neighboring districts, it is still too soon to say. In spite of
the misrepresentation of this chapter of the treaty by German and
pro-German writers, an examination of its provisions shows that the
rights and interests of the inhabitants have been carefully safeguarded
under international guarantees. Indeed their position has so many
advantages as compared with their neighbors in France and Germany
that there were those at Paris who predicted that the plebiscite
of 1935 would declare for the maintenance of an independent status
under the League of Nations, free from outside responsibilities, both
military and fiscal. Undoubtedly the issues will be economic as well
as political, and much of the success of the new regime will depend
on the economic and social policy of the Governing Commission. During
the delays of ratification and organization the labor legislation
of the district necessarily stood still at the point reached at the
time of the Armistice, and a considerable task of readjustment and
reconstruction falls on the new Commission, in a region inhabited by
a concentrated mining and industrial population with a strong local
organization of its own. It should be noted that, besides the general
obligation to consult a local legislative assembly, it is provided
that “in fixing the conditions and hours of labor for men, women, and
children, the Governing Commission is to take into consideration the
wishes expressed by the local labor organizations, as well as the
principles adopted by the League of Nations,”[41] so that a progressive
policy is clearly laid down. Moreover, by virtue of its geographical
position, the labor of the Saar should be able to secure conditions at
least as favorable as in adjoining regions, while, with a plebiscite
in view, the French state administration of the mines will have every
reason to maintain good relations with the mining population. At the
same time neither France nor the Commission will have any reason
for holding back the production of coal or the general industrial
development of the district in favor of the mines and factories of
Westphalia. In any event the people of the Saar will be in a position
to decide for themselves, district by district, after actual experience
of the new regime; nor are they likely to welcome the proposal of an
ardent revisionist of the treaty of Versailles, who, while admitting
that the arrangements respecting the Saar should stand for ten years,
would take away from the inhabitants all opportunity of voting as
to their future.[42] If government by the League of Nations is as
“odious” as the German delegates declared at Versailles, then ten years
of it is as indefensible in principle as fifteen. But if perchance
the League’s Commission should prove less odious than its enemies
anticipate, the fact will be worth recording for the sake of the League
as well as of the people directly concerned.
The government of the Saar basin by a commission of the League
of Nations is a very interesting experiment in international
administration. Granted the prompt organization of a League such as
the treaty contemplates, this experiment in commission government has
a fair chance of success, and while the difficulty has been rendered
greater by delay, it is not insoluble. By its success or failure in
such matters the League will be in large measure judged in western
Europe. There is reason to believe that its effectiveness depends
likewise largely upon such permanent activities. Its Assembly will
meet rarely, its Council not frequently, only its secretariat and
its administrative organs will be constantly at work, and it is
their action that will bring the League home to the peoples under
its immediate control. Curiously enough, those who were most eager
for the programme of an ambitious League were the first to criticise
the creation of such commissions and their tasks. But if one of the
chief objects of such an organization is to promote world peace,
surely the Franco-German frontier is an important point for it to
watch. And if the League can ease the strain here by acting as a sort
of shock-absorber, protecting at the same time the property rights
of France and the personal rights of the inhabitants, it will serve
another interest no less important than peace, namely the cause of
justice. If the League is not ready for this test, it is certainly not
ready to become a super-state. The super-state can wait, but justice
and peace are matters of today.
* * * * *
The Saar Commission, the Governing Commission for the occupied
territory, the new Central Rhine Commission, all are manifestations
of international interest in the Franco-German frontier, and efforts
to relieve the strain in this area of high national tension. The
demilitarization of the Left Bank and the river and the guarantee of
France against unprovoked aggression from the east are likewise plainly
in the interest of international peace. Even the most definitely
national measure of all, the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, was called
for, according to President Wilson, not only to right the wrong done by
Prussia in 1871, but “in order that peace may once more be made secure
in the interest of all.” The League of Nations in the valley of the
Rhine is the symbol of a new order.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The history of the Left Bank is examined from various points of
view by the Comité d’Etudes, i: _L’Alsace-Lorraine et la frontière
du Nord-est_ (1918). E. Babelon, _Le Rhin dans l’histoire_ (Paris,
1916-17), is the fullest account from the point of view of the Rhine
as the historical frontier of France. See also L. Madelin, in the
_Revue des deux Mondes_, December 1, 1918; the pamphlets of Babelon,
Driault, de Grailly, Milhaud, Stiénon, etc., issued in the same
years; and the _enquête_ published by the _Libre Parole_ in February
1919. For a sane French criticism see Pfister, in _Revue historique_,
cxxvi, pp. 334-338. A. Schulte, _Frankreich und das linke Rheinufer_
(Stuttgart, 1918), is largely a critique of French writers.
