Now this is very shallow reasoning, and is based either on misunderstanding or misrepresentation. As pointed out, the difference in tactics between the acceptance of the Grand Duke’s manifesto and the completer demands now made by the National Democrats corresponds to the difference between the Russian situation of 1914 and the Russian situation of 1917. What was not possible in 1914 is, theoretically, possible now, and should the Central Empires be completely beaten, there is no practical reason why the National Democratic programme should not be realised. The Entente powers, that is to say, would, if completely victorious, be able to unite Lithuania and the other Russian provinces with Poland, and thus accomplish what M. Dmowski’s opponents say was not possible except on the supposition that both Germany and Russia were simultaneously to suffer a crushing defeat. Whether that is desirable or not is another question, but it is not an imbecile dream founded on the total defeat of two opposed belligerents. It was not possible in 1914, but it must be remembered that the National Democrats did not put forth that demand then. They accepted the Grand Duke’s proclamation, for doing which then, and for claiming a completer Poland now, M. Dmowski has already been labelled a “Facing-all-ways.” But if he is that, he is not an imbecile in demanding concessions that imply a total defeat of both sides. His enemies may make their choice as to which label they attach to him, but they really must not attach both. One of the two slips off.
But there are points in this programme of the National Democrats which demand much more serious consideration and criticism. It will be remembered that the National Democrats aspire to a new Poland of 38,000,000 inhabitants of which not less than 70 per cent. are “Polish in language, culture, ideas and feeling.” Now 70 per cent. of 38,000,000 is 26,600,000, a number which vastly exceeds the total number of Poles in the whole area under discussion. Estimates as to this total differ; Mr. Geoffrey Drage, for instance, in his “Pre-War Statistics of Poland and Lithuania,” gives the total number of Poles in these territories as 18,626,000, a deficit of 6,000,000 below those in the privately-printed document. Similarly M. Olechowski, himself a Nationalist, who likewise makes out a strong case on behalf of united Poland, puts the total down as 19,400,000, and I have nowhere been able to find any authority or to construct any system of calculation which places the aggregate of the true Polish population as higher than between 21,000,000 and 22,000,000. Or, to apply another test, let us take in detail the various constituent parts of the new Polish state, and see how the percentages in them correspond with the percentage given above. They are as follows:—
| Percentage of Poles. | ||
| Kingdom of Poland | 74.0 | |
| Lithuania | 18.47 | |
| Minsk | 10.3 | |
| Volhynia | 9.97 | |
| Galicia | 58.55 | |
| Teschen | 54.9 | |
| Posen | 61.5 | |
| West Prussia | 35.5 | |
| Government of Allenstein | 50.0 |
These are pre-war statistics, but they are the latest available, and it is at once clear from them that you cannot get out of them an average of anything approaching 70 per cent. of Poles. In addition to this, the total population of the areas under consideration is considerably more than 38,000,000, and must be put down as being over 40,000,000, which again dilutes the percentage of Poles.
On the other hand, it will be noticed that the author of our document says that this 70 per cent. is “Polish in language, culture, ideas and feeling,” and does not definitely say “Polish in blood.” But the reader would rightly infer that this was meant, since his argument is ethnographical, and he himself confirms that impression, for he immediately goes on to speak of the various other nationalities which compose the remaining 30 per cent., leaving you to conclude that the 70 per cent. are Poles by blood. Ethnographically, then, his figures are wrong, and seriously wrong, while if he means exactly (though misleadingly) what he says, we must suppose that he includes among “those of Polish culture, etc.,” those of Polish religion, e.g. the Lithuanians. Some colour is given to this explanation by the fact that he says that “the Polish state ... ought to include those provinces where Western (Polish) civilization is ineradicable ... or where the majority of the inhabitants are Catholics.” Unless he includes all Roman Catholics as “Polish in culture, etc.,” he cannot justify this 70 per cent., while (apart from the fact that if he does so include them, he ought to have said so) he must be aware that a very large percentage of those Roman Catholics are bitterly and violently anti-Polish. He tells us, for instance, that a great majority of the Lithuanians would vote for union with Poland, on which subject we shall speak presently, and on such unsupported assertions I think that he must base his 70 per cent. By no other means can he possibly arrive at it, and if these are the means he adopts, it must be noticed that he drops the ethnographical argument altogether, and substitutes for it the argument that co-religionists are always amicably inclined to each other. How dangerous such an assumption is, we shall see when we come in detail to the question of the inclusion of Lithuania in the Polish state.
Our author recognises that the Jews will be an anti-Polish and pro-German element, and true to his anti-Jewish views, which are perfectly sound, as derived from present conditions, admits that “so large a number (two and a half millions) of Jews on the territory of the Polish states presents a very serious disadvantage.” But here again, in his desire to present the stability of his future state, he both magnifies its strength and underrates its weaknesses, of which the pro-German Jewish population is among the greatest. For instead of there being only two and a half million Jews to be reckoned with there must be well over four millions of them, the various censuses showing:—
| Jews. | |
| Russian Poland (1911) | 1,716,000 |
| Galicia (1910) | 900,000 |
| Lithuania (1897) | 697,000 |
| Minsk and Volhynia (1897) | 740,000 |
| Prussian Poland (1905) | 68,483 |
| 4,121.483[9] |
To the new state of Poland, of which the Poles, pur sang, do not probably exceed twenty-one millions at the most, this Jewish element, consistently anti-Polish, of over four millions is a danger which the National Democrats do not seem adequately to appreciate. For not only are they formidable in numbers, they are formidable in position also, when we consider that 80 per cent. of the total trade in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania before the war passed through their hands.
Certain trades like the leather trade and the stocking trade were entirely theirs, and Jewish money-lenders infested the small provincial towns, bringing ruin on their general interests. They are largely town-dwellers, and in centres of industry they form a much larger fraction of the population than in country districts, where their influence would be more scattered and less capable of being concentrated and organized; in Warsaw, for instance, they make up 35 per cent. of the whole population. Moreover, since the occupation of the Kingdom of Poland by the Central Empires, the Germans have opened Jewish schools, removed the disabilities which previously attached to their race, and done all in their power to encourage them and strengthen their position, well knowing that by so doing they were tightening their own grip on Poland. All this our author minimizes, and hopefully remarks that there has been a “strong tendency among them towards emigration, which is likely in the future to develop on a larger scale.” He commits the strategical error, in fact, of underrating the strength of his adversaries, which the Jews most undoubtedly are. In Lithuania, it is true, the Germans originally treated the Jews very differently, squeezing and despoiling them during the earlier months of their occupation, for the reason that they then contemplated having to give back Lithuania to Russia, and wanted to make as much out of it as possible, so that they would restore it in a completely impoverished condition. But in the Kingdom of Poland they have encouraged Jews as being their allies and coadjutors, for they never meant to let Poland go back to Russian domination. From this point of view, it is no wonder that when late in 1917 a Jewish deputation waited on the Minister of Justice and Social Affairs, asking for further privileges, the minister replied that the best remedy for Jewish grievances was the emigration from Poland of Jews. This was a short-sighted and foolish reply, for the Jewish problem in Poland, if we are to see a strong and united Poland, is not to be solved by belittling their importance, or by hostility to them with a view to eliminating them. It cannot, indeed, be too strongly stated that a liberal policy with regard to Jews is absolutely essential to the coherence of the new Polish state. They are far too important and numerous to disregard, and hostility to them would merely result in making a strong pro-German party in a state which, in order to exist, must purge itself of pro-German elements. This particular purging cannot be effected in any other way than by shewing the Jews that Polish prosperity is involved with their well-being.