that he did not "...share the view that questions Poland's right to exist...", and then on 17 May saying in a speech to the Reichstag that he did not believe that it was possible to "...make Germans out of Poles...". This was followed by a lessening of tensions around Danzig in July 1933, with Piłsudski instructing Beck to explore options for further talks. In September of the same year talks were held between Beck on the Polish side, and Neurath and Goebbels on the German side, as part of the general conclave on disarmament in Geneva. The German-Polish rapprochement was temporarily interrupted by the German withdrawal from the Geneva disarmament talks in October 1933. However, by the next month the Polish ambassador in Berlin had already asked Hitler whether the loss of security caused to Poland by Germany's exit from the talks might be compensated by "...direct German-Polish relations...". Hitler responded to this by stating that he saw Poland as "an outpost against Asia", and proposed a declaration excluding the possibility of war between the two countries. The German side proposed a draft declaration to this effect that was accepted in principle by the Polish government, and after a month the talks on the text of the agreement were quickly concluded in January 1934. The declaration Naming The German foreign ministry insisted that the agreement be called a "declaration" rather than a "pact" as "pact" was seen as implying that there was no conflict of interest between the parties. Additionally, the Germans believed that the term "pact" might imply recognition of the German-Polish border. Despite this the agreement is still referred to as a "pact" in some documents. Effect of the declaration Under the declaration, Poland and Germany agreed to normalise relations. Until the declaration Germany had withheld normalisation without first settling the question of the German-Polish border. Instead the issue of the border, and particularly of the Danzig Corridor was put to one side and both sides agreed not to use force to settle their dispute. The agreement also included clauses guarding Poland's relations with France under the Franco-Polish alliance, and under their membership of the League of Nations. An additional benefit Poland received from the declaration was that it enabled the Polish foreign minister, Józef Beck, to have a line of direct communication with Berlin regarding developments in the Free City of Danzig. This allowed Beck to avoid