It has, of course, been suggested that even if Danzig were left Germany, Poland could enjoy free use of the port by special commercial treaties guaranteed by the League of Nations. But on this very question Poland has had such sad experiences of the way in which Germany keeps treaties that she cannot rely on such arrangements. And whatever may be one’s hopes as to the League of Nations, in the present state of the League it is scarcely fair to ask a nation to stake its most vital interests upon the efficiency of such a guarantee.
It is well known that the Danzig question led to something of a contest at Paris. On the one hand, Poland had received the promise of a free and secure access to the sea; on the other hand, it was difficult to transfer to her outright the Danzig territory with a solid population of about 300,000 Germans. Finally a compromise was agreed upon, a solution intended to safeguard both the national rights of the Danzig Germans and the economic interests of Poland.
According to the new arrangement, Danzig and its territory are to be entirely separated from Germany and to be organized as a free city under the protection of the League of Nations. In economic matters, however, this small republic will be very closely connected with Poland through a treaty to be drawn up by the Allied and Associated Powers. This treaty will have for its object to include the Free City within the Polish customs area, and to insure to Poland complete control over the railways, posts, telegraph lines, waterways, and port facilities of Danzig.
If this arrangement is honestly put into practice, it will restore substantially the relation which existed so happily between Poland and Danzig from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, for Danzig was at that time virtually a free city under the protectorate of Poland. This historical precedent has helped a good deal to reconcile the Poles to the compromise, and there is reason to think that a considerable section of the Danzigers are rather well satisfied with it.
Posen, part of West Prussia, and the Danzig territory are the only regions which Germany has definitively lost to Poland. There are, however, three other territories which Germany may lose, since in all of them plebiscites are to be held to determine whether their inhabitants wish to remain with Germany or to be united with Poland.
The first of these plebiscite areas is the Marienwerder district on the right bank of the Vistula in the northeastern corner of West Prussia. This small territory is of much importance to Poland, since it borders upon the Vistula and, if left in German hands, might menace the security of communications along that river. Moreover, the most direct and convenient railway from Danzig to Warsaw runs across this territory. Nevertheless, since the district contained in 1910 about 114,000 Germans as against only 24,000 Poles, the Conference decided to refer its fate to a plebiscite. Apart from Danzig, this is the only considerable district with a German-speaking majority which may be taken away from Germany.
A plebiscite is also to be held in the southern zone of the province of East Prussia, in the territory commonly known as Mazuria. This secluded region of forests, lakes, and marshes has a decided majority of Polish-speaking population. The ancestors of these Poles were called into the country in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the Teutonic Knights to replace the original Prussian population, which the Knights had largely exterminated. The Mazurian Poles have remained politically separated from the rest of their nation for six hundred years; since the sixteenth century they have become Protestants, while almost all the other Poles are Catholics; and because of these facts and also because of their economic, intellectual, and spiritual dependence on their German landlords, teachers, and pastors, the Mazurian Poles have long been completely estranged from the rest of the Polish nation. They have on the whole shown no very marked signs of Polish national consciousness, and there was room to doubt whether they desired reunion with Poland. Hence, a plebiscite was clearly in order here.
The third plebiscite area is in Upper Silesia. In this case, likewise, there was an indisputable Polish-speaking majority: 65.6% of Poles for the region as a whole, and in many districts 80 or even 90%. So strong was the Polish claim that the original decision of the Peace Conference was to award Upper Silesia to Poland outright. It is well known, however, that, as a result of the vehement objections raised by the German delegation at Versailles, this decision was ultimately modified. The territory in question was extraordinarily rich in minerals and important industrially. In the period just before the outbreak of the War, its coal production was 44,000,000 tons a year—three times as great as that of the Saar basin, 23% of Germany’s total output of coal. It also furnished 34% of her production of lead ore; and 81% of her zinc. The loss of so immensely valuable a territory would mean a severe blow to the economical life, as well as to the pride, of the German people. It was a sacrifice that could be fairly demanded only if the majority of the population in Upper Silesia clearly and unmistakably desired union with Poland. As to the wishes of that population, the evidence available was strongly in favor of Polish claims, but it was not absolutely conclusive. Hence the Conference finally resolved that in so grave a matter the decision must be left in the hands of the people themselves through a plebiscite.
To sum up, Germany has definitively lost about 17,500 square miles of territory and about 2,900,000 subjects. If all the plebiscites go against her, her total losses in the east will amount to an area of about 27,500 square miles and a total population of nearly 5,800,000. In other words, she risks losing in the east an area five times as great as Alsace-Lorraine, and a population three times as great.
There is no denying that this is serious business. The Powers who have decreed and sponsored these arrangements have thereby assumed responsibilities and liabilities, the gravity of which ought not to be overlooked or minimized. There is a common belief in Germany (though a wrong one) that Prussia has never permanently lost any territory she has once held, and that after every Jena comes a Leipzig or a Waterloo. And what must be the feeling of true-blue Prussians over the loss of these ‘Eastern Marches’ on the maintenance of which, Prince von Bülow was wont to declare, “the fate of Prussia, of the empire, nay of the whole German nation depends”? The resulting dangers to the peace of Europe are obvious. But it should not be imagined that these dangers would have been avoided, or even much reduced, if the Allies had demanded less for Poland. Without a far greater change in German mentality than we have had any evidence of as yet, any territorial cessions at all in favor of the despised Poles were sure to be fiercely resented. Even Professor Delbrück, one of the most moderate of Prussian politicians, declared years ago, “All Germany would have to be hewn in pieces before we would allow even Posen to be taken away from us.” The Paris Conference was always faced by the dilemma that ‘the peace of reconciliation,’ of which the Germans talked, would have been one that left Germany intact, unpunished, and impenitent; while the peace of justice, demanded by the principles which the Allies had proclaimed, raised the vision of an embittered Germany thirsting and plotting for revenge.