THE PARTITIONERS AND THEIR POLES[*]
[*] This chapter has not been written without giving consideration to
the Russian point of view. There is an excellent book on Russia since
the Japanese War (from 1906 to 1912) by Peter Polejaïeff.
When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland at the end of the
eighteenth century, there were at the most six million Poles in the
vast territory stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Of
these a large number, especially in Eastern Prussia and in Silesia, had
already lost their sense of nationality. Poland was a country of
feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the
formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an
inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of
ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status
of the land in which they lived.
To-day there are twenty million Poles. Although they owe allegiance to
three different sovereigns, they are more united than ever in their
history. For their national feeling has developed in just the same way
that the national feeling of Germans and Russians has developed, by
education primarily, and by that remarkable tendency of industrialism,
{97} which has grouped people in cities, and brought them into closer
association. This influence of city life upon the destinies of Poland
comes to us with peculiar force when we realize that since the last map
of Europe was made Warsaw has grown from forty thousand to eight
hundred thousand, Lodz from one thousand to four hundred thousand,
Posen from a few hundreds to one hundred and fifty thousand, Lemberg
and Cracow from less than ten thousand to two hundred thousand and one
hundred and fifty thousand respectively. These great cities (except
Lodz, which Russia foolishly allowed to become an outpost of
Pan-Germanism in the heart of a Slavic population) are the _foyers_ of
Polish nationalism.
The second and third dismemberments of Poland (1793 and 1795) were soon
annulled by the Napoleonic upheaval. The larger portion of Poland was
revived in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The Congress of Vienna, just one
hundred years ago, made what the representatives of the partitioning
Powers hoped would be a definite redistribution of the unwelcome ghost
stirred up by Napoleon. Poznania was returned to Prussia, and in the
western end of Galicia a Republic of Cracow was created. The greater
portion of Poland reverted to Russia, _not as conquered territory, but
as a separate state, of which the Czar assumed the kingship and swore
to preserve the liberties_. The unhappiness, the unrest, the
agitation, among the Poles of the Muscovite Empire, just as among the
Finns, came from the breaking of the promises by Russia to Europe when
these subjects of alien races were allotted to her.
{98}
The story of modern Poland is not different from that of any other
nationalistic movement. A sense of nationality and a desire for racial
political unity are not the phenomena which have been the underlying
causes of the evolution of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In
Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Alsace-Lorraine, in Finland, among the
various races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan Peninsula,
as well as in Turkey and Persia, the underlying cause of political
agitation, of rebellions and of revolutions has been the desire to
secure freedom from absolutism. Nationalism is simply the tangible
outward manifestation of the growth of democracy. There are few
national movements where separatism could not have been avoided by
granting local self-government. Mixed populations can live together
under the same government without friction, if the lesser races are
granted social, economic, and political equality. But nations that
have achieved their own unity and independence through devotion to a
nationalistic movement have shown no mercy or wisdom with smaller and
less fortunate races under their domination. The very methods that
European statesmen have fondly believed were necessary for assimilation
have proved fatal to it.
The Polish question, as we understand it to-day, has little connection
with the Polish revolutions of 1830 and of 1863. These movements
against the Russian Government were conducted by the same elements of
protest against autocracy that were at work in the larger cities and
universities throughout Europe during the middle of the nineteenth
century. {99} Nationalism was the reason given rather than the cause
that prompted. The revolutions were unsuccessful because they were not
supported by the nation. The mass of the people were indifferent to
the cause, just as in other countries similar revolutions against
despotism failed for lack of real support. The apathy of the masses
has always been the bulwark of defence for autocracy and reactionary
policies. Popular rights do not come to people until the masses demand
them. Education alone brings self-government. This is the history of
the evolution of modern Europe.
The Poles _as a nation_ began to worry their partitioners in the decade
following the last unsuccessful revolution against Russia. To
understand the contemporary phases of the Polish question, it is
necessary for us to follow first its three-fold development, as a
question of internal policy in Russia, Germany, and Austria. Only then
is its significance as an international question clear.
