The White Eagle of Poland

by E. F. Benson

It is no wonder that, when we consider that these levies were made on a population that was already starving, the destitution of thousands became appalling, and in especial the mortality among infants. In many towns milk and all fats were absolutely non-existent; we read of children so soft of bone that they could not stand upright, and of a plague of scurvy in Warsaw, which affected 90 per cent. of the poorer classes. Food-riots were frequent, and were suppressed with Prussian thoroughness. Yet when the British Foreign Office asked Berlin for a guarantee that supplies let through the blockade should be used for Poland and not for Germany, and that the native foodstuffs should not be used for the maintenance of the occupying armies, it was refused. Needless to say, a chorus of vituperation burst from the Press at British inhumanity, which inhumanity consisted precisely in this, namely, that the British Government did not see its way to let the charity of other countries revictual Germany. Such relief as reached Poland by land routes was put into the hands of Hindenburg to administer, which augured well for the comfort of German soldiers, if not for that of those for whom it was sent.

This policy of starving the Poles in order to supply their own wants both Germany and Austria continued brutally to exercise, and as late as November, 1917, innumerable trucks of fruit, corn and potatoes were passing out of the starving country into that of its occupiers. We may judge from this what fraction of foreign supplies would have been allowed to feed the people for whom they were to be sent.[14]

The starvation which was intended to further Polish emigration into Germany failed in its effect, and we find that only about 21,000 Poles were induced to go, of whom a certain number were taken by force. They did not respond at all eagerly to the bait of “peace and plenty” in the Fatherland, and they viewed with a suspicion that their “deliverers” could ill understand, letters purporting to come from their countrymen there who spoke of the delightful conditions prevailing in Germany. On one occasion von Beseler, the German Governor of Warsaw, sent such an account to the Editor of a Warsaw paper, who refused to publish it unless he inserted a footnote saying that the entire communication came from the German military authorities. For this contumacy he was fined 4,000 marks. Those of the Poles who went were, like the Jews and natives from Lithuania, not permitted to return, and we hear of some of them at work in the Zeppelin sheds at Oldenburg, while interned Polish prisoners were trained and sent to the front.

Similarly the man-power desired by the Germans for recruits in the armies of the Central Empires was not forthcoming at all. Germany had made a grave miscalculation, for though there were tens of thousands of Poles ready to fight against Russia from patriotic motives, there was not one per cent. of these who were ready to fight for Germany. Germany, according to the official German view, had delivered the country from the Russian yoke, and had zealously proclaimed her liberating rôle. But what she failed to understand was that the national sentiment of Poland had no greater affection for Germany than it had for Russia. There were few, except the Jews in Poland, who looked on Germany as their deliverer, though Germany made the most of the very gratifying remarks which they addressed to the Kaiser about the invincibility of his armies. But as a practical test of the extent and depth of such emotions, the result of recruiting for purely German purposes after the declaration of the Polish state was not encouraging. For the Poles resented the Germanization of Posen and Silesia just as much as they resented the Russification of other parts of the ancient realm. The result, in any case, of the appeal to die, not for Poland but for Germany, as we shall see later, was highly unsatisfactory. The occupied territories made no response whatever.

CHAPTER II
The First Year of the German Occupation

Germany seems to have realised from the first that the management of the occupied territory of the Kingdom of Poland would present difficulties, and, apart from its systematic starvation, necessitated by the needs of her armies, and her desire for industrial emigration into Germany, she adopted a wiser policy than she did, for instance, in Belgium. Warsaw was taken on August 5, 1915, and schools were reopened there by August 25th, and both in primary and secondary classes Germany allowed Polish to be taught. German and Polish in fact were compulsory languages in schools, and German was taught by Poles. Russian, however, was completely prohibited, and no books or papers other than those that had passed a German censorship were allowed to be introduced into the territory at all. Similarly as an anti-Russian measure she permitted the Byzantine ritual for Greek Catholics, which Russia had prohibited. Now Germany had barred the teaching of Polish in schools in the Duchy of Posen and Prussian Poland, but then she had definitely annexed them and incorporated them into the German Empire, and any attempt at conciliation there was mere weakness. But she was still doubtful whether this fresh conquest was ripe for a similar coercion, and in the interval she tried with an amazingly small degree of success to establish friendly relations with the inhabitants.

