A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK SIR ARNOLD WILSON, after spending a Sunday
in Danzig, has arrived at " a basis of a settlement " of the European problem. His solution, strange to say, is identical with The Times's solution of the Czecho-Slovakian diffi- culty. " Danzig should be incorporated within the Reich." Sir Arnold adds the inane qualification that it should be so incorporated " as a free State." He advances two arguments: (i) that the status quo in Danzig has ceased to exist, and (2) that such incor- poration is all that Hitler asks. These arguments, it is to be observed, are exactly copied from the Runciman tech- nique of 1938. But Sir Arnold Wilson is not so ingenuous as to suggest that the Reich should accept the incorporation of Danzig without conceding a quid pro quo. Far from it: Sir Arnold has advanced a most important and original suggestion for such an adjustment. Why should not Ger- many " offer to guarantee Poland's present frontiers "? If that were done, " events in Europe might then take a new turn." They might indeed. To think that the penalty for simple arson is twenty years' imprisonment.
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