The Poles of the province of Galicia, which was assigned to Austria, fared no better, up to the year 1867, than their fellow-countrymen in Prussia and Russia. The most rigid system of Germanic bureaucracy was brought to bear on them, and they suffered barbarous oppression. Economically also Austria worked for the ruin of the country.[6] She suppressed both the natural resources of the country and the industries of its inhabitants. But after Austria’s defeat in the war of 1866, she had to reform her internal policy and grant rights to her subject races and from that date the conditions of the Poles of Galicia were greatly ameliorated. Polish, for instance, is the official language of the province, and is taught in Polish schools, and the fact that Austria belongs to the Roman communion has assured religious liberty for the Poles, who have their Archbishop at Lemberg, and three Bishops at Cracow, Tarnow, and Przemysl. They have freedom of access to Rome, and are appointed jointly by the Holy See and the Emperor. Galicia is represented in the Chamber of Deputies at Vienna (which consists of 545 members) by 106 members, of whom 28 are Little Russians, the rest Poles. The Minister of Galicia who has a seat in the Cabinet at Vienna, is always a Pole, and in the central administration at Vienna about seven per cent. of the officials are of Polish birth. Galicia enjoys an autonomy, though a limited one, with a Diet of its own under a Marshal, 73 per cent. of the members of which are Poles. The Crown is represented by a Lieutenant-General, who since 1849 up to the outbreak of war has always been a Pole. Since then the appointment has been held by two Germans in succession, first General Collard and then General Diller. Economical exploitation, however, still continues; there are, for instance, differential tariffs and railways, facilitating imports from Austria to Galicia and penalizing imports from Galicia into Austria.
Such in brief have been the fortunes and misfortunes of the nation which for more than a hundred years has been dismembered and assigned to its three neighbours. Two of them, Russia and Germany, have, as we have seen, made no pretence of granting the autonomy they promised to the people of the territories which they received, and up till the outbreak of the war, Lithuania and the kingdom of Poland have not enjoyed the autonomy that was guaranteed them more than have the Polish inhabitants of Posen or Royal Prussia. In both cases the policy of the annexing nations has been to absorb, to merge, to kill the consciousness of separate nationality. As far as legal disabilities, lingual suppression, religious bondage go, they have done their utmost. But it is one thing to stifle the expressions of national feeling, and quite another to extinguish the spirit that animates them, and in that regard they have signally failed. Austria alone for the last fifty years has acquitted herself of her obligations, and has granted to Galicia a fair equality of rights with the other races who compose her patch-work Empire, and a reasonable measure of autonomy. But it is not equality of rights among the subjects of different nations that the Polish National spirit desires. It does not ask for decent treatment at the hands of Germany or Russia or Austria. What it demands, and what the governments of the Entente have repeatedly promised it, is that it should be reunited and independent: it does not crave indulgence, but its due. On the grounds of the rights of smaller nations to exist, it claims that the territories into which Germany, Russia and Austria have divided it, should be reunited into a sovereign and independent state. But it is not merely as an act of belated justice that the Allies have insisted both in separate and in joint pronouncements on the execution of this: had there been, for instance, no European war, for other reasons, it cannot be supposed that any of them would have provoked it in order to give Poland the rights which they now claim for her. The significance of Poland to them is in relation to the menace of Germany’s Mittel-Europa policy.
CHAPTER III
Poland and the Entente
As we have already seen, England, France, Italy and America have repeatedly declared, by the mouths of those officially pronouncing the will of their respective governments, that the union and independence of Poland are among the objects for which they are to-day waging war on the Central Empires. Russia, though no longer a member of the Entente, since her bastard government of the moment has torn up her treaty with her allies and has signed a separate peace with Germany, has also in the days before her collapse declared for the same policy, for the Grand Duke Nicholas in August, 1914, proclaimed the unity of Poland implying thereby the union of the Kingdom of Poland with Prussian and Austrian Poland, while the revolutionary government announced the independence of Russian Poland in March, 1917, thereby relinquishing Russia’s sovereignty over the Kingdom. Since then Russia has ceased to exist as a member of the Entente, and indeed, temporarily, as a nation at all, and so we may take it, without provoking argument, that the Entente is unanimous for Polish unity and independence.
Meantime, owing to the military situation none of the Entente powers have been in a position to accomplish this aim, which necessarily implies the total defeat of the Central Powers, without which neither Germany will give up a yard of Prussian Poland, nor Austria of Austrian Poland, nor either of them a yard of what once was Russian Poland concerning the partitioning of which between them, irrespective of Polish feeling on the subject, they have held and are still holding prolonged debates, occupying it in the interval with Prussian callousness. Whatever solution they intend to adopt, they will not unless compelled to do so by force, whether of internal trouble or military defeat or both, suffer their grip on any part of what was once Polish territory to be relaxed. Till then, a starved and subject country, sick with the deferred hope of autonomy which has been repeatedly promised to it, is in their hands to misuse as they think fit.