For the important period 1794-1814 the best German accounts are C. T.
Perthes, _Politische Zustände und Personen in Deutschland zur Zeit der
französichen Herrschaft_ (Bonn, 1862); and J. Hashagen, _Das Rheinland
und die französische Herrschaft_ (Bonn, 1908). An excellent French
monograph is Ph. Sagnac, _Le Rhin français pendant la Révolution et
l’Empire_ (Paris, 1917). On Landau and Saarlouis, see Aulard, in
_Revue de Paris_, March 15, 1919. J. Hansen (ed.), _Die Rheinprovinz
1815-1915_ (Bonn, 1917), is a comprehensive treatment of the
Prussian period, with brief bibliographies. For a sketch of economic
conditions, see Yves Guyot, _La province rhénane et la Westphalie_
(Paris, 1915). On the Palatinate, see H. Schreibmüller, _Bayern und
die Pfalz, 1816-1916_ (Kaiserslautern, 1916).
The French side of the negotiations respecting the ‘guarantees’ on the
Left Bank is given by A. Tardieu, in _L’Illustration_, February 14,
1920. Nothing has as yet been published by the British or American
negotiators.
The commerce of the Rhine is well studied by E. J. Clapp, _The
Navigable Rhine_ (Boston, 1911). Cf. P. Vidal de la Blache, _La France
de l’Est_ (Paris, 1917); and the studies of de Martonne and Gallois in
the volume of the _Comité d’Etudes_. For a Swiss view of the problem,
see V. S. Rualens-Marlier, _Le Rhin libre_ (Paris and Neuchâtel, 1916).
* * * * *
In the Saar valley the events of 1814-15 are narrated by A.
Ruppersberg, _Geschichte der Stadt Saarbrücken_ (Saarbrücken,
1913). Böcking’s correspondence will be found, with other important
material, in A. Krohn, _Beiträge zur Geschichte der Saargegend_, in
_Mitteilungen des historischen Vereins für die Saargegend_, viii
(1901). Cf. F. Engerand, _L’Allemagne et le fer_ (Paris, 1916), ch.
2. For a general sketch, see E. Babelon, _Sarrelouis et Sarrebruck_
(Paris, 1918). Of the German literature touching this part of the
treaty examples are F. Meinecke, _Geschichte der linksrheinischen
Gebietsfragen_, with maps; and the articles in _Die Woche_, March 8,
1919.
On the Saar coal field, see _The Coal Resources of the World_
(Toronto, 1913); the _Atlas of Mineral Resources_ published by the
U. S. Geological Survey; the study of Gallois, in _Travaux du Comité
d’Etudes_, i, and _Annales de géographie_, July 15, 1919; E. de
Margerie, in _Enquête sur les richesses minérales du Nord-est de la
France et des régions voisines_, with maps (Paris, 1918); Friedrich
A. Schmidt, _Der Saarkohlenbergbau in Lothringen_ (Strasburg diss.,
1914); and the local geological surveys and mining reports. On the
growth of manufactures, see J. Kollmann, _Die Grossindustrie des
Saargebiets_ (Stuttgart, 1911).
* * * * *
An admirable presentation of the historical geography of the Left Bank
will be found in the _Geschichtlicher Atlas der Rheinprovinz_ (Bonn,
1898-). For the frontiers of 1814 and 1815, see the _Atlas_ of the
Comité d’Etudes.
