The settlement is, on the whole, a pretty complicated one, too complicated perhaps. It deals in varying ways with six territories, each of which has its peculiarities and special problems, and each of which, for the sake of clearness, must be discussed separately.
Five-sixths of the old province of Posen has been ceded outright to Poland. Even the German delegates at Versailles did not very seriously contest the justice of this award. Posen was the cradle of the Polish race and of the Polish state; it belonged to Poland uninterruptedly down to the Second Partition in 1793; it has always retained a strong Polish majority; and that majority has furnished the most conclusive proof of its Polish patriotism and its detestation of German rule. Posen is entirely an agricultural province, the loss of which will reduce Germany’s ability to feed herself from her own resources, but will not otherwise cripple her seriously. The acquisition of the province will be a great gain to Poland, however, since the Posnanian Poles, in the struggle which they have carried on for thirty years against the Prussian government, have learned to equal or surpass the Germans in the qualities of industry, thrift, organizing ability, and general economic efficiency—qualities which are not too well developed among the other Poles.
In West Prussia the problem was much less simple. West Prussia holds a position of such pivotal importance that it has been for six hundred years a battleground between German and Slav. Polish down to the beginning of the fourteenth century; seized by the Teutonic Knights in 1308; voluntarily reunited to Poland in 1454; Polish down to 1772; annexed by Frederick the Great at the time of the First Partition—such is the outline of its history. For centuries the province has been the meeting-place, the point of collision, between two streams of colonization—the German current from west to east along the coast of the Baltic, and the Polish current from south to north down the valley of the Vistula. As a result, the ethnographic map of West Prussia is almost as intricate a mosaic as that of Macedonia. Nevertheless, the general result is clear. West Prussia tails into three zones. The zone along the western border is predominantly German; and so is the northeasterly part, on the right bank of the Vistula. But the central zone and the southeast are predominantly Polish. There thus exists to the west of the Vistula an unbroken corridor of Polish-speaking territory extending through to the Baltic. In the collision referred to between the two streams of colonization, the south to north movement has been the stronger. The Germans have not succeeded in bridging the gap between the old German lands of the west and the isolated German colony in East Prussia. This is the first and principal reason for the establishment of the much discussed Polish couloir to the Baltic.
Poland needs territorial access to the sea—of that there can be no question. But the Peace Conference would probably not have granted her this wish, had it not been justified in doing so on ethnographic grounds. The Conference did not invent the couloir: that already existed and is written plain on every honest linguistic map of this region. The Conference merely recognized the fact, and drew the necessary conclusion by awarding to Poland that middle zone of West Prussia, which forms a compact, though rather narrow, corridor through to the Baltic.
There has been much criticism of this decision, on the ground that East Prussia, most of which will still remain to Germany, is thereby separated from the rest of the Fatherland—an anomalous and unjust arrangement, it is said, which the Germans can never be expected to put up with. Certainly it would be an undesirable arrangement if there were any just way of avoiding it. But it may be remarked, in the first place, that this is the only solution of the problem that corresponds to the ethnographic situation, to the unhappy way in which Germans and Poles have come to be distributed here as the result of centuries of conflict. This solution merely restores the territorial situation that existed for three hundred years down to the time of the First Partition. Moreover, the continuity of German territory cannot be maintained without denying Poland access to the sea. Either East Prussia will have to trade with Germany across Polish territory or Poland will have to trade with the outside world across German territory. It is a question of balancing the respective interests at stake. And who will argue that the right of the million and a half Germans in East Prussia[46] to have a land connection with Germany (they will always have easy communication by sea) outweighs the right of over twenty million Poles in the hinterland to a secure access to the Baltic? Clearly the Polish interest involved is incomparably the greater and ought to take precedence. Every effort has been made in the Peace Treaty to assure untrammeled railway and trade communications between Germany and East Prussia across the intervening Polish territory. Further than that its seems unnecessary to go to secure the interests of the rather small, detached German colony around Königsberg.
The question of the Polish corridor is closely bound up with the thorny problem of Danzig.
Historically Danzig has in the main passed through the same vicissitudes as West Prussia, of which it is the capital. It is an old Polish city, transformed into a German-speaking one since the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, German Danzig distinguished itself in the past by its loyalty to Poland. It took the lead and fought gallantly to effect the reunion of West Prussia with Poland in the fifteenth century. During the ensuing period of Polish rule, it was prosperous and contented. The whole sea-borne trade of Poland passed through its hands; it ranked as wellnigh the first port of the Baltic; and the wide measure of autonomy which Poland allowed it drew Danzig to her by affection as well as by interest. It was not without staunch resistance that the city surrendered to the Prussian usurpation in 1793, and as late as 1813 the City Council besought the Powers of Europe to reunite Danzig to Poland and not to incorporate it with Prussia.
Today the problem of Danzig revolves around two essential facts. The city itself with a population of about 170,000, is overwhelmingly German (over 90%), and so is the small district immediately surrounding it.[47] On the other hand, economically and geographically, Danzig belongs to Poland.
The city derives its importance almost wholly from the fact that it is the natural port of the Vistula valley: it is to that river what Marseilles is to the Rhone or Alexandria to the Nile.[48] Supremely prosperous during the best days of its union with Poland, Danzig has decayed and stagnated under Prussian rule. It has sunk to be a third-rate port, far outdistanced by Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, or even Königsberg. It is doubtful whether it would have any future at all, if it were left as a German city, almost surrounded by Polish territory and cut off by political and economic barriers from the hinterland on which its life depends.
For Poland this is almost the most crucial of all questions. Poland is essentially the valley of the Vistula. That river has always been the main artery of the country’s economic life, and scarcely any other European nation has its settlements concentrated in one river valley in like degree. The Vistula is a magnificent river system, a basin of 60,000 square miles with 3100 miles of navigable streams, and a possibility of opening good and easy connections with the Dnieper, the Dniester, and the Niemen—i.e., with half of eastern Europe. But the utilization and proper development of this unique system of transcontinental waterways by Poland depends on her control of the great port at the mouth of the Vistula. Moreover, Danzig is not only the natural outlet to the sea for this whole country, but it is the only outlet that is in any sense available. The narrow strip of coast which Poland has received to the west of Danzig contains no real ports, and it is doubtful whether any satisfactory port can be developed there.