Now, broadly speaking, there can be no doubt, if any meaning is to be attached to words, what the general intentions of the Powers of the Entente are. They intend (as indeed they have declared) to unite those portions of Central Europe which are contiguous to each other, and in which the Poles are indubitably the predominant nationality, into one state, and to give that state independence in a political, an economic and a military sense. They intend also to give it access to the Baltic, without which it cannot hope to prosper or maintain itself. While the affairs of Eastern Europe are in a state of such chaotic flux, it would be useless to lay down with any approach to definiteness the actual frontiers of the new realm, or the territories which it will embrace, but the Governments of the Entente have singly and jointly proclaimed as one of the objects for which we are now fighting, the foundation of this new Poland the inhabitants of which may properly be described as Polish in blood, culture and sympathies. Districts lying contiguous to each other and to the once-Russian Kingdom of Poland will be united to form this free and reconstructed realm, which will have in round figures a purely Polish population of about twenty-one million people. Some claim that the total will prove to be higher than that: some estimate it as less, but this figure may be taken as sufficiently correct. Historically, also, the new Poland has a valid claim to these territories that will be assigned to her, since up to the time of the three partitions, confirmed and modified by the Congress of Vienna, they formed part of the ancient Republic. If this is not the clear and obvious signification of the repeated declarations of Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, MM. Briand, Clemenceau, Ribot, Pichon, Signor Orlando, and Mr. Wilson it is impossible to guess what their signification is. Before that can be accomplished German arms must suffer a complete defeat, but unless it is accomplished, the Mittel-Europa policy will have won over the Entente and especially over England, Germany’s chief opponent in this little matter of world-wide dominion, a victory of the most decisive nature. For should Poland remain in a condition of dependence on the Central Powers—whom for the future it will be truer and more convenient to call simply “Germany”—and be obliged to lean on them, there will no longer be possible any bar or obstacle to the victorious advance of Germany eastwards. The Ukraine has declared peace, so too has Rumania; Bulgaria is her ally, Turkey is in her pocket, and she can penetrate eastward to Bagdad, until those countries are soaked with her influence and domination as a sponge is soaked with water, and when “Der Tag” comes again, she can sever our connection with India and Egypt and the British Empire will be hers. The Black Sea with its main ports is already now a German lake, as completely as if it were a mountain tarn in the Black Forest: and its main ports Varna, Costanza. Odessa, Batoum, Trebizond, and the key to them all, namely Constantinople are controlled by Germany. In the north the Baltic already, as the map stands, is a German lake, and no less is the Adriatic Sea, if Trieste, and the Austrian ports on the East Coast with their maze of defending and defensible islands remain in the hands of the Central Empires. Even the most ostrich-like of politicians when they consider this, can hardly miss the significance of Count Czernin’s pronouncement when in declaring for the freedom of the seas, he expressly and explicitly stated that the freedom of the narrow seas is not included in the freedom of the seas. In other words, the three seas which are of vital importance to Germany as bases are to remain her private and inviolable harbours which she can close at any time, and, when she desires, project a fleet from them.
But to make her road completely open it is essential to her that Poland, in the sense of the words in which the statesmen of all countries of the Entente have used it, namely a United Poland, consisting of some union of Russian, German and Austrian Poland, should be under the control of Berlin either directly or indirectly through Vienna. It is equally essential to the aims of the Entente that it should not. If, in fact, at the end of the war, Posen and West Prussia remain in German hands, Galicia in Austrian hands and the Kingdom of Poland, whether joined to Galicia or not (as by the Austrian solution), in the control either of Austria or Germany, then, whether or not Germany gives back Belgium with suitable reparation, and restores Alsace and Lorraine to France, the Entente will have lost the war. Indeed, so vital to the interests of the Central Empires is the retention of Poland, that M. Hervé (evidently with information behind him) has suggested that Austria would be willing even to cede Trieste and Pola to the Italians on condition of the Entente consenting to see the Kingdom of Poland joined to Galicia under a Habsburg suzerainty. This junction of the Kingdom of Poland with Galicia, is known as the “Austrian Solution,” and has been a policy debated between Germany and Austria since they occupied Poland in 1915. It is treated of in detail in Part II of this book.
Now it must clearly be understood that it is not merely nor even primarily in the cause of abstract justice that the pronouncements of the governments of the Entente have stated and reiterated their declaration with regard to Poland. A great wrong was undoubtedly done to the country when by the partitions and the Congress of Vienna more than a hundred years ago, a free nation was divided and wiped off the map. But the Entente did not go to war in order to redress that ancient wrong, though undoubtedly one of the main reasons, indeed the main reason, why they now cannot arrive at some basis from which peace-discussion could arise, is that they will not accept any such solution of the Polish question as implies unlimited German control over these territories. Nor is there any conceivable cause why Germany should yield in this matter until she is forced to, for the creation of such an independent Poland as the Entente demands, will be the most serious check that could possibly be dealt to her Mittel-Europa policy, and also implies an immense loss of territory for herself.