[Illustration: ALSACE-LORRAINE AND THE SAAR VALLEY
Scale 1: 1,500,000
_Eastern limit of French speech according to C. This._
_Limits of Territory of the Saar._
_Iron ore_ } _Areas represent_
} _extent of holdings,_
_Coal_ } _mines shown thus_
(_with seams_) }
_Potash_
_Petroleum_
_Canals_
_Based on Gallors’ map in the Geographical Review, VI_]
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Dietrich Schäfer, “Die deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze,” in
_Internationale Wochenschrift_, vii, p. 19 (1912).
[32] Articles 354-362.
[33] Article 65.
[34] Articles 358-360.
[35] E. Denis, in _Travaux du Comité d’études_, i, p. 414.
[36] Articles 428-432.
[37] These treaties, the American one not yet ratified, and the
agreements concerning occupation of the Rhine will be found in the
_Supplement to the American Journal of International Law_, xiii, pp.
404-416.
[38] Facsimiles in _Atlas_ of the Comité d’Etudes.
[39] “Landau et Sarrelouis villes françaises,” in _Revue de Paris_,
March 15, 1919.
[40] Articles 42-50 and annex, with official map.
[41] Annex to the Saar section of the treaty, § 23.
[42] Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, p. 263.
V
POLAND
Among all the results of the War and of the Peace Treaties, there is,
perhaps, none which would have caused our forefathers greater joy or
greater astonishment than the resurrection of Poland. It is heartening
to dwell for a moment on the moral significance of this great event,
and to recall what the name of Poland stood for down to the time when
Bismarck banished sentiment from politics and attempted to exorcise the
idea of an ‘immanent justice’ in history.
To every generation of the nineteenth century, down to 1870 at least,
Poland furnished the supreme example both of what people then called
‘the crimes of despotism,’ and of a liberty-loving nation struggling
with unsurpassed heroism against wellnigh insuperable odds. The
restoration of Poland signified something more than the mere revival
of a vanished state: it stood for the triumphant righting of the
greatest political wrong that Europe had witnessed, the vindication
of the principles of justice in international relations, a decisive
victory for the cause of universal liberty. Hence the Polish cause
called forth a unanimity of sympathy from all civilized nations
which no other similar movement, not even the Italian one, was able
to command. In England, France, and Italy, liberals, conservatives,
and clericals alike--men of such diverse opinions as Gladstone and
Disraeli, Montalembert and Victor Hugo, Mazzini and Pius IX--were very
much of one mind with respect to Poland. In France particularly every
success or reverse of the Polish cause was greeted as if it were a
triumph or a defeat for France herself. It is said that after the fall
of Warsaw in 1831 the gloom and consternation at Paris were greater
than after Waterloo. Even in Germany Bismarck felt bound to reproach
his compatriots of the 1848 period for being more concerned about the
liberty of Poland than about their own national problem. There too
people sang of Poland:
“Dein Sieg is ein Völkersieg,
Dein Krieg ist ein heiliger Krieg.”
And from America also one might cite many expressions of such
sentiments. Jefferson denounced the partition of Poland as a “baneful
precedent,” a “crime,” and an “atrocity.” Henry Wharton called it “the
most flagrant violation of natural justice and international law which
has occurred since Europe first emerged from barbarism.”
But unanimous as was the opinion of the public regarding the justice
of the Polish cause, among statesmen and politicians the idea was
scarcely less general that from a practical standpoint that cause was
hopeless. Lord Salisbury in a famous essay attempted to prove that
the restoration of an independent Poland was “a mere chimera.” Guizot
in his Memoirs demonstrated in his most magistral fashion that the
difficulties in the way of the Polish patriots were incomparably
greater than those that beset any other national movement: for here it
was a question of liberating a people, not from one foreign oppressor,
but from three, and those three the strongest military monarchies
in Europe, permanently united by their common interest in keeping
their victim enchained. No other power in Europe was strong enough
to liberate Poland, and it was doubtful whether all the other powers
together were strong enough to do so. At all events, the thing could
not be done without a general war, involving the entire continent
and upsetting the whole existing political system. And as time wore
on, as one insurrection after another failed and one hope of foreign
intervention after another proved delusive, the Poles themselves came
to pin their faith chiefly to some such catastrophic solution. Sixty
or seventy years before it came about, their poets began to prophesy a
day of conflict such as the world had never yet seen, and in that day
should Poland rise again and triumph. Mickiewicz, in that “Litany of
the Polish Pilgrim” which is the most poignant expression both of the
sufferings and of the undying hopes of his people, inserts the prayer:
“For a universal war for the freedom of the nations,
We beseech Thee, O Lord.”
