The White Eagle of Poland

by E. F. Benson

Chaos was now complete, and probably Germany intended that, for she was intending to “scrap” the constitution which she has proclaimed nearly a year before, since it had not produced for her that for which she had granted it, namely an army to fight her battles. In this year she had but succeeded in fusing the whole Polish population of the occupied territory into enmity against her, and since they now declared foes, she proceeded to treat them as such. She had openly become a tyrant over a conquered people: she had imprisoned the man who voiced national sentiment, she had tried to raise troops of another nation to fight for her, and now she proceeded to any sort of petty tyranny that suited her convenience. She demanded that German schools in Poland, the management of which had in April been entrusted to Poles, should now be directly controlled from Berlin, in spite of her having given matters dealing with education and justice into the care of the Council of State, she closed Polish schools and opened new German ones. All matters connected with education and administration of justice were, for the future, to be dictated by German military control, and she ordained that the Governor-General might demand re-examination of the legitimacy of decisions in law-courts (so that if an anti-German verdict was returned, it could be revised); she reserved also to the Governor-General the right of approval or reversal of any measures passed by the country’s representatives, in so far as they affected “war-conditions,” and again banished or imprisoned Polish students. Finally she directly threatened to annex such part of Poland as she needed for rectification of her frontier, leaving Austria to annex the remainder. The immediate effect of this would be to render all Poles liable to military service either with her or with Austria. As a protest against this which was a frank and open repartition of the Poland she had declared independent, the Austrian Polish Socialists, the peasant party and the National Democrats in the Reichsrat formed a bloc to demand an independent Poland with access to the sea. Austria remonstrated with her partner, and together they settled to drop the final adjustment of Poland, at any rate till the end of the war, scrapped the declaration of November 5th, 1916, and proceeded to announce a new system of government. This was not done without strong and expressed warnings from Germany itself, and among others Prince Lichnowsky declared in the Berliner Tageblatt that the Polish question constituted for Germany the gravest question of the war, far, graver than that of Belgium or Alsace, and that she was playing with it in the manner of a child with a toy that would not work. He was quite right, for while Germany by these tyrannies was acquiring material advantages for the Mittel-Europa policy in the way of expansion Eastwards, she was also building up against that expansion a solid wall of hate and antagonism.

The patent for this new constitution appeared in the middle of September, 1917, and appointed:

(i.) A Regency Council of three members to be nominated by the two Emperors of the Central Powers.

(ii.) An administrative Cabinet under the Presidency of the Prime Minister, who was to be appointed by the Regency Council.

(iii.) A representative Parliament.

The names of the Regency Council appeared by the end of the month, and consisted of Prince Lubomirski, Archbishop Kakowski and M. Ostrowski. These were to hold office until the appointment of a Regent was made, and since they were appointed by the Central Empires, and in turn appointed a Premier, it can be conjectured that Poland was not intended to gain much measure of true autonomy, for Germany’s hand was still on the throttle, to prevent any real development of horse-power.

Of the three, Prince Lubomirski is the predominant personality: He is a very able man, aristocratic and of Liberal tendencies. He has enjoyed considerable popularity since the occupation of the country, first as chairman of the Citizens’ Committee, and as President of Warsaw, and throughout has shewn great firmness and dignity in his dealings with the German authorities. M. Ostrowski is a wealthy landowner, who has worked with the group of Polish conservatives for a reconciliation with Russia. He has had more political experience than Lubomirski but lacks his ability, and is the victim of a strange nervous disease that causes him to fall asleep for several weeks at a time. His power of application to business therefore, is not particularly valuable to anybody. Archbishop Kakowski is a man of common-sense but of narrow horizons who has no qualifications for a post of political authority. His appointment, as a Roman Catholic prelate, is chiefly interesting as an indication of a certain swaying of the balance again towards an Austrian solution which presently became a more pronounced movement. For some weeks after the appointment of this Council the post of the Prime Minister was vacant, for the Germans vetoed Count Tarnowski, the Austrian candidate, and it was not until the middle of November that M. Jan Kucharzewski was appointed, a man of ability and honesty but without much strength or decision, and a student of history rather than a maker of it.

