POLAND: Swiss Runcimcm?

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The modest career of German Butcher Gustav Gruebner was crowned last week with a hero's funeral. From Adolf Hitler came a lily wreath and from Kalthof, Danzig Territory, where he was killed by a Polish chauffeur, to neighboring Marienburg, East Prussia, where his grave waited, Nazi formations lined the road, saluted the remains of their latest "martyr." Poles breathed easier when Fiihrer Hitler's gesture was confined to flowers. German newspapers played down the incident. The Danzig plum was not yet ripe, so eager Danzig Nazis must wait, perhaps "until autumn," for Anschluss with the Reich. Said Danzig Nazi Leader Helmuth Andres: Danzigers must remain quiet, even in the face of the worst Polish provocation. It is our responsibility not to force the Fiihrer in any way in the tempo he has chosen to rectify the wrong done by forceful separation of Danzig from the Reich."

A clue to Nazi restraint was found in the return to Danzig, after more than two months absence, of League of Nations High Commissioner, Professor Karl J. Burckhardt, whom Adolf Hitler recently described as "a man of extraordinary tact." Official explanation of the Commissioner's return was that he was to undertake a survey of the Danzig situation for the League. The Poles greeted his arrival as a reassertion of League authority. Nazi newspapers, cued by suggestions in the French and British press that "Danzig is not worth a war," thought they knew better, and hailed tactful Professor Burckhardt as a Swiss Lord Runciman, come to mediate, to persuade, with French and British backing, the Poles to be reasonable, as the Czechs were reasonable last September.