THE POLES SINCE 1864 IN RUSSIA
The troubles of Russia in her relationship to the Poles have come
largely from the fact that the distinction between Poland proper,
inhabited by Poles, and the provinces which the Jagellons conquered but
never assimilated, was not grasped by the statesmen who had to deal
with the aftermath of the revolution. What was possible in one was
thought to be possible in the other. What was vital in one was
believed to be vital in the other. In the kingdom {100} of Poland, as
it was bestowed upon the Russian Czar by the Congress of Vienna, there
were massed ten million Poles who could be neither exterminated nor
exiled. Nor was there a sound motive for attempting to destroy their
national life. The kingdom of Poland was not an essential portion of
the Russian Empire, and was not vitally bound to the fortunes of the
Empire. So unessential has the kingdom of Poland been to Russia, and
so fraught with the possibilities of weakness to its owner, that
patriotic and far-sighted Russian publicists have advocated its
complete autonomy, its independence or its cession to Germany. Because
it was limitrophe to the territories occupied by the Poles of the other
partitioners, there was constantly danger of weakening the defences of
the empire and of international complications. Through failing to
treat these Poles in such a way that they would be a loyal bulwark
against her enemies, Russia has done irreparable harm to herself as
well as to them.
The Polish question in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine was a
totally different matter. These provinces had been added to Russia in
her logical development towards the west and the south-west. Their
possession was absolutely essential to the existence of the Empire.
Their population was not Polish, but Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and
Russian. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the acquisition of these
territories made possible the entrance of Russia into the concert of
European nations. They had been conquered by Poland during the period
of her greatness, and had naturally been lost by her {101} when she
became weak. In these portions of Greater Poland, the Poles were
limited to the landowning class, and to the more prosperous artisans in
the cities and villages. They were the residue of an earlier
conquering race that had never assimilated the country. They had
abused their power, and were heartily disliked. These provinces were
vital to Russia, and she was able to carry out the policy of uprooting
the Poles. Their villages were burned, their fortunes and their lands
confiscated, the landed proprietors deported to Siberia, and others so
cruelly persecuted that, when their churches and schools were closed
and they found themselves forbidden to speak their language outside of
their own homes, they emigrated. In Lithuania, the Lithuanian language
was also proscribed. The Russians had no intention of blotting out a
Polish question in order to make place for a Lithuanian one.
Where the Poles were few in number, these measures, which were exactly
the same as the Poles had employed themselves in the same territories
several centuries before, were successful. The peasants were glad to
see their traditional persecutors get a taste of their own medicine.
It was not difficult to make these provinces Russian. They have
gradually been assimilated into the Empire. In all fairness, one can
hardly condemn the Russian point of view, as regards the Poles in
Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine. Only youthful Polish irredentists
still dream of the restoration of the Empire of the Jagellons.
In the kingdom of Poland, the situation was {102} entirely different.
This huge territory had been given to Russia by the Congress of Vienna
upon the solemn assurance that it was to be governed as a separate
kingdom by the Romanoffs. There was no thought in the Congress of
Vienna of the disappearance of the Poles as a separate nationality from
the map of Europe. But the autonomy of Poland was suppressed after the
rebellion of 1830.
After the rebellion of 1863, Russia tried to assimilate the kingdom of
Poland as well as the Polish marches. The repression was so severe
that Polish nationalism was considered dead. The peasants had been
indifferent to the movement. Not only had they failed to support it,
but they had frequently shown themselves actually hostile to it.
It was because the nobles and priests were believed to be leaders of
nationalistic and separatist movements, not only in Poland but in other
allogeneous portions of the composite Empire, that Czar Alexander II
emancipated the serfs. The policy of every autocratic government, when
it meets the first symptoms of unrest in a subject race, is to strike
at their church and their aristocracy. The most efficient way to
weaken the power of the nobles is to strengthen the peasants.
Alexander himself may have been actuated by motives of pure humanity,
but his ministers would never have allowed the _ukase_ to be
promulgated, had they not seen in it the means of conquering the
approaching revolution in Poland. For the moment it was an excellent
move, and accomplished its purpose. The Polish {103} peasants were led
to believe that the Czar was their father and friend and champion
against the exactions of the church and landowner. Was not their
emancipation proof of this?