“The great far-off divine event,” thus dimly forecast, has been
realized before our eyes. And however obdurate fate might hitherto
have been to the Poles, it must be admitted that during the World War
all things have worked together marvellously to serve the cause of
Poland. By an irony of fortune, the Partitioning Powers themselves
were the first to proclaim the principle of the restoration of
Poland, although in half-hearted and ambiguous fashion. The Russian
Revolution removed the great obstacle to an honest treatment of the
Polish question by the Entente. Through President Wilson’s efforts,
the principle of the restoration of a united and independent Poland
was definitively and unequivocally inscribed among the war aims of the
Allies; and the collapse of the Central Powers afforded the possibility
of carrying out this principle with a completeness which two years ago
few friends of Poland could have believed possible.
But granted that Poland was to be restored, what was Poland? What
territory should it include, and what were its proper boundaries? As
to such questions it may be doubted whether any Allied statesman or
the public in any of the Allied countries two years ago had any very
definite ideas. Italia Irredenta, Greater Greece, Greater Roumania,
Yugo-Slavia, even Czecho-Slovakia--those were concepts simple and
familiar in comparison with that of Poland reincarnate. For Poland had
been erased from the map so long that it had come to be regarded as a
name, a memory, a cause, rather than a country. Poland was a ghost
roaming around in the Sarmatian plain, somewhere between Germany and
Russia. But what were the limits of its habitat few persons knew, nor
what this disembodied spirit would look like if clothed again in flesh
and blood.
Moreover the problem was in itself very difficult. Geographically,
Poland is one of the hardest countries in the world to define. Clearly
marked natural frontiers are lacking; or else, when they can be
discerned, they do not coincide with the historic political boundaries
or with present ethnographic ones. The Carpathians, for instance, seem
to offer an admirable natural frontier on the south; nevertheless
the boundaries of the old Polish state overlapped this mountain
range for a considerable distance, and so does the Polish linguistic
frontier today. On the north the Baltic ought to form the natural
limit of Poland; but historically Poland had seldom held more than a
narrow frontage upon that sea, and today the area of Polish-speaking
population touches the Baltic only along a short stretch of coast just
west of Danzig. On the east and west no natural barriers whatever are
to be found in the vast unbroken plain which stretches across northern
Europe from the Low Countries to the Urals.
It is true that Polish geographers are accustomed to treat the whole
region between the Baltic, the Carpathians, the Dvina, and the Dnieper
as one country; to claim for it a high degree of physical unity with
respect to its structure, climate, productions, river systems, and
other features; and to argue that this entire area ought likewise to
form a political unit--Poland. ‘Geographic Poland’ thus defined is
practically identical with the historic Polish state as it was in its
later period (a coincidence which may be explained as an illustration,
either of the effects of geographic laws on history, or of the workings
of historic facts on the minds of geographers). It must be admitted
that Russian scientists have demonstrated with equal ease that nearly
all of the region in question is geographically a part of Russia; while
the patriotic scholars of Kiev and Lemberg have proved that nature
intended a great part of this same region to belong to neither Poland
nor Russia, but to a tertium quid called the Ukraine.
‘Ethnographic Poland,’ i. e., the region which has a majority of
Polish-speaking population, is an area easier to define. It includes
nearly the whole of the so-called ‘Congress Kingdom’ of Poland (that
small realm which was set up by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and
suppressed by Russia a few years later); most of the former Prussian
province of Posen; parts of the Prussian provinces of East and West
Prussia and Silesia; most of the duchy of Teschen in Austrian Silesia;
and the western part of Galicia. Ethnographic Poland thus defined has
an area of about 82,000 square miles: i. e., it is about as large as
Kansas or Minnesota, or three-fourths as large as Italy. It had a
population in 1910 of twenty millions. About sixty per cent of it
belonged to Russia; twenty-five per cent to Prussia; fifteen per cent
to Austria.
