POWER POLITICS: Sunrise

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Last week Danzig churned with rumors like a pot coming to boil. Because Nazis interfered with Polish customs guards, Warsaw closed the frontier to certain goods, sent a note to the Danzig Senate demanding that interference cease, offering to negotiate. Danzig's Nazi press screamed that Poland had opened a trade war, and the rumors began: at 7 o'clock August 6 trouble would break when Nazis refused to recognize the authority of customs officials; highly placed Poles were preparing to flee; stories from Berlin had German officers getting assignments for August 19 in the Polish towns of Lodz and Posen. All this added warmth to a simple speech by Marshal Smigly-Rydz on the 25th anniversary of the entrance of the Polish Legion into the War: "August the Sixth," said he, "is like the sunrise to us."

Not even the Germans, only other people to celebrate the anniversary of the World War, thought up such a metaphor to describe the conflict. But Marshal Smigly-Rydz made it clear that it was not war, but Polish independence, that made the date memorable, warned against the use of force in Danzig, mentioned the military agreements with Poland's friends, and said peace for Poles could never mean "take" for one nation, and "give" for another. Day after he spoke the Danzig Senate was reported to have accepted the Polish offer to negotiate.