But in the long run the emancipation of the serfs proved fatal to
Russian domination in Poland. For the advisers of Alexander had not
realized that freemen would demand and attend schools, and that
schools, no matter how careful the surveillance and restrictions might
be, created democrats. Democrats would seize upon nationalism to
express their aspiration for self-government. The emancipation of the
serfs, launched as a measure to destroy Poland, has ended in making it.
Emancipation created Polish patriots. It was a natural and inevitable
result. The artificial aid of a governmental persecution helped and
hastened this result. The Irishman expressed a great truth when he
said that there are things that are not what they are.
A flock of hungry Russian functionaries descended upon Poland in 1864.
They took possession of all departments of administration. The Polish
language was used in courts only through an interpreter, and was
forbidden as the medium of instruction in schools. No Polish signs
were tolerated in the railways or post-offices. In the parts of the
kingdom where there were bodies of the Lithuanians, their nationalism
was encouraged, and they were shown many favours, in contradiction to
the policy adopted towards the Lithuanians of Lithuania. Catholics who
followed the Western Rite were forced to join the national church.
There was a clear intention {104} to assimilate as much as possible the
populations of the border districts of Poland.
After thirty years of repression, Russia had made no progress in
Poland. In 1897, Prince Imeretinsky wrote to the Czar that the policy
of the Government had failed. Polish national spirit, instead of
disappearing, had spread remarkably among the peasant classes. The
secret publication and importation of unauthorized journals and
pamphlets had multiplied. The number of cases brought before the
courts for infraction of the "law of association," which forbade
unlicensed public gatherings and clubs, had so increased that they
could not be heard. Heavy fines and imprisonment seem to have had no
deterring effect.
[Illustration: Map--Partitions of Poland]
Could Russia hope to struggle against the tendencies of modern life?
Free press and free speech are the complement of education. When men
learn to read, they learn to think, and can be reached by propaganda.
When men increase in prosperity, they begin to want a voice in the
expenditure of the money they have to pay for taxes. When men come
together in the industrial life of large cities, they form
associations. No government, no system of spies or terrorism, no laws
can prevent propaganda in cities. From 1864 to 1914, the kingdom of
Poland has become more Polish than ever before in her history. Instead
of a few students and dreamers, fascinated by the past glories of their
race, instead of a group of landowners and priests, thinking of their
private interests and of the Church, there is awakened a spirit of
protest against Russian {105} despotism in the soul of a race become
intelligently nationalistic.
The issue between Russia and her Poles has become clearer, and for that
reason decidedly worse, since the disastrous war with Japan. The Poles
have demanded autonomy in the fullest sense of the word. The Russians
have responded by showing that it is their intention to destroy Poland,
just as they intend to destroy Finland. There is an analogy between
the so-called constitutional _régimes_ in Russia and Turkey. In each
Empire, the granting of a constitution was hailed with joy by the
various races. These races, who had been centres of agitation,
disloyalty, and weakness, were ready to co-operate with their
governments in building up a large, broad, comprehensive, national life
upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But in both
Empires, the dominant race let it soon be understood that the
Constitution was to be used for a destructive policy of assimilation.
In the Ottoman Empire, the Constitution was a weapon for destroying the
national aspirations of subject races. In Russia it has been the same.
After the Russo-Japanese War, Czar Nicholas and his ministers had their
great opportunity to profit by the lessons of Manchuria. But the
granting of a constitution was a pure farce. Blind to the fact that
the enlightened Poles were interested primarily in political reforms,
and in securing equity and justice for the kingdom of Poland, instead
of for the advancement of a narrow and theoretical nationalistic ideal,
the Russians repulsed the proffered {106} loyalty of the Poles to a
free and constitutional Russian Empire. In the second Duma, Dmowski
and other Polish deputies unanimously voted the supplies for
strengthening the Russian army. They stated that the Poles were
willing to cast their lot loyally and indissolubly with constitutional
Russia. Were they not brethren, and imbued with the same Pan-Slavic
idea? Was it not logical to look to Russia as the defender of all the
Slavs from Teutonic oppression?
