§ Then my right hon. Friend turned the question of Danzig. I said the other day, and my right hon. Friend referred to it, that I deprecated any attempt to tie too tightly the representative of this country when he was going to put our contribution into the common stock with the other nations of the world, as represented on the Council, in the hope that, out of our mutual and friendly deliberations, there will come a decision acceptable to, or, at least, accepted by, all, carrying the full authority and weight of the League, and arrived at by a friendly consideration, there in a common Council, of the different points of view with which we have to reckon. As questions about Danzig will certainly come before the Council on this occasion—as, indeed, I may permit myself to say they have come far too freely before the Council in the past—I would beg the Committee not to expect of me that I should express my opinions in such a way that I should not be free to join in a common decision which, after common discussion, I might myself think a right one.
§ All that I will say about it is that I share to the full my right hon. Friend's desire that the restored Republic of Poland should cultivate good relations with her neighbours, and should do all that a Power of her greatness, and glory, and strength can rightly and easily do to make easier a situation which must be difficult in any case, and to prevent unnecessary difficulties from arising. We can all of us sympathise with the difficulties and troubles of Poland when called to her re-birth in her early days, and still menaced on her frontiers; but she is now steadily strengthening her position, she 704 is putting her finances in order without any international loan, she is making steady and fruitful progress; and, in those circumstances, we may look to her for a surety of judgment, a wisdom in policy, and a consideration for the feelings of others, which it would have been, perhaps, expecting too much of human nature, and especially of human nature so tried in the past, to expect from her in the early days of her regained freedom and of her struggle to establish it on a secure foundation.