convoked to learn its nature and to make a vow of obedience to its
decisions. During the first stage of the Conference the representatives
of the lesser states had sometimes been permitted to put questions and
present objections. But later on even this privilege was withdrawn. The
following description of what went on may serve as an illustration of
the Council's mode of procedure. One day the Polish delegation was
summoned before the Special Commission to discuss an armistice between
the Ruthenians of Galicia and the Polish Republic. The late General
Botha, a shrewd observer, whose valuable experience of political
affairs, having been confined to a country which had not much in common
with eastern Europe, could be of little help to him in solving the
complex problems with which he was confronted, was handicapped from the
outset. Unacquainted with any languages but English and Dutch, the
general had to surmount the additional difficulty of carrying on the
conversation through an interpreter. The form it took was somewhat as
follows:
"It is the wish of the Supreme Council," the chairman began, "that
Poland should conclude an armistice with the Ruthenians, and under new
conditions, the old ones having lost their force.[180] Are you prepared
to submit your proposals?" "This is a military matter," replied the
Polish delegate, "and should be dealt with by experts. One of our most
competent military authorities will arrive shortly in Paris with full
powers to treat with you on the subject. In the meantime, I agree that
the old conditions are obsolete and must be changed. I can also mention
three provisos without which no armistice is possible: (1) The Poles
must be permitted to get into permanent contact with Rumania. That
involves their occupation of eastern Galicia. The principal grounds for
this demand are that our frontier includes that territory and that the
Rumanians are a law-abiding, pacific people whose interests never clash
with ours and whose main enemy--Bolshevism--is also ours. (2) The Allies
shall purge the Ukrainian army of the Bolshevists, German and other
dangerous elements that now pervade it and render peace impossible. (3)
The Poles must have control of the oil-fields were it only because these
are now being treated as military resources and the Germans are
receiving from Galicia, which contains the only supplies now open to
them, all the oil they require and are giving the Ruthenians munitions
in return, thus perpetuating a continuous state of warfare. You can
realize that we are unwilling to have our oil-fields employed to supply
our enemies with war material against ourselves." General Botha asked,
"Would you be satisfied if, instead of occupying all eastern Galicia at
once in order to get into touch with the Rumanians, the latter were to
advance to meet you?" "Quite. That would satisfy us as a provisional
measure." "But now suppose that the Supreme Council rejects your three
conditions--a probable contingency--- what course do you propose to
take?" "In that case our action would be swayed by events, one of which
is the hostility of the Ruthenians, which would necessitate measures of
self-defense and the use of our army. And that would bring back the
whole issue to the point where it stands to-day."[181] To the
suggestions made by the Polish delegate that the question of the
armistice be referred to Marshal Foch, the answer was returned that the
Marshal's views carried no authority with the Supreme Council.
General Botha, thereupon adopting an emotional tone, said: "I have one
last appeal to make to you. It behooves Poland to lift the question from
its present petty surroundings and set it in the larger frame of world
issues. What we are aiming at is the overthrow of militarism and the
cessation of bloodshed. As a civilized nation Poland must surely see eye
to eye with the Supreme Council how incumbent it is on the Allies to put
a stop to the misery that warfare has brought down on the world and is
now inflicting on the populations of Poland and eastern Galicia."
"Truly," replied the Polish delegate, "and so thoroughly does she
realize it that it is repugnant to her to be satisfied with a sham
peace, a mere pause during which a bloodier war may be organized. We
want a settlement that really connotes peace, and our intimate knowledge
of the circumstances enables us to distinguish between that and a mere
truce. That is the ground of our insistence."
"Bear well in mind," insisted the Boer general, "the friendly attitude
of the great Allies toward your country at a critical period of its
history. They restored it. They meant and mean to help it to preserve
its status. It behooves the Poles to show their appreciation of this
friendship in a practical way by deferring to their wishes. Everything
they ordain is for your good. Realize that and carry out their schemes."
"For their help we are and will remain grateful," was the answer, "and
we will go as far toward meeting their wishes as is feasible without
actually imperiling their contribution to the restoration of our state.
