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.
In November, 1918, General Pilsudski, a Lithuanian Pole, who had been
a prominent Socialist leader, an officer in the Austrian army in the
early part of the war, and the creator of the Polish Legion, was
released from a German prison, where he had been placed in 1917. He
returned to Warsaw and resumed the command of the Legion, which had
secretly retained and developed its organization after Pilsudski’s
arrest. Holding the military force, it was in Pilsudski’s power to
constitute a government. He became the head of the state at the end
of 1918, and had the good sense to consent to the appointment of
Paderewski as premier, with the idea that the celebrated pianist, best
known of all Poles in Europe and America, would be the ideal man to
head the delegation to the Peace Conference. But at home Pilsudski was
very frank in expressing his belief that after the peace negotiations
were over only a Socialist Government, with a program of constructive
democratic reform, could retain authority in the state. The country
was facing a Bolshevist invasion, however, and the Paris negotiators
needed united support. So internal politics was kept in the background
until after the Treaty of Versailles and its supplementary treaty,
resurrecting Poland, were signed.
Reconstituted Poland received very liberal frontiers on the west at the
expense of Germany, with a corridor to the Baltic Sea, thus cutting
off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Danzig was made a free city
under the protection of the League of Nations, despite its purely
German population; but it was to be included in the Polish customs
frontiers, and its foreign relations were to be under Polish control.
Later plebiscites were to determine whether Upper Silesia and two
districts of West Prussia should remain with Germany or be handed over
to Poland. The Treaty of St.-Germain gave western Galicia to Poland,
and the Entente Powers agreed that eastern Galicia should have autonomy
for twenty-five years, under the protection of Poland, after which its
inhabitants were to decide their destiny by a plebiscite. The Poles
had expected to obtain a clear title to eastern Galicia, considering
of no importance the fact that they were hardly more than 10 per cent
of its population of over three millions. The outcry raised by the
nationalists at Warsaw over eastern Galicia forced Paderewski to resign
the premiership. His stormy year in politics had accomplished much for
Poland, but he himself was thoroughly discredited. He had not shown
himself as good a land-grabber as his compatriots had hoped. Paderewski
is back at the piano!
During the Peace Conference, and before Poland had an official status,
she found herself engaged in three wars. She was fighting at the
same time with the Czechoslovaks over the coke and coal of Teschen,
with the Ukrainians over eastern Galicia, and with the Bolshevists
over border-lands in a vast region whose political future could not
be decided. The Entente Powers, wanting to maintain relations with
reactionary Russian elements, had avoided fixing a Russo-Polish
frontier. Any line they drew would have offended the anti-Bolshevists
and the Poles alike!
The war with the Czechoslovaks was too ridiculous to last long. Both
states were in the embryo. Their future was being debated at Paris.
They were compelled to listen to reason, sign an armistice, and submit
the dispute to the Supreme Council. Teschen was eventually cut in two,
the line running down a street in the town. But the mining district
and the railway went to Czechoslovakia. The Poles were assured that
they would be compensated at the expense of Germany for this loss, if
something one had not yet had can be called that. The Ukrainian war
was complicated by the division of the Ukrainians into two parties.
The anti-Bolshevists eventually joined forces with the Poles against
the Bolshevists; and this mischance of civil war put the Ukrainians of
Eastern Galicia at the mercy of Poles.
The war with the Bolshevists dragged on through the winter of 1919–20,
largely because the Entente Powers felt that it might be possible to
use Poland against Russia in conjunction with the Kolchak and Denikin
movements. The Poles launched an offensive at the end of April, 1920,
and within two weeks had advanced to Kiev. But the Bolshevists, having
disposed of counter-revolutionary movements, were able to concentrate
all their forces against Poland. There was a sudden change in the
fortune of arms. Poland was invaded, and by the middle of August the
Russians had advanced to the suburbs of Warsaw.
In the meantime the Poles had sued for an armistice. Polish
plenipotentiaries went to Minsk on August 17, prepared to accept
humiliating terms, which included the reduction of the Polish army to
fifty thousand, the surrender of all arms and war materials over and
above what was necessary for this small army, and the stoppage of war
industries. These terms, together with the proposal for the Vistula
boundary, had been transmitted to Poland by the intermediary of the
British, and seemed reasonable to the British Government, which had
never countenanced Poland’s inordinate territorial ambitions.
