For the moment, therefore, the Prime Minister can count upon
the anxious support of these two main categories of educated opinion. Yet it will require consummate gifts of leadership if he is to ride two such nervous horses at the same time or for very long. Already the appeasers are shying slightly at the uncovered guarantee which we have given to Poland, Rumania and Greece. Already the resisters are viewing with some dismay the effect upon Russian and American opinion of the Tokyo memorandum. It is not surprising that the Cabinet should be counting the days until Parliament adjourns. It is conceivable (although I do not regard it as probable) that our Government may believe themselves to be on the verge of a diplomatic success. The bright buoyancy displayed by the Prime Minister during the last ten days may indicate that he also credits some such possibility. It is conceivable that, with the aid of Signor Mussolini, M. Georges Bonnet and Colonel Beck, some compromise acceptable to Poland may be achieved over the Danzig question. It should not be beyond the ingenuity of man to devise some settlement under which the city itself should be attached to the Reich, subject to two vital conditions. The first condition would be the guar- anteed demilitarisation of the Danzig area ; and the second would be the placing of the customs, harbours, waterways and railways under a public utility corporation upon which both Poles and Germans would have equitable representation. Such a solution might well tide us over the dangerous anni- versaries of August 4th and August 27th.
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