‘The Foreign Office records regarding the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 must be amongst the most regularly requested papers held at the National Archives. One file, FO 608/65, is part of the herculean effort to redraw the map of Europe after the First World War. It recounts the efforts of officials and ministers to work out how to provide Poland with meaningful access to the Baltic. The focus of this attention was the port city of Danzig. The two options before the Council of Ten were to include the city as part of Poland, but place limits on how Poland exercised its national sovereignty over this part of its territory, or to create a “free city”, administered by a League of Nations High Commissioner, which was tied into a customs union with Poland. In late March 1919 Lloyd George expressed the UK’s support for the former option in the Council. Behind the scenes, however, the Foreign Office was preparing the alternate plans for a free city, which Lloyd George backed to decisive effect in April 1919. Concerns that this reversal might destabilise the fledgling Polish state were summarily dismissed.’
UK Constitutional Law Association, 25th September 2018
Source: ukconstitutionallaw.org