But we cannot blink the facts that their views are sometimes mistaken
and their power to realize them generally imaginary. They have made
numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now frankly avow. If
they persisted in their present plan they would be adding another to the
list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their
initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an
irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern
Europe, where they now can help none of their protégées against their
respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to
themselves. From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams, but
little else. In fact, the utmost they can do is to issue decrees that
may or may not be obeyed. Examples are many. They obtained for us by the
armistice the right of disembarking troops at Dantzig, and we were
unspeakably grateful to them. But they failed to make the Germans
respect that right and we had to resign ourselves to abandon it. They
ordered the Ukrainians to cease their numerous attacks on us and we
appreciated their thoughtfulness. But the order was disobeyed; we were
assailed and had no one to look to for help but ourselves. Still we are
most thankful for all that they could do. But if we concluded the
armistice which you are pleading for, this is what would happen: we
should have the Ruthenians arrayed against us on one side and the
Germans on the other. Now if the Ruthenians have brains, their forces
will attack us at the same time as those of the Germans do. That is
sound tactics. But if their strength is only on paper, they will give
admission to the Bolsheviki. That is the twofold danger which you, in
the name of the Great Powers, are unwillingly endeavoring to conjure up
against us. If you admit its reality you cannot blame our reluctance to
incur it. On the other hand, if you regard the peril as imaginary, you
will draw the obvious consequences and pledge the word of the Great
Powers that they will give us military assistance against it should it
come?"
If clear thinking and straightforward action has counted for anything,
the matter would have been settled satisfactorily then and there. But
the Great Powers operated less with argument than with more forcible
stimuli. Holding the economic and financial resources of the world in
their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with reasoning and proceeded to
coerce where they were unable to convince or persuade. One day the chief
delegate of one of the states "with limited interests" said to me: "The
unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced. There is no milder term
to signify this procedure. Thus we are told that unless we indorse the
decrees of the Powers, whose interests are unlimited like their
assurance, they will withhold from us the supplies of food, raw
materials, and money without which our national existence is
inconceivable. Necessarily we must give way, at any rate for the time
being." Those words sum up the relations of the lesser to the greater
Powers.
In the case of Poland the conversation ended thus--General Botha,
addressing the delegate, said: "If you disregard the injunctions of the
Big Four, who cannot always lay before you the grounds of their policy,
you run the risk of being left to your own devices. And you know what
that means. Think well before you decide!" Just then, as it chanced,
only a part of General Haller's soldiers in France had been transported
to their own country,[182] and the Poles were in mortal terror lest the
work of conveying the remainder should be interrupted. This, then, was
an implicit appeal to which they could not turn a wholly deaf ear.
"Well, what is it that the Big Four ask of us?" inquired the delegate.
"The conclusion of an armistice with the Ruthenians, also that
Poland--as one of the newly created states--should allow the free
transit of all the Allied goods through her territory." The delegate
expressed a wish to be told why this measure should be restricted to the
newly made states. The answer was because it was in the nature of an
experiment and should, therefore, not be tried over too large an area.
"There is also another little undertaking which you are requested to
give--namely, that you will accept and act upon the future decisions of
the commission whatever they may be." "Without an inkling of their
character?" "If you have confidence in us you need have no misgivings as
to that." In spite of the deterrents the Polish delegation at that
interview met all these demands with a firm _non possumus_. It upheld
the three conditions of the armistice, rejected the free transit
proposal, and demurred to the demand for a promise to bow to all future
decisions of a fallible commission. "When the Polish dispute with the
Czechoslovaks was submitted to a commission we were not asked in advance
to abide by its decision. Why should a new rule be introduced now?"
argued the Polish delegates. And there the matter rested for a brief
while.
But the respite lasted only a few days, at the expiry of which an envoy
called on the members of the Polish delegation and reopened the
discussion on new lines. He stated that he spoke on behalf of the Big
Four, of whose views and intentions he was the authorized exponent. And
doubtless he thought he was. But as a matter of fact the French
government had no cognizance of his visit or mission or of the
conversation to which it led. He presented arguments before having
recourse to deterrents. Poland's situation, he said, called for
prudence. Her secular enemy was Germany, with whom it would be
difficult, perhaps impossible, ever to cultivate such terms as would
conciliate her permanently. All the more reason, therefore, to deserve
and win the friendship of her other neighbors, in particular of the
Ruthenians. The Polish plenipotentiary met the argument in the usual
way, where upon the envoy exclaimed: "Well, to make a long story short,
I am here to say that the line of action traced out for your country
emanates from the inflexible will of the Great Powers. To this you must
bend. If it should lead to hostilities on the part of your neighbors you
could, of course, rely on the help of your protectors. Will this not
satisfy you?" "If the protection were real it certainly would. But where
is it? Has it been vouchsafed at any moment since the armistice? Have
the Allied governments an executive in eastern Europe? Are they likely
to order their troops thither to assist any of their protégées? And if
they issued such an order, would it be obeyed? They cannot protect us,
as we know to our cost. That is why we are prepared, in our
interests--also in theirs--to protect ourselves."
