“But perhaps you fear the Bolsheviks?” I ventured, inquiringly. “I gather from the newspapers that Trotsky’s generals are massing their troops for a triumphal entry into Warsaw.”
“Trotsky will never enter Warsaw,” said my colleague confidently. “I do not believe we have anything to fear from the Bolsheviks. There are very few of them in Poland, practically none amongst the peasants; and the Socialists of the towns are very largely Social Democrats.”
“But your fellow-countrymen in this city, to whom I spoke last night, do not think with you on this matter”—and I mentioned the names of a group of Polish exiles in Geneva whose chief preoccupation of mind was the almost certainty that Poland was about to be overrun by the armies of Russia. “They are very nervous and anxious. They imagine that British Labour has more power than it really has, and are trying to get permission from the French Government to travel by Paris to London in order to interest the British working-class leaders in their side of the story. And they are quite right,” I added, “for Labour will one day be all-powerful in England, and at the present moment the British Labour Movement is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the heavier share of the blame for this fighting belongs to the Poles. They believe the Poles began it by attacking the Russians.”
I made this statement to M. Gavronsky of the Polish Legation in Switzerland, and he promptly retorted that it was not true.
“But it is not enough that I go home and say to British Labour that it is not true the Poles began it. I must have positive proof of this if I am to do you any good.”
“Well, I can give it to you,” said M. Gavronsky. “But I should like to go to London myself and give it to the Labour leaders personally. It is, of course, very difficult to apportion the blame in any conflict, to say who began it and when it began. The raids upon the homes of the Polish peasants by the ravenous Russian troops, who stole all the food and clothing they could lay their hands on, burnt the farms where there was any show of resistance, and ill treated the women were the beginning of the trouble. Very properly the peasants hit back when they could. If your people call this resistance to Bolshevik violence beginning the war, there is nothing more to be said. But I don’t. I admire them for it. What do you suppose Englishmen would have done in the same place? The same thing, of course. I have lived in England. I know them. But”—and here he sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down the room, his handsome face distorted with rage—“the most awful thing these damned Bolsheviks have done is the ill treatment of our prisoners. The brutes have sent Polish officers back to their camps mutilated in the most horrible fashion. That we shall never forget nor forgive.”
To what extent these charges and counter-charges of horrible atrocities are true I am not able to say. They are made by every army in Europe against its enemies. I can speak with definiteness only of those things I have seen, and with confidence only of what I have heard from those witnesses whose calm and dispassionate judgment and power to sift and weigh evidence I know; whose cool blood gives their testimony a certain value. But there was no doubt whatever in the mind of this ardent young Polish patriot and supporter of Pilsudski that the most awful outrages had been perpetrated upon Polish soldiers helpless in the hands of their enemies.
M. Gavronsky is related to the great Polish family, the Radziwills. Despite his aristocratic birth and connexions he is, I am convinced, a man of genuinely democratic sympathies. He is very English in appearance, tall and fair and fresh-complexioned. He speaks English better than most Englishmen. He joins to a delightful boyishness and engaging frankness the elegant manners of a finished specimen of our race. At his request and that of his friends, I introduced him to Mr. Sidney Webb and Mr. J. R. Macdonald, and left him to make upon these two such impression as he could.
Soon after this the situation on the Russo-Polish front completely changed, to the astonishment of the whole world. Warsaw forgot its follies and rose like one man to resist the invaders. The failure of supplies and the breakdown of discipline caused the Russian armies to be driven back. Warsaw broke into a mad riot of joy. The restraining influence of the Allies, whose experience of Russia had developed a certain wisdom in them, saved the jubilant Poles from the stupid blunder of a vindictive pursuit. Some sort of a peace treaty has been patched up between them; but like every other peace treaty made during the last two and a half years it is scarcely likely to prove worth the paper it is written upon.
I asked my companion of the hills to tell me more about Poland. “The trouble with you Poles is that you will not stop fighting. You are everywhere looked upon as the enfant terrible of Europe. Your ridiculously disproportionate army of 600,000 men not only keeps your naturally rich country poor, but is a disturbing factor to the whole of Europe. Of course,” I said hastily, not wishing to hurt, “I know quite well that, as a Social Democrat, you are personally hostile to all militarist enterprises. I say what I have said because I am really sorry for the unpopularity which Poland will bring upon herself when it is discovered whose restlessness it is which is preventing Europe from settling down. You are helping the opinion to grow that the small nation is a big nuisance whatever may be said of the theory of self-determination.” He grinned understandingly, and continued his interesting talk.