But Poland, like Finland, was to continue to be the victim of Russian
bureaucracy and of an intolerant nationalism which the Russians were
beginning to feel as keenly and as arrogantly as the Prussians. Is the
Kaiser, embodying the evils of militarism, more obnoxious and more
dangerous to civilization than the Czar, standing for the horrors of
bureaucratic despotism and absolutism? Have not the Armenian
massacres, ordered from Constantinople, and the Jewish pogroms, ordered
from Petrograd, associated Christian Czar with Mohammedan Sultan at the
beginning of the twentieth century?
The first deliberate violation of the integrity of the kingdom of
Poland was sanctioned by the Russian Duma in the same session in which
it approved violation of Russian obligations to Finland. A law
separating Kholm from the kingdom of Poland was voted on July 6, 1912.
The test of the law declared that Kholm was still to be regarded as a
portion of the kingdom of Poland, but to be directly attached to the
Ministry of the Interior without passing by the intermediary of the
Governor-General of Warsaw; {107} and to preserve the Polish adaptation
of the Code Napoléon for its legal administration, but to have its
court of appeal at Kief.
The elections of 1913 from the kingdom of Poland to the Duma gave a
decided setback to the party of Dmowski, who had so long and so ably
pled for a policy of Pan-Slavism through accommodation with Russia.
The law concerning Kholm had been the response of the Duma to Dmowski's
olive branch. The moderates were discredited. But the failure of the
radical nationalists to conciliate the Jewish element caused their
candidates to lose both at Warsaw and Lodz.
The birth of an anti-Semitic movement has been disastrous to Polish
solidarity during recent years. The Polish nationalists suspected the
Jews of working either for German or Russian interests. They were
expecially bitter against the _Litvak_, or Lithuanian and south Russian
Jews, who had been forced by Russia to establish themselves in the
cities of Poland. Poland is one of the most important pales in the
Empire. The Jewish population is one-fifth of the total, and enjoys
both wealth and education in the cities. Their educated youth had been
courageous and forceful supporters of Polish nationalism. Before the
Russian intrigues of the last decade and the introduction of these
non-Polish Jews, there had never been a strong anti-Semitic feeling in
Poland. The Polish protests against the encroachment of the Russians
upon their national liberties have been greatly weakened by their
antagonism to the Jews. The anti-Semitic movement, which has carried
away {108} both the moderate party of Dmowski and the radical
nationalists, as was expected, has played into the hand of Russia.
The Muscovite statesmen, while endeavouring to use the Balkan Wars for
the amalgamation of south Slavic races under the wing of Russia against
Austria have treated the Poles as if they were not Slavs. During 1913
and the first part of 1914, the policy of attempting to russianize the
Poles has proved disastrous to their feeling of loyalty to the Empire.
The government announced definitely that the kingdom of Poland would be
"compensated" for the loss of Kholm by a law granting self-government
to Polish cities. This promise has not been kept. The municipal
self-government project presented to the Duma was as farcical in
practical results as all democratic and liberal legislation which that
impotent body has been asked to pass upon.
THE POLES SINCE 1867 IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
The disappearance of Austria from Germany after the battle of Sadowa
led to the organization of a new state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
We must divorce in our mind the Austria before 1867 from the
Austria-Hungary of the Dual Monarchy. The political situation changed
entirely when Austrians and Hungarians agreed to live together and
share the Slavic territories of the Hapsburg Crown. Austria no longer
had need of her Galicians to keep the Hungarians in check. But there
was equally important work for them to do.
{109}
The Austrians have always treated the Poles very well. Galicia, which
had been Austria's share in the partition of Poland, was given local
self-government, with its own Diet, and proper representation in the
Austrian _Reichsrath_. Poles were admitted in generous numbers to the
functions of the Empire.
