Despite the political confusion of the last six years, the new Baltic Republics have succeeded remarkably well in establishing their claim to recognition as independent states on a permanent footing. What may happen when Germany and Russia again become powerful none can predict. It is hardly possible, however, that any of these states will return to Russia unless German policy demands this solution of the Baltic question, which is most unlikely. Because of their higher level of civilization and their literacy, the Baltic peoples survived Russianization in the old Romanoff Empire. Since the World War Finland has been able to make arrangements to refund her debt to the United States, and the three other countries have all been able to balance their budgets. Financially and in healthy trade prospects the Baltic Republics are better off than any of the new states that have come into being as a result of the World War, with the possible exception of Czechoslovakia.
CHAPTER XII
THE RESURRECTION OF POLAND
When the European war raised the question of subject nationalities, Entente propagandists ignored the oppression and the aspiration to independence of other peoples save those under the yoke of enemy countries. The censorship, rigorously enforced in France, forbade discussion of the hopes of the Poles or even allusion to them. The Poles had no friends in Entente official circles, and Americans regarded the resurrection of Poland as a dream. The right of the Poles to recreate their political unity and national life could not be encouraged so long as Russia was a member of the Entente. Self-determination was a war weapon and not an honest profession of faith in an ideal. When every nerve was strained to bring Germany to her knees, it would have been folly to discuss matters tending to undermine the solidarity of the Entente coalition. Had the revolution not occurred, had Russia remained in the war to the day of victory, the Poles would have had as little attention at the Peace Conference as Ireland and Egypt received.
The resurrection of Poland was the result, not of German encouragement of Polish aspirations, and not of the victory of the Entente Powers, but of the Russian revolution. The consideration shown the Poles at the Peace Conference and since cannot be explained by the affection of the French for the Poles. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Poles were sacrificed to the exigencies of international politics, and none of the great powers was a worse offender than France. Three times, in 1814, in 1830, and in 1863, the Poles had been left in the lurch by the French, after having been encouraged to defy Russia; and the Third Republic pursued the policy of sacrificing the Poles to the Russian alliance. This situation changed only when France became an enemy of Russia. Then Polish aspirations were encouraged. When Russia deserted the Entente, France decided that Poland must be resurrected to take the place of Russia in the alliance against Germany. That Poland might be a strong ally, France backed the Poles to the limit in their territorial demands, and has succeeded in making the new Poland a nation of thirty millions, larger by far than any of the other states emerging aggrandized or with recovered independence from the World War.
When the Russian revolution had made encouragement of the hopes of the Poles a diplomatic possibility for the Entente, I heard M. Roman Dmowski, at the Comité National d’Etudes in the Cour de Cassation, set forth the aspirations of Poland. M. Dmowski spoke as if two racial units alone, Russians and Poles, faced each other from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He limited the problem of the future of the border-lands of Russia and the Central Empires to the recognition of Poland’s independence and the backing of Polish claims at the Peace Conference. He did not mention the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians. This was the beginning of a policy that has guided the Polish attitude toward the eastern frontiers of their state. The Poles insisted in the west on the inclusion of every district inhabited by Poles. In the east they regarded the ethnographical argument as of no importance.
From the moment they had a hearing the Poles began to claim all the Russian border-lands, including Lithuania, as part of historic Poland. Ukrainians and Lithuanians, however, asserted that they, too, had ruled over these lands at one time or another. The Lithuanians denied ever having been conquered by the Poles or having formed more than a personal union with the Polish state, and declared that they were victims of the partitions of the eighteenth century, not as a part of Poland, but as an independent state. The historic argument applied to the Russian border-lands is like that used in the Balkan states in rival claims to Macedonia. Each in turn had at one time been the upper dog and had owned the disputed territories.
The ungenerous attitude of the Poles toward their neighbors has been one of the most disheartening phenomena of the World War’s aftermath. One would think that they, having suffered so much at the hands of their masters, would instinctively refrain from playing the detested rôle themselves. But as soon as they had a chance they demonstrated that they had learned only too well how to employ the brutal methods of their own conquerors. As Russians and Germans had acted toward Poles, so Poles began to act toward Lithuanians and Ukrainians. We remember how the Poles cried out against the refined cruelty and the diabolical ingenuity of the colonization schemes of their Prussian masters. The laws under which they suffered in Posnania have been the inspiration of laws adopted by the Polish Diet to be applied against embarrassing majorities in the border districts of the new Poland.
Ever since the Poles found that they were going to receive back their freedom, their territorial appetite has known no bounds, and it has increased with eating. Each successive triumph in getting a strip of territory from a neighbor has been followed by new demands. A study of the already delimited and still disputed frontiers of Poland cannot fail to make one pessimistic about the chances of a durable peace in eastern and central Europe. The Poles have taken on as enemies all their neighbors, Czechoslovaks, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians, as well as Germans and Russians. On every frontier they have vigorously insisted upon as much land as they could grab, regardless of the wishes of the inhabitants. The state they have formed contains so many alien elements in geographical juxtaposition to “brothers of blood” that it is bound to be seriously affected when irredentist movements get under way.
During the first two years of the World War Russian and Austrian Poland was a battle-ground for the German and Russian armies. The Socialist and Radical elements among the Poles, whose headquarters were in Galicia, did all they could to get Russian Poles to desert and fight for the Central Empires. After the Austro-German conquest of Russian Poland, the Poles were willing to throw in their lot with the Central Empires, provided Germany equally with Austria would consent to make the sacrifices necessary for the resurrection of the old Kingdom of Poland. But the Germans were unwilling to make any promises. After much parleying the independence of Russian Poland only was decreed on November 5, 1916. The Russian Poles were grateful to Germany for having freed them from the yoke of Russia, but they resisted the attempt of Germany to raise an army for use against the Entente Powers. During 1917 and 1918 resentment against Germany increased to the breaking-point, especially since the power of Russia was no longer to be feared. Germany became what Russia had been at the beginning of the war, and the victory of the Entente Powers, now that the alliance with Russia was terminated, became for all the Poles the hope of salvation.