This remarkable conversation was terminated by the announcement of the
penalty of disobedience. "If you persist in refusing the proposals I
have laid before you, I am to tell you that the Great Powers will
withdraw their aid from your country and may even feel it to be their
duty to modify the advantageous status which they had decided to confer
upon it." To which this answer was returned: "For the assistance we are
receiving we are and will ever be truly grateful. But in order to
benefit by it the Polish people must be a living organism and your
proposals tend to reduce us to a state of suspended vitality. They also
place us at the mercy of our numerous enemies, the greatest of whom is
Germany."
But lucid intelligence, backed by unflagging will, was of no avail
against the threat of famine. The Poles had to give way. M. Paderewski
pledged his word to Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson that he would have
an armistice concluded with the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia, and the
Duumvirs rightly placed implicit confidence in his word as in his moral
rectitude. They also felt grateful to him for having facilitated their
arduous task by accepting the inevitable. To my knowledge President
Wilson himself addressed a letter to him toward the end of April,
thanking him cordially for the broad-minded way in which he had
co-operated with the Supreme Council in its efforts to reconstitute his
country on a solid basis. Probably no other representative of a state
"with limited interests" received such high mark of approval.
M. Paderewski left Paris for Warsaw, there to win over the Cabinet. But
in Poland, where the authorities were face to face with the concrete
elements of the problem, the Premier found no support. Neither the
Cabinet nor the Diet nor the head of the state found it possible to
redeem the promise made in their name. Circumstance was stronger than
the human will. M. Paderewski resigned. The Ruthenians delivered a
timely attack on the Poles, who counter-attacked, captured the towns of
Styra, Tarnopol, Stanislau, and occupied the enemy country right up to
Rumania, with which they desired to be in permanent contact. Part of the
Ruthenian army crossed the Czech frontier and was disarmed, the
remainder melted away, and there remained no enemy with whom to conclude
an armistice.
For the "Big Four" this turn of events was a humiliation. The Ruthenian
army, whose interests they had so taken to heart, had suddenly ceased to
exist, and the future danger which it represented to Poland was seen to
have been largely imaginary. Their judgment was at fault and their power
ineffectual. Against M. Paderewski's impotence they blazed with
indignation. He had given way to their decision and promptly gone to
Warsaw to see it executed, yet the conditions were such that his words
were treated as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The Polish
Premier, it is true, had tendered his resignation in consequence, but it
was refused--and even had it been accepted, what was the retirement of a
Minister as compared with the indignity put upon the world's lawgivers
who represented power and interests which were alike unlimited? Angry
telegrams were flashed over the wires from Paris to Warsaw and the
Polish Premier was summoned to appear in Paris without delay. He duly
returned, but no new move was made. The die was cast.
A noteworthy event in latter-day Polish history ensued upon that
military victory over the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia. The
Ukrainian[183] Minister at Vienna was despatched to request the Poles to
sign a unilateral treaty with them after the model of that which was
arranged by the two Anglo-Saxon states in favor of France. The proposal
was that the Ukraine government would renounce all claims to eastern
Galicia and place their troops under the supreme command of the Polish
generalissimus, in return for which the Poles should undertake to
protect the Ukrainians against all their enemies. This draft agreement,
while under consideration in Warsaw, was negatived by the Polish
delegates in Paris, who saw no good reason why their people should bind
themselves to fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine.
Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to Poland was
Esthonia, but its advances were declined on similar grounds. It is
manifest, however, that in the new state system alliances are more in
vogue than in the old, although they were to have been banished from it.
Throughout all the negotiations that turned upon the future status and
the territorial frontiers of Poland the British Premier unswervingly
stood out against the Polish claims, just as the President of the United
States inflexibly countered those of Italy, and both united to negative
those of the Rumanians. Whatever one may think of the merits of these
controversies--and various opinions have been put forward with obvious
sincerity--there can be but one judgment as to the spirit in which they
were conducted. It was a dictatorial spirit, which was intolerant not
merely of opposition, but of enlightened and constructive criticism. To
the representatives of the countries concerned it seemed made up of
bitter prejudice and fierce partizanship, imbibed, it was affirmed, from
those unseen sources whence powerful and, it was thought, noxious
currents flowed continuously toward the Conference. For none of the
affronted delegates credited with a knowledge of the subject either Mr.
