at any rate, thought convincing. But Mr. Lloyd George, it was said,
declared them insufficient. The subject was thrashed out one day in June
when the Polish delegates were summoned before their all-powerful
colleagues to be told of certain alterations that had been recently
introduced into the Treaty which concerned them to know. They appeared
before the Council of Five.[184] President Wilson, addressing the two
delegates, spoke approximately as follows: "You claim Silesia on the
ground that its inhabitants are Poles and we have given your demand
careful consideration. But the Germans tell us that the inhabitants,
although Polish by race, wish to remain under German rule as heretofore.
That is a strong objection if founded on fact. At present we are unable
to answer it. In fact, nobody can answer it with finality but the
inhabitants themselves. Therefore we must order a plebiscite among
them." One of the Polish delegates remarked: "If you had put the
question to the inhabitants fifty years ago they would have expressed
their wish to remain with the Germans because at that time they were
profoundly ignorant and their national sentiment was dormant. Now it is
otherwise. For since then many of them have been educated, and the
majority are alive to the issue and will therefore declare for Poland.
And if any section of the territory should still prefer German sway to
Polish and their district in consequence of your plebiscite becomes
German, the process of enlightenment which has already made such headway
will none the less go on, and their children, conscious of their loss,
will anathematize their fathers for having inflicted it. And then there
will be trouble."
Mr. Wilson retorted: "You are assuming more than is meet. The frontiers
which we are tracing are provisional, not final. That is a consideration
which ought to weigh with you. Besides, the League of Nations will
intervene to improve what is imperfect." "O League of Nations, what
blunders are committed in thy name!" the delegate may have muttered to
himself as he listened to the words meant to comfort him and his
countrymen.
Much might have been urged against this proffered solace if the
delegates had been in a captious mood. The League of Nations had as yet
no existence. If its will, intelligence, and power could indeed be
reckoned upon with such confidence, how had it come to pass that its
creators, Britain and the United States, deemed them dubious enough to
call for a reinforcement in the shape of a formal alliance for the
protection of France? If this precautionary measure, which shatters the
whole Wilsonian system, was indispensable to one Ally it was at least
equally indispensable to another. And in the case of Poland it was more
urgent than in the case of France, because if Germany were again to
scheme a war of conquest the probability is infinitesimal that she would
invade Belgium or move forward on the western front. The line of least
resistance, which is Poland, would prove incomparably more attractive.
And then? The absence of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the
principal causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that had
made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization in the interval
between the conclusion of the armistice and the ratification of the
Treaty. In the future the absence of strongly situated Allies there, if
Germany were to begin a fresh war, would be more fatal still, and the
Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the
Allied governments could reach it. Why should the safety of Poland and
to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at
best a gambler's throw?
But no counter-objections were offered. On the contrary, M. Paderewski
uttered the soft answer that turneth away wrath. He profoundly regretted
the decision of the lawgivers, but, recognizing that it was immutable,
bowed to it in the name of his country. He knew, he said, that the
delegates were animated by very friendly feelings toward his country and
he thanked them for their help. M. Paderewski's colleague, the less
malleable M. Dmowski, is reported to have said: "It is my desire to be
quite sincere with you, gentlemen. Therefore I venture to submit that
while you profess to have settled the matter on principle, you have not
carried out that principle thoroughly. Doubtless by inadvertence. Thus
there are places inhabited by a large majority of Poles which you have
allotted to Germany on the ground that they are inhabited by Germans.
That is inconsistent." At this Mr. Lloyd George jumped up from his place
and asked: "Can you name any such places?" M. Dmowski gave several
names. "Point them out to me on the map," insisted the British Premier.
They were pointed out on the map. Twice President Wilson asked the
delegate to spell the name Bomst for him.[185] Mr. Lloyd George then
said: "Well, those are oversights that can be rectified." "Oh yes,"
added Mr. Wilson, "we will see to that."[186] M. Dmowski also questioned
the President about the plebiscite, and under whose auspices the voting
would take place, and was told that there would be an Inter-Allied
administration to superintend the arrangements and insure perfect
freedom of voting. "Through what agency will that administration work?