The Polish nationalists of Russia and Prussia feel very bitter about
the indifference of the Galicians to the nation at large--or rather in
captivity. They claim that the lack of national feeling among the
Austrian Poles is due to the fact that they have been bribed by the
Austrians to desert not only their brethren of Russia and of Prussia,
but also their fellow-Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have
heard this criticism ably and feelingly presented, but I do not think
it just. Since national aspirations are awakened and sustained by the
effort to secure political equality and justice, the enjoyment of these
takes away need or desire to plot against the Government. The Poles of
Austria are like the French of Canada. Their nationalism is literary
and religious in character. There is no reason for its being
anti-governmental.
Of late years, however, there has been a national Polish agitation in
Galicia. It is directed not against the Government, but against the
Ruthenians, who, to the number of three millions--nearly forty per
cent. of the total population--inhabit the eastern section of Galicia.
This local racial conflict, which has strengthened rather than weakened
the attachment of the Poles to the Vienna Government, arose after the
introduction of universal suffrage, when {110} eastern Galicia began to
send in large numbers Ruthenian deputies to the Galician Diet and to
the Austrian Parliament.
On April 12, 1908, Count Potocki was assassinated by a Ruthenian
student, whose death sentence was commuted to twenty years'
imprisonment. With the complicity of wardens, the assassin escaped
from jail after three years. There has never been peace between the
Poles and the Ruthenians since that time. After serious disorders at
the University of Lemberg, where the Ruthenian students were treated
disgracefully, Polish and Ruthenian leaders tried to find common ground
for reconciliation in December, 1911. The Ruthenians demanded
electoral reform with greater representation, and the creation of a
Ruthenian university. The imperial government communicated to the
representatives of the two nationalities the project of a decree of
public instruction in Galicia in January, 1913. The project was a
marvel of ingenuity. A Ruthenian university was to be established
after four years, but if by October 1, 1916, the law voting credits for
it was not yet passed, a special school for Ruthenians would be
attached to the University of Lemberg, until their own university was a
reality. The teaching of the Ruthenian language would cease in the
University of Lemberg when this "special school" was inaugurated. The
Ruthenians were suspicious of a trick in the project. They could not
understand its vagueness. It looked as if they would be giving up
their present rights in the University of Lemberg, limited as they
were, for an uncertainty. Why was {111} no definite date for opening
specified, or indication given of the new university's location? Would
it be maintained by Galicia with a budget appropriation in proportion
to the taxes paid by Ruthenians?
The Ruthenian question in Galicia has been cited here to show how there
are wheels within wheels in the complex questions of nationalities.
European racial questions seem to follow the law of the animal world.
The littlest animals are eaten by little animals, who in turn serve as
food for larger animals. Nations which have suffered most cruelly from
race persecution are generally themselves relentless and fanatical when
the power to persecute is in their hands.
The Ruthenian question shows also how Poles and Austrians work
together, and are content with the mutual advantages of their union. I
have never met an Austrian Pole, who lived in Galicia and had a settled
profession or business there, who was not a loyal--even
ardent--supporter of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Austrian Poles are
dismayed as they face the terrible dilemma of union with Russia or
Germany.
THE POLES SINCE 1870 IN GERMANY
Germany, like Russia, has had a twofold Polish question: The
acquisition of Polish territory on either side of the Vistula to the
Baltic Sea was as essential to the creation of a strong Prussian
kingdom as was the acquisition of Pomerania. The portion of Poland
which, before the partition, cut off eastern {112} from western Prussia
was fully as much German as Polish,--in fact more so. It became German
by logical and natural conquest in the course of Prussia's evolution.
The situation was different in Poznania. This territory of the later
partition reverted to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. In 1815, its
population was only twenty per cent. German. For fifty years the
process of Germanization went on naturally--in no way forced. When the
German Empire was formed, nearly half of Poznania was German. Many of
the leading Poles had lost their sense of Polish nationality. They had
become German in language and in culture. How many families there are
in Prussia whose Polish origin is betrayed only by their names!
But the Germanized Poles, for the most part, retained their religion.
The notorious _Kulturkampf_ of Bismarck aroused again the sense of
nationality which had been lost, not only among the prosperous Poles of
Poznania, but even of Silesia. Only the bureaucratic classes were
unaffected by this renaissance of nationalism awakened by revolt
against religious persecution.