By the time the Polish peace delegation reached Minsk, the tide of
battle had begun to turn. With French staff aid the Polish army made
a successful counter-offensive, and the Bolshevists retreated as
rapidly as they had advanced. The shoe being now on the other foot,
negotiations were transferred to Riga, where on October 12, 1920, a
treaty was signed as humiliating to Russia as the one the Bolshevists
had intended to make the Poles accept. Ukrainia was associated with
Russia in making the peace. Poland tried to avoid dealing with Ukrainia
as a Soviet government, but on this point Moscow and Kiev were
obdurate. It was a surprise to the world that the Moscow Soviet agreed
to cede one hundred and thirty-five thousand square kilometers, which
meant the loss of part of White Russia and the cutting off of Russia
from Lithuania. Poland secured a corridor to Latvia, which enabled her
to begin immediately a frontier dispute with that little state. Russia
renounced intervention in negotiations between Lithuania and Poland,
which left Lithuania at the mercy of her larger neighbor. The cessions
in the northwest, when taken into consideration with the creation of
the Baltic Republics, made still more difficult the trade communication
of Russia with Germany and the rest of western Europe. In the south
Poland established a common frontier with Rumania at a sacrifice on
the part of Soviet Ukrainia both of a large part of Volhynia province,
with a purely Ukrainian population of more than a million, and also
of the claim to a union with Eastern Galicia, with three million more
Ukrainians.
The cessions of territory secured by Poland under the terms of the
Treaty of Riga were hailed in Warsaw and Paris as a great triumph. But
when we take the Treaty of Riga and the Treaty of Versailles together
it is not hard to come to the conclusion that the wild extravagance
of Poland’s eastern and western boundaries, the result of the unwise
abuse of temporary power, will come to be regarded as a source of fatal
weakness. Add the later decisions of the Entente Powers in regard
to Upper Silesia and Eastern Galicia, and we have the problem of a
new country, hardly more than half of whose inhabitants are Poles, a
country of thirty millions, wedged in between Russia and Germany, at
the expense of both of whom Poland has been constituted and put in
possession of railways and oil-wells and coal-mines and industries.
Is it possible to suppose that Russia and Germany are rendered so
permanently and completely powerless that Poland is going to enjoy the
peaceful possession of what she has stolen and of what others have
stolen for her?
Since the Treaty of Riga, Poland, with the backing of France, has
scored three more notable territorial successes, each of which has
added more alien inhabitants to the already alarmingly conglomerate
electorate of the new state. In each case the decision in favor of
Poland has been the result of strong-arm methods. Previous decisions,
solemnly made, have been reversed when the Poles have used force.
Eastern Galicia declared its independence at the end of 1918, after
the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Under the old Austrian rule its
inhabitants, Ukrainians, had struggled long and successfully against
the Poles and were just getting control of the country when the World
War broke out. Although the cities contain mostly Poles and Jews, the
province is overwhelmingly Ukrainian. The Poles have about 10 per cent
and the Jews 15 per cent. In May, 1919, the Poles invaded Eastern
Galicia, and in July secured from the Supreme Council the authorization
to occupy the country--two months after it had been done! It was
arranged that Poland should hold Eastern Galicia for twenty-five years
as an autonomous province, and that there should be a plebiscite in
1944.
Poland began a reign of terror in Eastern Galicia, suspending the Diet
and Provincial Executive on January 30, closing Ukrainian schools,
suppressing Ukrainian newspapers, and conscripting Ukrainians by
force into the Polish army. When the time came for elections to the
Polish Diet, the army was used at the polls to prevent the people from
returning Ukrainian deputies. The brutality of the Polish army and
the methods of the Polish Government in Eastern Galicia are as bad as
anything the Germans and Russians have ever done. This is a strong
statement, but it is based upon unimpeachable testimony. I have only
recently heard accounts of punitive expeditions to the villages in
the Przemysl district that might have been written about Europeans in
central Africa. At Przemysl the Ukrainian recruits marched handcuffed
through the streets singing patriotic songs. This is how Poland is
raising her armies!