Lloyd George, who had never heard of Teschen, or Mr. Wilson, whose
survey of Corsican politics was said to be so defective. And yet to the
activity of men engaged like these in settling affairs of unprecedented
magnitude it would be unfair to apply the ordinary tests of technical
fastidiousness. Their position as trustees of the world's greatest
states, even though they lacked political imagination, knowledge, and
experience, entitled them to the high consideration which they generally
received. But it could not be expected to dazzle to blindness the eyes
of superior men--and the delegates of the lesser states, Venizelos,
Dmowski, and Benes, were undoubtedly superior in most of the attributes
of statesmanship. Yet they were frequently snubbed and each one made to
feel that he was the fifth wheel in the chariot of the Conference. No
sacred fame, says Goethe, requires us to submit to contempt, and they
winced under it. The Big Three lacked the happy way of doing things
which goes with diplomatic tact and engaging manners, and the
consequence was that not only were their arguments mistrusted, but even
their good faith was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. "Bitter
prejudice, furious antipathy" were freely predicated of the two
Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of attempting by
circuitous methods to deprive France of her new Slav ally in eastern
Europe. Sweeping recriminations of this character deserve notice only as
indicating the spirit of discord--not to use a stronger term--prevailing
at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring to knit together the
peoples of the planet in an organized society of good-fellowship.
The delegates of the lesser states, to whom one should not look for
impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the
Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise
conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference.
One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest doubt that the
firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment of the hegemony of
the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which in the fullness of time may be
transformed into the hegemony of the United States of North America.
Even France is in some respects their handmaid. Already she is bound to
them indissolubly. She is admittedly unable to hold her own without
their protection. She will become more dependent on them as the years
pass and Germany, having put her house in order, regains her economic
preponderance on the Continent. This decline is due to the operation of
a natural law which diplomacy may retard but cannot hinder. Numbers will
count in the future, and then France's rôle will be reduced. For this
reason it is her interest that her new allies in eastern Europe should
be equipped with all the means of growing and keeping strong instead of
being held in the leading-strings of the overlords. But perhaps this
tutelage is reckoned one of those means?"
Against Britain in especial the Poles, as we saw, were wroth. They
complained that whenever they advanced a claim they found her first
delegate on their path barring their passage, and if Mr. Wilson chanced
to be with them the British Premier set himself to convert him to his
way of thinking or voting. Thus it was against Mr. Lloyd George that the
eastern Galician problem had had to be fought at every stage. At the
outset the British Premier refused Galicia to Poland categorically and
purposed making it an entirely separate state under the League of
Nations. This design, of which he made no secret, inspired the
insistence with which the armistice with the Ruthenians of Galicia was
pressed. The Polish delegates, one of them a man of incisive speech,
left no stone unturned to thwart that part of the English scheme, and
they finally succeeded. But their opponents contrived to drop a spoonful
of tar in Poland's pot of honey by ordering a plebiscite to take place
in eastern Galicia within ten or fifteen years. Then came the question
of the Galician Constitution. The Poles proposed to confer on the
Ruthenians a restricted measure of home rule with authority to arrange
in their own way educational and religious matters, local
communications, and the means of encouraging industry and agriculture,
besides giving them a proportionate number of seats in the state
legislature in Warsaw. But again the British delegates--experienced in
problems of home rule--expressed their dissatisfaction and insisted on a
parliament or diet for the Ukraine invested with considerable authority
over the affairs of the province. The Poles next announced their
intention to have a governor of eastern Galicia appointed by the
President of the Polish Republic, with a council to advise him. The
British again amended the proposal and asked that the governor should be
responsible to the Galician parliament, but to this the Poles demurred
emphatically, and finally it was settled that only the members of his
council should be responsible to the provincial legislature. The Poles
having suggested that military conscription should be applied to eastern
Galicia on the same terms as to the rest of Poland, the British once
more joined issue with them and demanded that no troops whatever should
be levied in the province. The upshot of this dispute was that after
much wrangling the British Commission gave way to the Poles, but made it
a condition that the troops should not be employed outside the province.
To this the Poles made answer that the massing of so many soldiers on
the Rumanian frontier might reasonably be objected to by the
Rumanians--and so the amoebean word-game went on in the subcommission.
In a word, when dealing with the eastern Galician problem, Mr. Lloyd
George played the part of an ardent champion of complete home rule.
To sum up, the Conference linked eastern Galicia with Poland, but made
the bonds extremely tenuous, so that they might be severed at any moment
without involving profound changes in either country, and by this
arrangement, which introduced the provisional into the definitive, a
broad field of operations was allotted to political agitation and revolt
was encouraged to rear its crest.