The historical claims then of Poland to these territories does not concern the Entente or the objects for which they are fighting. At the most it is a supplementary consideration marginally noted at the edge of the real question at issue. The historical claim is admitted, but it does not exercise weight. Calais once belonged to England, Syracuse once belonged to Athens, but nobody proposes to restore them to England and to Greece because they once belonged to them, and the Entente do not propose to restore either German or Austrian territories to Poland for the similar reason. But the ethnographical reason is a very different matter: the population of these lands is neither Russian nor German nor Austrian, but Polish. One nation inhabits them, and, as a nation, it has a right according to the programme of the Entente, to a national existence, for it has shown itself for centuries able to cohere and govern itself, and it was a series of unjust provisions that tore it apart. And this acceptance by the Entente of this ethnographical claim coincides with the necessity of securing a check to the Mittel-Europa expansion of Germany. It is essential for the peace of the world and the integrity of the British Empire that there should exist just here a strong state that does not lean on Germany, but shall be in itself a bar to German absorption eastwards, and shall naturally find its orientation and its development independent of and opposed to Teutonic penetration. At present as we all know and deplore, there is chaos east of Poland, and to lean on chaos is to be engulfed in the whirlwind. But no sane thinker, unless he believes in the sanity of Bolsheviks can doubt that some day out of chaos and outer darkness a light shall shine again, and a call of a people’s will shall be heard, and when fire and tempest have passed shall come the “still small voice” for which the prophet hearkened. Socialistic, revolutionary against the order of those things that have been swept away, it will no doubt be, but what it will not be is the mad destructive hurricane which at present is the only manifestation of the power behind it. Unless Germany wins the war, there will be a democratic Russia, sympathetic in blood and in constitution to a democratic Poland. Out of the disintegration that Germany has made in the nation of her foe, will arise order again, but it must not be order as established by Germany. It is vital and essential to the peace of the world, unless by the “peace of the world” we imply a complete Germanic domination of the world, that a united and independent Poland should voice the will of a free people, and that her cry of “Liberty” should be re-echoed by Russia. Anything that makes for discord between the new Russia and the new Poland is a nail driven into the coffin that contains the corpse of a free world.
It is necessary to descend into the bewildering arena (mixed metaphors are the only way to express it) of Polish politics, in order to understand the feeling of the country itself with regard to its fate. That country at the present moment lies in the hand of Germany, but not “tame as a pear late basking over the wall,” but more like a bomb with a time-fuse attached to it. It lies there for the moment in Germany’s hand, quite quiet, since it cannot extricate itself from that iron grip, but it has not only the potentiality, but the necessity for explosion. Never was there a country so crammed with the chemicals that make the explosive mixture. Could a plebiscite be taken not only of the “Kingdom of Poland,” but of Prussian and Austrian Poland as well, there is no shadow of doubt that an overwhelming majority would elect for the formation of a national unit, independent of Russia, of Austria and of Germany, that should form a united State of Poles. Such (and the numbers that would make up that choice are quite incontrovertible) is the will of the Poland that the Governments of the Entente have declared that they will call into being. If the Poles of Russian, Prussian and Austrian Poland could be given voting papers, there would be so great a majority for the declared intentions of the Entente, that the minority would rightly be unrepresented. But of the unrepresented minority the most numerous as the most powerful factor would not by nationality be Polish or Austrian, or Russian or Prussian at all, but Jewish. The Jews, of whom there are very large numbers, as will subsequently be shown, both in Russian and Austrian Poland (in Prussian Poland their numbers are very insignificant) cannot possibly be expected to support the union rather than the disintegration of Poland, and the cause of this is so simple that it hardly needs to be pointed out. They have no national affinity for Poland at all, nor is there the smallest reason why they should have. Racially, they were detested by the Poles, and they were abhorred and persecuted by the Russians during the century in which Poland was under Russian government. But since Germany has been in occupation their lot has been vastly ameliorated and their yoke lightened. She has given them greater liberty and rights than they ever enjoyed in Russian Poland before; she has admitted them to the Council of State, she has founded Jewish schools, and above all she has given them “business.” In both Poland and Russia she has employed the Jews on the mission of disintegration with the success that up till now has always attended the policy of Mittel-Europa, and to-day the Judaic interest in the question of Poland cannot, in the very nature of things, be pro-Polish. Pour le bon motif, that is to say, for the interest of their nation, they support the German interest here, there and elsewhere, on patriotic grounds.[7] They have no national territory at stake; they are but the mistletoe, a strong parasitic growth, on other trees, and, as regards Poland, they have selected the tree that they consider most likely to give them nutriment. That tree is Germany. Here, on behalf of the Entente’s declaration, is another reason for cutting down the tree. But better still would it be to convince the Jewish element in Poland that it would be more advantageous to root itself in the tree of the Entente, than on the world-ash of the Central Powers. It is, indeed, essential for the prosperity and coherence of the new Poland, that for the shrill antagonism that to-day exists between Poles and Jews there should be substituted the concord and community of interest that will make them friends.