Notwithstanding the determination of the Eastern Galicians to have
nothing to do with their age-old enemies, on March 16, 1923, the
Council of Ambassadors at Paris allotted full sovereignty over Eastern
Galicia to Poland. Former Secretary Colby was in Paris, retained by the
Ukrainians to plead their cause. But he was refused a hearing. The
Ukrainians were ignored. The decision was made solely at the suggestion
of France, who had received from Poland control of 50 per cent of the
oil-wells and 75 per cent of the refining factories in Eastern Galicia
as security for a loan of 400,000,000 francs for military purposes.
As a last resort, the Ukrainians requested that the status of their
country be referred to the League of Nations or the Hague tribunal. As
they did not have the backing of a great power, as the Poles had, the
request was ignored. This settlement of the Eastern Galician question
creates a large and dangerous Alsace-Lorraine in eastern Europe.
None who knows local conditions doubts that Ukrainia will eventually
intervene on behalf of her “oppressed brethren,” with the backing of
Russia.[11]
Poland had allowed her insatiable territorial greed to create for her
another danger on the East as great as that of Eastern Galicia. We have
read in another chapter how General Zeligowski violated the armistice
agreement arranged between Poland and Lithuania by the intermediary of
the League of Nations. Zeligowski, following the successful example of
d’Annunzio, seized Vilna, capital of Lithuania. When the Lithuanian
Government protested to the League of Nations, the Polish Government
answered that Zeligowski had acted on his own initiative, and that
Poland was not responsible for him. But Warsaw took full advantage
of the breach of faith, and, again with French backing, manœuvered
diplomatically so as to secure a decision of the Conference of
Ambassadors, on March 15, 1923, arbitrarily dividing Lithuania in two.
The Vilna district contains a mixed population, with White Russians
predominating. But there are more Lithuanians than Poles, and Vilna is
the historic capital of Lithuania. The decision of the ambassadors,
after the League of Nations had failed to settle the question,
consecrates Zeligowski’s _coup de force_. The Lithuanians have
officially declared that they will not acquiesce in the settlement,
and they warn the Entente Powers that “such a wrong done to the most
powerful instincts of racial self-preservation may precipitate untoward
events.” The reply of the Entente Powers was to give the Lithuanians
authority to inflict a wrong upon the Germans at Memel such as the
Poles inflicted upon them at Vilna! The Moscow Soviet, speaking for
once in the name of all Russia irrespective of party, immediately
warned London and Paris that the Occidental powers “are responsible
for prejudice to Russian interests through decisions adopted by them
without the participation of Russia and her Allies.”
The third dubious success gained by Poland since her reconstitution was
the decision of the League of Nations to divide Upper Silesia after
the province had voted by nearly three hundred thousand majority to
remain with Germany. Before and after the plebiscite Polish bands, with
the connivance of the French, overran Upper Silesia. The British and
Italians on the spot protested in vain. The decision of the League of
Nations, dividing Upper Silesia, awarded to Poland most of the mines
and factories, which had been created by German industry and run by
German engineers. To make this possible, thriving industrial towns that
had given substantial majorities in the plebiscite in favor of Germany
were put on the Polish side of the line. I was in Kattowitz when the
transfer from French military occupation to Poland took place. The
Treaty of Versailles did not bind the victors to make the partition
in accordance with the verdict of its inhabitants. The vote was to be
for “guidance” only. France stood out squarely for giving Kattowitz to
Poland. Aside from the consideration of crippling Germany as much as
was humanly possible, the French military authorities pointed out that
Kattowitz must be taken from Germany because through this city ran the
railway from Prague to Warsaw.
The Poles argued that the country-side around these German cities like
Kattowitz contained a Polish peasant population, and that the large
German population in the cities was due to colonization. But when I
had been in Eastern Galicia, where Lemberg had a Polish and Jewish
majority and the country was Ukrainian--more Ukrainian than the country
districts of Upper Silesia were Polish--I was told that it was the
city population that counted! Alarm for the peace of Europe and not
sympathy with Germany for the loss of this rich region prompts one
to denounce the decision by which people were bartered like cattle
and were placed under a Government that will have great difficulty in
utilizing the resources thrust into its inexperienced hands. Decisions
of this sort in international questions are precisely what keep alive
old animosities, and sow the seeds of new wars. The problems are not
solved; they remain, and are aggravated.
