Who rules over the mouth of the Vistula rules over Poland better than the King of Poland himself.
Thus commented Frederick the Great of Prussia, who himself was a leading carver in the 18th-Century first partition of Poland. His words have not been lost on a 20th-century admirer, Adolf Hitler, who has lately demanded for Germany the Free City of Danzig, at the Vistula's mouth. Unfortunately for Herr Hitler, Poland's present rulers can also read and they showed last week in many ways that they too appreciated Frederick's maxim.
> Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Josef Beck did his efficient best to scuttle Pope Pius' proposed five-nation conference to settle the Danzig question, lest the Dictators confer as successfully as they did at Munich.
> The Polish Government moved to bar any discussion of Danzig from the League of Nations Council session meeting late this month. The Poles want no mediation at Geneva, either. Danzig affairs are handled at the League by a committee of three: Britain, France and Sweden. The League of Nations High Commissioner for Danzig is Dr. Karl Burckhardt, a Swiss professor of law whom Führer Hitler, in his last speech, called "incidentally a man of extraordinary tact." Dr. Burckhardt's "tact" consists largely of a do-nothing silence. Unlike his predecessor, fiery Sean Lester of Eire, who barked long and hard about the Nazis' repeated violations of Danzig's Constitution, Commissioner Burckhardt has uttered public words in Danzig only once and then subtly to quote from an inscription on a Danzig building: "The high things must be kept high and the low things low." His hearers could only guess at his allusions, but among the "low" things which took place in Danzig in violation of the Constitution were the suppression by local Nazis of opposition parties and the imprisonment of Socialist, Catholic and Jewish (though not Polish) enemies. In fact, things got so "low" last January that Dr. Burckhardt, who was placed in virtual quarantine by the ruling Nazis, suddenly left, returned for only several days in March and then got the League's permission to leave more or less permanently. The League Committee of Three has not got around to considering Danzig's case now for two and a half years and it is not likely to do so this session.
> To Warsaw from a much publicized diplomatic swing to Ankara, Sofia and Bucharest went Vladimir Potemkin, the U.S.S.R.'s Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Retired Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff and Colonel Beck always rubbed each other the wrong way. Colonel Beck had not talked diplomatic matters over with a Russian since 1934. But Comrade Potemkin was different.