Just after the formation of the Empire, when Prussia needed all her
strength and force to preserve her hegemony in the new confederation
and to lead modern Germany in the path of progress and civilization, on
either side of her kingdom she had to cope with nationalist movements
of Danes and of Poles. But she did not fear to undertake also the
assimilation of Alsace and Lorraine!
{113}
Since the _Kulturkampf_, the Polish renaissance in Prussia has thrived
in spite of persecution. As in Russia, the Polish language was
banished, Polish teachers were transferred to schools in other parts of
the Empire, and about forty thousand Poles of Russian and Austrian
nationality were expelled from the country. The persecution has been
carried on in the schools, in the army, and in the church. School
children have been forbidden to pray in the Polish language. Two
unconstitutional laws have been passed by the Prussian Diet. The first
of these forbade the Poles to speak Polish in public gatherings. The
second, sanctioned by the _Landtag_ on March 8, 1908, authorized the
Government to expropriate land owned by Poles _for the purpose of
selling it to Germans_.
The Prussian scheme for getting rid of the Poles was to drive them from
their lands and instal German colonists. Private enterprise was first
tried. A "colonization society" was formed, with a large capital, and
given every encouragement by Prussian officialdom. But economic laws
are not controlled by politics. The colonists were boycotted.
Enormous sums of money were lost in wasted crops. The farms of the
colonists had to be resold by the sheriff, and were bought in by Poles.
To discourage the buying back of the German farms, a law was passed
forbidding Poles to build upon land acquired by them after the date of
the colonization society's failure. The Poles got around this law most
cleverly. If one goes into Poznania to-day, he will see farmhouses,
barns, dairies, stables--even chicken-coops--on {114} wheels. The
people live in glorified wagons. They do not build. Will there be a
law now against owning wagons?
When the failure of private enterprise was demonstrated, the Prussian
Government announced its intention of applying the law of expropriation
"for the use of the commission of colonization." This was in October,
1912. At the beginning of 1913, the Polish deputies to the _Reichstag_
brought before their colleagues of all Germany the question of the
expropriation of Polish lands in Prussia. They asked the
representatives of a supposedly advanced and constitutional nation what
they thought of this injustice. Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg tried
to keep the question from being debated. He argued with perfect reason
that it was a purely internal Prussian matter, which the Imperial
Parliament was incompetent to discuss. But the Catholic centre and the
Socialist left combined to vote an order of the day allowing the
discussion of the Polish lands question.
In the history of the German confederation, it was the first time that
an imperial chancellor had received a direct defiance. This vote is
mentioned here to show how Prussian dealings with the Poles, just as
with Alsace-Lorraine, have tended to weaken the purely Prussian
substructure of the German confederation, and to arouse a dangerous
protest against Prussian hegemony. Contempt for the elementary
principles of justice has been the key-note of Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg's career. His mentality is typical of that of German
bureaucracy--no, more than that, of German statesmanship. It is {115}
possible to have sympathy with German national aspirations, but not
with the methods by which those aspirations are being interpreted to
the world. To show how little regard he had for parliamentary opinion
in the German confederation, the Chancellor forced through the Prussian
_Landtag_, on April 22, 1913, only three months after his rebuke from
the _Reichstag_, an infamous law, voting one hundred and twenty-five
million marks for German colonization in Prussian Poland. Shortly
before the European war broke out, another unconstitutional law was
passed, which makes possible the arbitrary division of large landed
properties owned by Poles.
THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT OF THE POLISH QUESTION
During the war with Japan, the Czar and the Kaiser understood each
other perfectly on the Polish question. The neutrality of Germany was
essential to Russia at that time. The Russians owe much to Germany for
her benevolent attitude of those trying days. The Poles have since
paid the bill.
As in Prussia, the Poles of Russia have seen their liberties menaced
more than ever before during the past decade, and have had to struggle
hopelessly against a policy of ruthless extermination. If on the one
hand the Prussian persecution is more to be condemned because Germany
asks the world to believe that she is an enlightened, constitutional
nation, and "the torch-bearer of civilization," while Russia is
admittedly reactionary and still half-barbarous, on the other hand
there is less excuse for {116} the Russian persecution of the Poles.