The new frontier in Upper Silesia will give rise to countless
difficulties. The provisions for the “preservation of the economic
unity of Upper Silesia” will not succeed. Poles and Germans have closed
the frontier to each other. They could not have done otherwise. And
they have mounted guard to the detriment of any peace within the near
future. An Englishman who knows Upper Silesia thoroughly told me that
the country would go to smash--on both sides of the frontier--as it
would be impossible to work out on a sound economic basis the coal and
iron and railway readjustments made necessary with the new frontier.
“It just can’t be done,” said my informant, “and one of these days we
shall read despatches in the newspapers telling us that the Germans and
Russians have decided to take back what is now given to Poland. And who
will prevent them?”[12]
In contrast to the success of her neighbor, Czechoslovakia, Poland
has been floundering in the mire of financial difficulties from the
day of her birth. Of course, the conditions confronting the two
new Governments were entirely different. Because Bohemia had highly
organized industries that furnished most of the war materials for
Austria-Hungary, the Czechoslovaks prospered throughout the war. And
Czechoslovakia was not invaded. Poland, on the other hand, had been a
battle-ground, and had suffered as much as northern France and Serbia
from the ravages of contending armies. It is impossible to overestimate
the economic damage done to Poland not only by the fighting but also by
the dislocation of her industrial and agricultural life.
For all that, the natural richness of the country might easily have
turned the balance in the years immediately after hostilities had not
the new state taken upon itself from the very beginning the burden of
military ventures and a large standing army. Ever since the end of 1918
Poland has strained every nerve to keep up a military establishment
and to accomplish the various extensions of her frontiers outlined in
this chapter. When territories are occupied they must be subjugated;
and when they are subjugated they must be defended. Thus it is that
the Polish Government has never had a chance to get a breathing-spell
to put its financial house in order and attempt to balance its budget.
The printing-presses have turned out paper money by the trillion. The
Polish mark has gradually sunk until now it stands hardly better than
the Austrian crown. From a financial point of view, as indicated by her
exchange, Poland, although she has no national debt as an inheritance
and no indemnities to pay, stands with the conquered nations. She has
recently been voted a loan of 400,000,000 francs by France “for the
purpose of improving Poland’s financial and economic situation so that
she may resume her proper place in the European concert of nations
and play the rôle to which her geographical position and her history
entitle her.”
So ran the resolution adopted by the French Chamber of Deputies. But
it was soon discovered that the purpose of the loan was to increase
still further the Polish army and to develop Polish factories capable
of producing war materials. With what result? The Polish mark is still
far below the German mark in purchasing-power. That means that it has
virtually no purchasing-power! Militarism is the curse of Poland, and
there is no hope of economic rehabilitation until the revenues of the
nation and the money she can borrow abroad are devoted to purposes of
peace.
At the Peace Conference the British advocated the restriction of the
frontiers of Poland to regions inhabited in large majority by Poles.
They argued that the award to the new republic of provinces with
alien majorities, at the expense of Germany and Russia, would create
fatal irredentist questions. But such a Poland would have been an
agricultural country, without access to the sea, and without a common
frontier with Rumania. France wanted a Poland to take the place of
Russia as an ally, possessing the iron and coal and oil essential to
military power in the twentieth century. The French plan, for the
accomplishment of which the doctrine of self-determination would have
to be sponsored or ignored as it fitted the plan, called for a _cordon
sanitaire_ of allied states separating Germany and Russia.
The success of the French point of view has made the Polish republic a
heterogeneous conglomeration of peoples, among whom the pure Poles have
a bare majority. Aside from the millions of Germans, Lithuanians, White
Russians, and Ukrainians, Poland contains the largest Jewish population
in the world. The Jews in Poland are a separate people, tenacious
of their language and customs, who would have furnished a serious
enough internal political problem for the new republic had Poland
been given her proper ethnographic frontiers. But, as the country is
now constituted, the balance of power in the parliament is held by
the Jewish and alien deputies. The folly of the attempt to found a
Poland with universal suffrage in accordance with the French plan is
demonstrated by the political confusion of the last four years. Poland
was bound by the Minorities Treaty of June 28, 1919, to grant equality
to all elements of the new state. The difficulties with the Jews were
quite sufficient in themselves. But when millions of other peoples have
been brought against their will into Poland, it is easily seen that the
Polish Nationalists are having hard sledding.
