The White Eagle of Poland

by E. F. Benson

Mittel-Europa is not yet quite entitled to sing its Paeans of victory, for the whole world knows that the fate of Germany at the present moment, hangs on the military operations on the West front. Should Germany gain a victory there, or even obtain an effective stalemate, her Mittel-Europa policy would proceed precisely as she desires it to proceed. But should Germany sustain a smashing defeat there, or a stalemate which her internal conditions render ineffective, all her policy, whether in East or West, whether Pan-German or Mittel-European must topple and fall. The Jews in Poland who are a very numerous and important body have definitely betted on Germany. The Entente has betted against her. While the military situation in the West remains unresolved, there is no conclusion to be reached. It is only necessary to note that the Jews of the whole of Poland as an independent united state, have put their money on Germany, because they believe that Germany will control the destinies of these territories.

But the Jews in the Kingdom of Poland are not only Pro-German but also anti-Polish, and it is noticeable that, whereas all Jews in German Poland declare themselves German, when a census was taken at Lodz after the German occupation, only 2,300 Jews declared themselves Poles, while 153,000 declared themselves Jews. The Poles claim that originally they were tolerant and hospitable to Jews, but that in the insurrections of 1830 and 1863, the latter sided against them with the Russians, and that during the last twenty years they have consistently organized themselves as a separate nationality, shewing marked hostility to the Poles. About 1907 they began a boycotting policy against Poles, forbidding their countrymen, for instance, to consult Polish doctors, and in 1909 when the Poles proclaimed a boycott of German products in Poland, this boycott failed because the Jews lent all their support to German commerce. The ill-feeling between the two has been steadily on the increase, and came to a head when in 1912, at the election of the fourth Duma, for which M. Kuckarewski and M. Dmowski were standing at Warsaw, the Jewish vote succeeded in defeating both of them and electing their own candidate. This led to a Polish commercial boycott of Jews, and at present the antagonism between the two is hostile and fierce. The feeling of the Poles towards them is not so much anti-Semitic as such, but is the antagonism of a race for a foreign and hostile dweller in its lands. Germany to-day is in possession of Poland, and the Jews of Poland lean over the shoulders of the landlord, protected by his bulky form from the hisses and hatred below. For if there is one face that the Pole, as a nationalist and patriot hates more than the German face, it is the Jewish face. Whatever the rights and the wrongs of this antagonism are, the antagonism acutely exists, and no solution, Austrian or otherwise will dissolve it. The Pole believes that the Jew is at present completely antagonistic to his national ideal, unless it is a German ideal. But for Poland to become a united independent state, not fearing German penetration, it is essential that a liberal policy towards Jews should convince the latter that their interests are cared for and appreciated by the national government.

(ii) Polish Parties

In the shifting kaleidoscope of Polish politics a party is formed one day to dissolve or amalgamate itself with another the next, and the trumpetting that heralds its birth may only imply that a dozen men who happen to agree with each other have after dinner christened themselves by some high-sounding name. It would be useless to define the vast majority of these parties, to render an account of the various shades of opinion which are congregated into the Parliamentary terms of Left or Right, or explain in what points the Christian Democrats, for instance, or the National Federation or the Union of Economic Independence who form part of the Right differ from each other. But three of these groups with their main policies must be outlined.

I. A considerable body of opinion among Poles favours the Austrian Solution, that is to say, the union of Russian Poland with Galicia forming an autonomous state under a Habsburg prince. The Social Democratic party of Galicia and Silesia is identified with this, but the policy of the whole group is based on the notion that this is the best solution that Poland can possibly hope for, and the pillars that support the structure are not love of Austria, but hatred of Germany and Russia. Its adherents do not believe that an independent and united Poland, consisting of German, Russian and Austrian Poland, is within the horizons of practical politics, and they would prefer to see Russian and Austrian Poland under the sceptre of the Habsburgs, while Posen and West Prussia remain German, rather than that the Kingdom of Poland should remain in German grip. But they accept this because they consider it the best that can be had. The powers of the Entente, it is hardly necessary to state, would never willingly consent to such a solution, since it would defeat the object for which they are fighting. Poland would thus come under the direct control of the Central Empires, and though nominally she would enjoy autonomy under Austrian suzerainty, she would assuredly be fitted into the Mittel-Europa structure. For the Dual Monarchy has in fact to-day no independent existence. It is Germany and Germany alone that keeps it together, and Poland partitioned between Germany and Austria, even though the Austrian province should be granted a large measure of autonomy, would remain a link in the chain of Mittel-Europa expansion, a story in the structure of the Mittel-Europa house.