Russia, moreover, in this summer of 1915, was far from disabled, and there might still be severe fighting on the Eastern frontiers of Poland. It was wise therefore, firstly, so long as no sacrifice was entailed, to seem to adopt a more liberal policy of government than Poland had previously enjoyed, in order, if possible, to make the inhabitants of the occupied territories better content with her rule than that of Russia. Just as in 1914 the motive of the Grand Duke’s proclamation was to avoid having a disloyal and discontented population in the rear of the Russian armies, so in 1915 such indulgences as were given to the Poles were granted by Germany for precisely the same reason as they had been dangled in front of them before by the Russians. Secondly, a fresh invasion of the occupied territory from the East was still to be reckoned with, and her armies might be pushed back. In that case she would have secured, once more in the rear of the enemy’s line, a population that found it had fared better under her temporary rule than under that of the power which had laid their country waste. A third alternative was that she would remain permanently in possession of Poland, and so she proceeded apace with her usual penetrative work, on which we will touch presently.

But what chiefly occupied her with regard to Poland was the determination of what she wanted to do with it. Given that Poland was not going to be reconquered by Russia, there were the proposals of her Austrian Allies, who were meditating a programme far more attractive to the Poles than was any arrangement which Germany had the slightest intention of proposing, to be digested and disposed of. In brief, this “Austrian solution” was as follows the Kingdom of Poland, hitherto Russian, should be joined to Galicia, ceded by Austria, to form a self-governing state under a Habsburg prince, who, being Catholic, would be acceptable to the nation. This scheme obtained some adherents among the Poles, especially the Poles of Galicia of the class whose interests were bound up with the Austrian government, for during the last fifty years they had received far better treatment at the hands of Austria than either Russia or Germany had granted to the provinces that fell to them through the partions. Hatred of Russia combined with hatred of Germany, who made no corresponding proposal about the cession of the Duchy of Posen, inclined many of the more moderate Polish groups, such as the League of the Polish State, to welcome some such Austrian solution as the best that they were likely to secure, and almost immediately after the German occupation of Warsaw the Austrian government published the manifesto of the Galician Supreme National Council, which set forth the general terms of the proposed arrangement. Germany strongly objected to this as inopportune in its appearance, the inopportunity chiefly consisting in the fact that she had not sanctioned it, and did not mean to. In consequence, a similar resolution of the Polish Parliamentary Club in Vienna was only privately circulated. Simultaneously Count Julius Audrassy announced that the Central Powers were agreed that Poland should never go back to Russia, that a new partion would be dangerous, and that she should form a political body with assured individuality as a state with a Polish government. This was confirmed in December, 1915, by a joint declaration of Baron Burian and Bethmann-Hollweg. As we shall see, the consideration of the Austrian solution, and the discussion over it between the two Central Empires lasted more than a year before Germany finally vetoed it, declaring on November 5, 1916, to the Poles of the Kingdom of Poland, the establishment of a State of their own. From the first she viewed this Austrian solution with distrust, as checking her own development Eastwards, for it was a very different matter from creating a state which she herself could penetrate, easily riddling it in an economical and political, and, in spite of the fiasco she was about to experience with regard to recruiting, in a military sense. But it was objectionable to contemplate a new Kingdom of Poland, subject to a Habsburg prince, interposed in the eastward march of German influence. Much might be gained, no doubt, by the withdrawal of Polish representatives from the Reichsrat who would henceforth sit in the Diet of the new state, thus increasing German preponderance in the Reichsrat. Indeed, since the occupation of part of Russian Poland by Austria, many high Polish officials in Vienna had been drafted into the Administration of Poland, and their places had been taken by Germans, but Germany was uneasy about it all. Possibly Austria, with this fresh accession of territory, and the chance of raising an army where Germany had failed, might assert an inconvenient independence of Berlin, whereas at present she was bound to her. For the dependence of Austria on Germany, her indissoluble Alliance, which amounts to exactly the same thing as her complete subjugation, was a thing not lightly to be risked.

But though the solution of the Polish question might wait, there was no reason why a revised system of taxes should do so, and by March, 1916, Germany was in receipt of a very handsome revenue from her occupied territory. The chief of these taxes were as follows:

(i.) She levied an annual contribution of about 50,000 roubles on many towns, as she had done in Belgium.