The National Democratic party, comprising the landed gentry and the
educated classes in general, who had led the independence movement,
thought that it was their right to control the government. But from the
beginning they had to contend with the peasant and labor and Socialist
combination, which matched them in strength, and which could easily
run the country by Jewish and German-Ukrainian support. Pilsudski, who
retained for four years the transitional title of Chief of the State,
insisted that no conservative Government could live in Poland. The
natural majority was Socialist (with the peasant support), and any
attempt to keep the Nationalists in the saddle, according to Pilsudski,
would be futile.
The first General Election under the new constitution was held on
November 5 and 12, 1922. Strenuous efforts were made in every part of
the country to prevent the exercise of suffrage on the part of the
new alien Minorities and the Jews. Despite intimidation and glaring
fraud, the new Parliament did not contain a Nationalist majority. The
Nationalist Right and the Populist-Socialist-Labor Left had about the
same strength in both Diet and Senate, with a center group of Jews
and “foreigners” holding the balance of power. The test came in the
election of the first president of Poland. Pilsudski refused to run,
not wanting to owe his election to the votes of Jews and Germans. Count
Maurice Zamoyski, Polish minister in Paris, whose family had played a
glorious rôle in Poland for centuries, was the candidate of the Right.
The Left put up Professor Narutowicz, who had been living in exile at
Zurich for many years, and who returned to Poland to become minister
of foreign affairs after the resurrection. Zamoyski, idol of the
Nationalists, was defeated.
Feeling ran high in Warsaw. For several days a pogrom was feared.
Molested in the streets, the Jews took to cover. Had not the police
behaved admirably there would have been serious loss of life and
destruction of property. The worst offenders were not hooligans but
students and older men of the so-called intelligentsia. General
Haller, former commander of the Polish Corps in France during the war
and later of the volunteer army that stemmed the Bolshevist advance
in 1920, imprudently allowed himself to be drawn into the street
manifestations. He addressed the students in an inflammatory manner,
crying out that the Poles had been outvoted in their own country by
Jews and foreigners. It was unthinkable, General Haller said, that a
man like Zamoyski, who represented the noblest traditions of Poland,
should have been defeated.
The new president, to prove that he was not under the control of
the Left and the Jews, immediately asked the Right to form a new
Government. Not only did the irritated Nationalists refuse this
overture, but they absented themselves from the inauguration, and
declared that they would abstain from participation in Parliament. The
police had to take stringent measures to protect the members of the
Diet and the representatives of foreign legations who appeared for the
ceremony. The President was smuggled in. When the inauguration was
over, the Nationalists formed barricades, and the police had to charge.
The automobile of M. Narutowicz made slow progress back to the palace,
and all along the way the first president of Poland was pelted with
snow-balls and mud. Five days after he took the oath of office, he
was assassinated. The crime was explained as the act of an insane man
without accomplices, but there can be no doubt that it was prompted by
the feeling aroused over the defeat of the Nationalist candidate.[13]
A strong revulsion of feeling followed this crime. It was realized that
the very existence of Poland was at stake. General Sikorski, Chief of
Staff, assumed the premiership, proclaimed the country in danger, and
appealed to all parties to join in solving the crisis. Alarmed over the
possibility that rioting in Warsaw might react unfavorably upon the
morale of the army, Premier Sikorski was ready for strong measures.
When parliament met again on December 20, and Stanislas Wojciechowski,
the candidate of the Left and Center, was elected over Professor
Morawski, of the University of Cracow, one of the leaders of the Right,
the Nationalists decided to accept their defeat.
This sad experience was a demonstration of the old truth that you
cannot keep your cake and eat it. Unless the elements other than Poles
are barred from taking part in elections, the Polish Nationalists will
never be able to get the Government into their hands. Half the Poles
are supporters of agrarian reform or some kind or other of Socialism,
and they place these issues above nationalism. In fact, the majority of
the radicals abhor nationalism. They put class ahead of race interests.
Greater Poland was a glorious dream, but its realization has meant the
disillusionment of the dreamers. If Poland is to continue to exist as
an independent state with its present boundaries, the landed gentry
will have to abdicate their special privileges and become democratized,
while the Polish Nationalists will have to abandon the notion that
the privileges of Polish citizenship are the inherent right of those
alone who speak the Polish language and glory in Polish traditions and
culture.