Gone Fishing

Into the Free City of Danzig steamed a train and off got the League of Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, His Excellency Sean Lester, greeted only by Mrs. Lester and their dog. The dog leaped up and frisked about while Danzig Nazis stolidly stared at Sean Lester with hate in their blue eyes. Patting his dog on the head, the High Commissioner cracked in German at the Nazis, "Thank you, Meine Herren. Thank you for this warm welcome."

The Nazis, led by Danzig Senate President Arthur Karl Greiser. who recently thumbed his nose in the League Council (TIME, July 13), cracked back with decrees muzzling the Danzig Opposition and putting all citizens last week at the mercy of the Nazi police. Adolf Hitler's supreme chief of German Police, Heinrich Himmler, sent one of his closest aides to become Danzig's Police Chief.

Abruptly the Jewish organ Danziger Echo was suspended for ten months. The only other Opposition organ still appearing, the Catholic Volkszeitung, was wiped out for printing a letter from Danzig Bishop Edward O'Rourke in which he wrote: "The Senate has made war on all the Free City's Christians. I appeal to all Catholics to rally around the clergy."

In despair the League's Sean Lester penned a report saying that Nose-Thumber Greiser's Senate had refused even to answer questions by the High Commissioner as to what was supposed to be the constitutional basis for their arbitrary Nazi decrees. Unanswered Mr. Lester then took his wife and dog fishing.

This week the German Air Minister, bull-necked General Hermann Wilhelm Goering, is scheduled to go to Danzig for a gala opera night of Parsifal, and most Danzigers assumed that from this night on their once Free City will be German in fact, if not by a Goering proclamation. Shopkeepers hoped they have not been duped by Nazi assurances that Danzig is going to boom as General Goering turns it into a great German air base and "Spearhead against Russia."

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