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5 Brit. Y.B. Int'l L. 89 (1924)
The Free City of Danzig

handle is hein.journals/byrint5 and id is 97 raw text is: THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG By MALCOLAI M. LEWIS, A.A., LL.B., Director of Legal Studies, University of Bristol. THE Port of Danzig, situated at the mouth of the Vistula, provides Poland's only outlet to the sea.' Its population is of course predominantly German, and the Principal Allied and Associated Powers, in recasting the map of Europe after the World War, were, therefore, confronted with the problem of affording Poland access to the sea without unduly violating the principle of nationality. The German proposal was that Danzig should remain German territory but that it should be a free port in which Poland should have far-reaching rights. 2 This proposal, however, was not acceptable to the Allies, and the solution to the problem was eventually suggested by Danzig's own history. The city had for centuries been a member of the Hansa League, the cities of which enjoyed complete autonomy, for any authority that the Emperor or neighbouring Princes could claim within their walls was an unsubstantial shadow. The League itself was a loose and ill-defined confederacy with a Diet which usually met at Liibeck, and whose assemblies were held in the name of all the cities ; it does not appear to have possessed a formal constitution or a fixed mode of government. The binding link between the members was mutuality of com- mercial interests, and the cities were largely kept together by the fear of being unhansed, i. e. being expelled from the League, a punishment which involved the loss at one blow of the delinquent city's commerce, as Bremen learnt. to its cost in 1356.3 Although the League itself had virtually dissolved by the beginning of the seventeenth century, most of the individual I The Polish Government has recently taken the preliminary steps with a view to building a seaport in Gdynia, a village in the extreme west corner of Danzig Bay, in the - Polish Corridor. It is intended that the new port should supersede, or at any rate supplement, Danzig as a harbour for Poland. (The Times, March 7, 1924.) 2 Temperley : History of the Peace Conference of Paris, Vol. II, p. 292. 2 Zimmern : Hansa League, pp. 83-5 and 201-8.

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