The swing of the pendulum, indicated by the personnel of the Regency council, towards some form of Austrian solution soon grew more marked, and it was understood that the Crown Council held in Berlin in November favoured the idea of the union of Poland and Galicia under the Emperor of Austria, while by way of adjusting the balance Courland and Lithuania would be annexed by Germany. But though this scheme would be manifestly to the advantage of Germany, since German influence would increase in the Reichsrat now that Polish deputies would no longer sit there but in the Diet of their new state, there were two vital objections to it which aroused the opposition of the entire German press. One was that such annexation was definitely contradictory to the “no-annexation” doctrine officially proposed, the other that to take over Lithuania and Courland would be to incur the bitter and lasting enmity of Russia. Russia might be at present an almost non-existent factor in international politics (and was soon to advance nearer vanishing point) but no sane politician could base his schemes on the impossible premise of her total and permanent extinction. A third objection, one, however, to which Germany attached no weight whatever, was that the Little Russians (Ukrainians) who formed by far the largest national body in East Galicia would fight to the last gasp before being united with, and governed by a Polish state. Indeed this consideration, so far from being an objection in Germany’s view, constituted an argument in favour of this arrangement, since there would thus be bitter hostility between Ukrainians and Poles. Meantime the Polish Club in Vienna were strongly in favour of the Austrian solution, and it had many adherents among the Conservative Poles of Galicia, while Count Julius Audrassy writing semi-officially in the Fremden Blatt in December, 1917, declared for it saying that Posen was inalienable from Germany, but that Galicia formed a natural adjunct to the Kingdom of Poland. Equally significant as to the fact that some form of “Austrian solution” though often rejected by Germany, was on the tapis again, was that Kucharzewski speaking of the reception of the Regency Council by the Emperor of Austria, in January, 1918, said that the union of Galicia and Poland was a heart-felt desire of the whole Polish nation. This statement followed immediately on a visit he had paid to Berlin, and was, if not authorized, allowed to remain uncontradicted.

There were certainly more elements in this new constitution of a self-governing state than in any which Germany had yet permitted to take shape. Hitherto her main use for Poland had been that Poland should supply her with an army against Russia, and up till now she had declared that Poland must establish her claim for independence by shedding her blood for Germany. But now, in the swift disintegration of Russia there was no longer any need for a Germano-Polish army, and so she could be advanced a step towards independence and create an army for herself. Germany by no means wished to have a rebellious and discontented province in her sphere of occupation, though in days gone by, she would sooner have been supplied with such an army as Pilsudski could have raised for her than satisfy the aspirations of the Poles. But now at last she consented, as an experiment, to Poland devoting herself to her own coherence and stability, when suddenly all was turmoil again, and the rights and territorial integrity granted to Poland were violated more wantonly than ever before. For in February, 1918, there took place the peace-negotiations with Russia at Brest-Litovsk in which Poland claimed a voice, which was not granted her, and the Polish government thereupon stated that no agreement bearing on Poland’s fate or prejudicing her rights would be accepted by the nation as legally binding. Then followed the Ukrainian peace, which sheared off the entire Government of Cholm, hitherto Polish, and gave it to the Ukraine, thereby making a fresh partition which went a step further than even the Congress of Vienna had done, for it cut off 10,000 square miles of territory from the Kingdom of Poland (by way of granting it independence) and created, if it was allowed to stand, a lasting fratricidal contest between Poland and the Ukraine.

The Austrian Poles retorted by a vigorous and successful move, supported by the Czechs, who opposed a treaty which sowed discord between Slav peoples. The whole of the Polish Club in the Reichsrat under Baron von Goetz went over to the opposition and threatened to vote not only against the Budget, but against the Provisional budget about to be laid before the House; they also issued a unanimous manifesto demanding the presence of Polish representatives in the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, while in Poland itself the whole Polish Cabinet with Kuckarzewski resigned. In the Reichsrat Glombinski, a Polish deputy, asserted the proclaimed independence of Poland and its right, as independent, to make its treaties, when they concerned its frontiers, with any other country, while Goluckowski read a similar manifesto in the upper house. Similarly M. Daszynski, a Polish Member of the Reichsrat, issued an appeal to Austrian Poles on February 18th, saying: