The situation as it now stands is this. The Russians have everywhere defeated the Poles, as they told us they would, and are threatening to move on Warsaw. The Poles have cried to the Allies for help. The Allies have sent a note to Russia asking for an armistice between Russia and Poland on certain well-defined terms. The Russians have replied carefully, expressing a desire for peace, but requesting the Poles themselves to sue for it, and promising them better terms than the Allies themselves suggest in the matter of their boundary line.
The territory claimed by the Poles and for which they entered upon this foolish and wicked adventure is an area of about four hundred square miles, containing a population which is not ten per cent Polish. The remaining ninety per cent do not wish to belong to the Polish Empire. The claim of the Poles to this territory is of the shadowiest description and dates back to the time when the United States of America was still a part of the British Empire. Undoubtedly, the claim upon this land rests upon the ambition of the Poles to make it a jumping-off ground for an imperialist adventure which would establish Polish rule from Warsaw to Odessa. No Russian Government, whatever its name or quality, would accept such an arrangement, and it is the most natural thing in the world that the insolent campaign of Poland should have united behind the Soviet Republic every section of the Russian populace.
Although morally and legally in the right, and full of indignation at the unworthy part played by certain European statesmen and soldiers in the business, who have either openly or covertly, helped and encouraged the Poles, the Russian Government has repeatedly made efforts to conclude peace, and has offered to concede much of the Poles’ outrageous claim in order to secure it. The Russians need so sorely to get on with their work of internal reconstruction that only the most stupid blunderer could for a moment imagine they were eager for spoils and conquests. The last offer, which was made months ago, was to accept for an armistice the lines now occupied by the terrified Poles; but it was refused. The Allies were requested to temper the rapacity of Poland and help forward peace, but no attention was paid to this appeal. And now the victorious Russians are requested to stop fighting, to make peace on terms prepared for them by interested outsiders who have helped their foes, or to prepare to have brought against them the armed power of Great Britain and, it may be, the rest of the Allies. It is a preposterous situation, in which only the Russians occupy a position of credit. The invocation of the League of Nations by Great Britain, after the League had remained silent, whilst one of its members, Poland, played the pirate, has brought still greater contempt upon that poor ghost of the thing designed to help mankind.
One’s whole sympathy is with the Russians. By every precedent established by history, by the precedent of every government engaged in the recent war, Russia would be entitled to march on and bid the Allies do their worst. But the best friends of Russia must hope that she will avoid the bad example of the rest of Europe and, in spite of great and sore temptation, choose the better way.
When we were in Moscow, we noted the passionate longing of the people for peace. It was clear that the majority of the men in power also wanted peace. But a minority existed which was totally indifferent to peace, whilst a few were glad of the war, since it united the masses of the population behind the extremer Communists at the head of the State. The policy towards Poland will depend upon which of the sections gets its way. If the moderate men win, the armistice will be concluded, and the terms will be generous. If the others gain the day, the war will go on until Poland consents to reform her Government on Bolshevist lines. In such case Lemberg and Warsaw will be occupied and the bourgeois population may suffer a hard fate.
But what an opportunity presents itself for reversing the thinking world’s judgment of the men who are managing Russian affairs; or if not quite reversing it, of modifying it! For the choice of peace on fair terms will prove the Bolshevik commanders superior in international morals to any European Government engaged in the recent war. A government capable of such self-control and a people capable of such self-denial would go down into history as marking a new epoch. There would be a new faith in idealism born to Europe, which would help to undo the cruel wrong to Faith and Hope dealt by the treaties miscalled of Peace.
Our experience of Russia fills us with mingled fear and hope. During the last two and a half years of bitter fighting the Russian Government has trained and equipped a magnificent army. Its navy is utterly devoted to it. In a sense the Revolution is the child of the navy, for the sailors brought the thing to birth. It is not possible to estimate the exact number of men in the active forces, but it is very large indeed, and it is a very different army from the ragged, ignorant, ill-equipped forces of the Czar, cheated and abused by corrupt generals and politicians.
In Petrograd we witnessed an enormous display of Reserve Troops, numbering not less than fifty thousand, in the Uritzky Platz, which is the new name given to the great square opposite the Winter Palace. Accompanying these troops were machine guns and much of the regular paraphernalia of war. The uniforms were smart and the men were well shod. Two similar displays in Moscow took place, the one chiefly of young officers in training, the other of fully trained officers about to leave for the Polish front. The oath which these men took in public, and in the presence of the British Delegation, is translated as follows:
“1. I, son of the working people, citizen of the Soviet Republic, take upon myself the name of a warrior of the Labour and Peasant Army.
“2. Before the working classes of Russia and of the whole world I undertake to carry this name with honour, to follow the military calling with conscience and to preserve from damage and robbery the national and military possessions as the hair of my head.