The people have suffered badly at their hands. More than that, the Kachoubs miss the German social legislation, especially our sickness insurance. In a word, they feel that they are superior to the population of the rest of Poland, and want to get back to Germany.'

I did not venture to tell this gentleman that he might be taking his wishes for realities. Whenever two countries are competing for the favor of a little community like that of the Corridor, men will be found in it who will flatter both sides. I have no doubt that some Kachoubs will tell the Germans in private that they prefer Germany, and likewise tell the Poles in private that they prefer Poland. But at bottom the Kachoubs are Slavs, and do not differ from other Poles more than a Frenchman of Auvergne differs from a Frenchman of Picardy.

I have on my desk a portfolio stuffed with papers and documents relating to the innumerable controversies, trickeries, mystifications, complaints, and answers that have gathered around the Danzig-Polish dispute. There is no conceivable aspect of the question historical, economic, or politicalthat has not been abundantly aired by experts of one side or the other. In fact, a ceaseless battle is being fought for the mouth of the Vistula. Since the policing of both the port and the city is in the hands of the Free State Government, ment, although the engineering control of the harbor is not, - the Poles

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