For in Russia it is not Teuton against Slav, but Slav against Slav.
Germany and Russia have had the common interest of fellow-criminals in
their relation to the Polish nation. Russia has not hesitated to
co-operate with Germany through diplomatic and police channels in
riveting more securely the fetters of the Poles. Her championship of
the south Slavs against Teutonic aggression has been supposedly on the
grounds of "burning love for our brothers in slavery, in whose veins
runs the same blood as ours." The sham and hypocrisy of this attitude
is revealed when we consider the fact that Russia has never protested
to Germany against the treatment of the Poles of Poznania, nor shown
any inclination to treat with equity her own Poles. Here are "brothers
in slavery" nearer home. There is ground for suspicion that her
interest in the south Slavs has been purely because they are on the way
to Constantinople and the Mediterranean. One who reads the recent
history of Russia stultifies himself if he allows himself to believe
that Russia has entered into the present war to defend Servia from
Austrian aggression _through any love for or humanitarian interest in
the Servians_. If Russia gets the opportunity, will her treatment of
Servian national aspirations be any different from that of
Austria-Hungary? When we try to answer this question, let us think of
Bulgaria after 1878 (the last "war of liberation") and of Poland _in
1914_.
On August 16, 1914, when I read the proclamation of Czar Nicholas to
the partitioned Poles, promising {117} to restore administrative
autonomy to the kingdom of Poland, and posing as the liberator of Poles
now under the yoke of Austria and of Prussia, it was hard to be
enthusiastic. For the Jews of Odessa and Kief, and the Finns of
Helsingfors, rise up to add their cry of warning to the bitter comments
of Polish friends. Only two years ago I saw in those cities subjects
of the Czar suffering cruelly from fanaticism and broken promises, and
deprived of that which is now being held out as bait to the Poles, and
as a sop to Russia's Allies.
Austria-Hungary has been able to use the Russian treatment of Poland as
a means of strengthening her own hold on the border regions of the
Empire. It was at the instigation of Ballplatz that the Galician
deputies, on December 16, 1911, made a motion in the Reichsrath,
inviting the Minister of Foreign Affairs "to undertake steps among the
Powers who signed the conventions at Vienna in 1815 to assure the
maintenance of the frontiers of the kingdom of Poland, of which Russia,
in violation of her international obligations, was threatening the
integrity. For the separation of Kholm from Poland is an attack upon
Polish historic and national consciousness." It was tit for tat with
the two Eastern Powers. Russia burned with indignation for the
feelings of Servia when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Austria-Hungary burned with indignation for the feelings of her own
loyal Polish subjects, when Russia separated Kholm from Poland. Both
had violated international treaties. Russia had no genuine interest in
the Servians, and Austria {118} none in the Poles. They merely seized
upon weapons with which to attack each other.
It is a mystery how French and British public opinion, always so
traditionally favourable to downtrodden races, and especially to the
Poles, can hail the Russian entry into Lemberg as a "victory for
civilization." To the Austrian Poles, the coming of the Cossacks is as
the coming of the Uhlans to the Belgians. They look upon the Russian
invasion of Galicia as a calamity to their national life. Fighting
with the Austrians are thirty thousand young Poles who call themselves
Sokols (falcons). Their organization is something like the German
_Turnverein_, but more purely military. The Poles of Austria-Hungary
are a unit against Russia.
One can make no such positive statement about the attitude of the Poles
of the other two partitioners. They have little hope of any
amelioration of their lot from a change of masters through the present
war. As I write, the thunder of German cannon is heard at Warsaw, and
the unhappy kingdom of Poland is the centre of conflict between Russia
and Germany. The Poles are fighting on both sides, and Polish
non-combatants are suffering from the brutality of both "liberating"
armies. The situation is exactly expressed by a Polish proverb which
is the fruit of centuries of bitter experience: _Gdzie dwóch panów sie,
bije, ch[l-tilde]op w skur[e-cedille], dostaje_--"When two masters
fight, the peasant receives the blows."
{119}