Germany hitherto has never quite admitted the Austrian solution, though on several occasions since she and Austria have occupied the kingdom of Poland she has come near to doing so, and, while still they occupy it, may yet do so, for though it would remove the kingdom of Poland from her direct control, she knows very well that she controls the Dual Monarchy. Indeed her domination over Austria would be thereby increased, for she would no doubt demand as the price of her consent that the seats in the Austrian Parliament hitherto occupied by Poles should henceforth be occupied by Germans, for the Poles would no longer have any voice in the Reichsrat but would sit in the assembly of the newly-made autonomous state. Germany would thus secure a preponderance in the Austrian Parliament over the Czech element. These and other points have from time to time inclined her to the Austrian solution with the condition attached that she should annex to Germany a certain portion of the Russian Kingdom of Poland, leaving the greater part to be joined to Galicia.

But on the whole she has hitherto considered that the disadvantages to her personally of the Austrian Solution outweigh the advantages. Should the greater part of Poland pass into Austrian control, it would be Austria who recruited her armies from among the Poles, and thus Germany would not directly obtain the quarries of man-power which she would like. The more thorough-going Junkers, such as Hindenburg and the Crown Prince, are in favour of her annexing the Kingdom of Poland herself, directly and openly, and what probably keeps her back from so doing is the knowledge that she would have on her hands a turbulent province always ready to break into insurrection, for of the nine and a half millions of Poles who inhabit it, there is not one who would not protest against such an annexation. The fact of her having declared the existence of a Polish state with all the creaking machinery of the sham Regency Council and the sham Council of State, does not for a moment deter her from tearing up the Constitution she has granted; what does give her pause is her inability to balance pros and cons and determine in precisely what solution of the Polish problem lies her greatest aggrandisement. Nor can she at present risk a rupture with Austria, and in the meantime the question of the appointment of a Regent and the Austrian Solution hangs fire.

II. The second solid party in the affairs of Poland is not Polish at all but Jewish. The Jews do not compose even one of the twenty-three parties of Polish opinion or form a bloc in the Council of State, and for this reason they are as a rule totally overlooked by those who want to estimate the values and weights of different sections of Polish politics. Without fear of contradiction we may say that they are, at the present moment, favourable to German aims and interests, and will undoubtedly by a grave danger to the stability of any future Polish state, unless the long-standing quarrel between the Poles and them is reconciled by liberal and democratic legislation.

III. The third main group in Polish politics consists of the parties which uphold and work for an independent and united Poland. Chief of these are the National Democrats who are allied with the Realists. The Realists in the main are landowners, and represent the upper classes of Poland. They have solid interests there, and their patriotism is confirmed, or as their opponents say, diluted, by the fact that they have a stake in the country.

But when we come to the National Democrats and their allied groups we find for the first time in this short analysis of the main Polish parties, one that is as solid as the Jews, as well organised as any political party, largely dispersed and severed from its native land, can be, completely in accord in its aims, and representative not only of themselves but of many other parties in Poland, who would undoubtedly ally themselves to them, if they thought that the aims of their policy could be realized. These groups have as their entire aim the unity and independence of Poland. Their ascendancy in Russia during the years immediately preceding the war may be gauged from the fact that in the first Duma of 1906 and in the second and third Dumas of 1907 they and their supporters won all Polish constituencies. In the fourth Duma of 1912 they won all but two, and these two, a witness to the growing power of Jews and German penetration, were lost by them and won by the Jewish interest. One of them was the constituency of Warsaw already alluded to. That their aims constitute the national aims of the Poles taken as a whole to-day was indicated at the elections to the National Council in April, 1918, for out of 52[8] of the elected members no less than 37 belonged to the Inter-party club of Warsaw, which adopts the National Democrat programme as opposed to either the Austrian Solution or any German disposition of the future of the country. It is, however, important to remember with regard to the significance of those elections, that the deputies were elected by certain small bodies called Dietines, which have no claim to democratic representation, for in the German sphere of occupation those Dietines were appointed by Germans. Moreover, the Dietines in which the predominant vote was Radical or Socialist, abstained altogether from taking part in the elections, and thus the Inter-party Club, consisting largely of land-owning Realists had matters its own way. A further consideration is that the Realists, without being in the smallest degree pro-German, have yet this common bond with them, namely that both are equally concerned in resisting any revolutionary movement like that which lately caused the collapse of the Russian Empire, for the Realists represent the landed classes, while perhaps the greatest danger that faces Germany on the East is the spread of Bolshevism. We must, in fact, with regard to their elections realize that there was German support for the Inter-party Club. Though the Inter-party Club support the National Democratic programme, it was itself supported by German interest, which, equally with it, was opposed to the Socialist vote.