In addition, there are many Polish enclaves scattered about in eastern
Galicia and in the Russian provinces to the east of the Congress
Kingdom. For these adjacent provinces on the east, the Russian
nationality statistics are so grossly inaccurate and fraudulent that
we are left in great uncertainty as to the real ethnographic situation
and the exact relative strength of the numerous races[43] which inhabit
this debatable region (Poles, Lithuanians, White Russians, Jews,
Ukrainians, etc.). There is much reason to suppose, however, that if
ever an honest census is taken here, the eastern limits of the Polish
ethnographic area will be extended considerably beyond the boundaries
of the Congress Kingdom.
Historically, the name Poland has been applied to a state with very
widely fluctuating frontiers. The original Polish kingdom, as it grew
up in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries under its first
dynasty, the house of the Piasts, was a comparatively small state.
It embraced the area which forms ethnographic Poland today, and also
the rest of Silesia and Pomerania. Having the Oder for a part of its
western boundary and a broad strip of Baltic coast line, Poland in its
earliest period enjoyed better natural frontiers than it was ever later
to possess.
Unfortunately, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the realm
was rent asunder by partitions and civil wars among its princes, and
weakened by the invasions and devastations of the Mongols. Taking
advantage of this situation, the Germanic _Drang nach Osten_, which
the Poles had hitherto arrested at the cost of much hard fighting, set
in with redoubled vigor and unparalleled success. It was at this time
that Pomerania and Silesia were lost to Poland,--although in Upper
Silesia a large and compact Polish population has for six hundred
years successfully resisted that process of more or less violent
Germanization to which so many of the western Slavs succumbed. It
was at this time also that the Germans, led by the Teutonic Knights,
succeeded in planting a colony in Prussia, thus cutting off Poland from
the sea and inaugurating that struggle for the mouth of the Vistula
which has gone on intermittently ever since.
When Poland in the fourteenth century regained her unity and strength,
it was now too late to recover most of the territories thus lost: it
was rather a question whether the shattered kingdom could even defend
what was left to it against the Germanic onrush. Seeking resources
and allies for that struggle, Poland turned to the East. The conquest
of the principality of Halicz (Eastern Galicia) in 1340 marked the
beginning of Polish encroachments upon the Ukrainian nationality.
Still more important was the union effected in 1386 between Poland
and Lithuania. For the Lithuanian empire, built up with such amazing
rapidity during the fourteenth century, included nearly the whole area
inhabited by the Ukrainian and White Russian races; it spread from the
Baltic to the Black Sea and far beyond the Dnieper. Through the union
concluded in 1386 there arose a realm which was to be for several
centuries the strongest power in Eastern Europe, and which remained
down to the time of the Partitions the second or third largest state on
the Continent.
The most immediate result of this union was that Poland and Lithuania
combined could renew their traditional struggle against the Teutonic
Knights and fight it through to a successful conclusion. Not the least
of the circumstances that contributed to their victory was the fact
that, in the crisis of the conflict, the majority of the German nobles
and cities of Prussia deserted the Knights and joined King Casimir,
preferring the liberty which Poland could offer them to the tyrannous
rule of the Teutonic Order. This was the second of those voluntary
unions which form so striking and peculiar a feature of Polish history.
By the peace of Thorn (1466), which ended this Hundred Years’ War,
Danzig and West Prussia were incorporated in Poland, although with
guarantees for a large measure of self-government, while East Prussia
was left to the vanquished Knights to be held as a fief of Poland.
Thus the mouth of the Vistula and a frontage upon the Baltic had
been recovered and were to remain in Polish possession for the next
three hundred years. Unfortunately for the peace of Europe, however,
the Prussian question was not completely liquidated, as it might have
been both in 1466 and on several later occasions. With a generosity
or a lack of foresight which later historians have found it very hard
to excuse, the Polish government in 1525 permitted the Teutonic Grand
Master, Albert of Hohenzollern, to secularize East Prussia and turn it
into a duchy hereditary in his family, though still a fief of Poland;
and on the extinction of his line in 1618, Poland was induced to allow
the transfer of the duchy to the Brandenburg branch of the family--the
first great step towards the building up of that Hohenzollern monarchy
which was to be the worst foe of Poland.