Is it through the officials?" "Evidently," Mr. Wilson answered. "You are
doubtless aware that they are Germans?" "Yes. But the administration
will possess the right to dismiss those who prove unworthy of their
confidence." "Don't you think," insisted M. Dmowski, "that it would be
fairer to withdraw one half of the German bureaucrats and give their
places to Poles?" To which the President replied: "The administration
will be thoroughly impartial and will adopt all suitable measures to
render the voting free." There the matter ended.
The two potentates in council, tackling the future status of Lithuania,
settled it in an offhand and singular fashion which at any rate bespoke
their good intentions. The principle of self-determination, or what was
facetiously termed the Balkanization of Europe, was at first applied to
that territory and a semi-independent state created _in petto_ which was
to contain eight million inhabitants and be linked with Poland. Certain
obstacles were soon afterward encountered which had not been foreseen.
One was that all the Lithuanians number only two millions, or say at the
most two millions and one hundred thousand. Out of these even the
Supreme Council could not make eight millions. In Lithuania there are
two and a half million Poles, one and a half million Jews, and the
remainder are White Russians.[187] It was recognized that a community
consisting of such disparate elements, situated where it now is, could
hardly live and strive as an independent state. The Lithuanian Jews,
however, were of a different way of thinking, and they opposed the
Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness and animation which wounded
Poland's national pride and left rankling sores behind.
It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia, who are supposed
to clutch convulsively at all the states which once formed part of the
Tsardom, displayed a degree of political detachment in respect of
Lithuania which came as a pleasant surprise to many. The Russian
Ambassador in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address before a
learned assembly[188] in the French capital, announced that Russia was
henceforward disinterested in the status of Lithuania.
That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with the Lithuanians
became evident during the Conference. General Pilsudski, on his own
initiative, visited Vilna and issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians
announcing that elections would be held, and asking them to make known
their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw government. One of
the many curious documents of the Conference is an official missive
signed by the General Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first
Polish delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come to terms
with the Lithuanian government, as behooves two neighboring states.
Unluckily for the soundness of that counsel there was no recognized
Lithuanian state or Lithuanian government to come to terms with.
As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and utterances of the
two world-menders were so infelicitous as to lend color to the
belief--shared by the representatives of a number of humiliated
nations--that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported
to be a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates were
currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive
capitalistic influences. Possibly they would have been astonished were
they told this: Great Britain was suspected of working for complete
control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from
the markets of that territory and to have potent levers for action in
Poland, Germany, and Russia. The achievement of that end would mean
command of the Baltic, which had theretofore been a German lake.[189] It
would also entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland,
and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians from
Germany's orbit into that of Great Britain. In vain the friends of the
delegates declared that economic interests were not the mainspring of
their deliberate action and that nothing was further from their
intention than to angle for a mandate for those countries. The
conviction was deep-rooted in the minds of many that each of the Great
Powers was playing for its own hand. That there was some apparent
foundation for this assumption cannot, as we saw, be gainsaid. Widely
and unfavorably commented was the circumstance that in the heat of those
discussions at the Conference a man of confidence of the Allies put this
significant and impolitic question to one of the plenipotentiaries: "How
would you take it if England were to receive a mandate for Lithuania?"
"The Great Powers," observed the most outspoken of the delegates of the
lesser states, "are bandits, but as their operations are on a large
scale they are entitled to another and more courteous name. Their gaze
is fascinated by markets, concessions, monopolies. They are now making
preparations for a great haul. At this politicians cannot affect to be
scandalized. For it has never been otherwise since men came together in
ordered communities. But what is irritating and repellent is the perfume
of altruism and philanthropy which permeates this decomposition. We are
told that already they are purchasing the wharves of Dantzig, making
ready for 'big deals' in Libau, Riga, and Reval, founding a bank in
Klagenfurt and negotiating for oil-wells in Rumania. Although deeply
immersed in the ethics of politics, they have not lost sight of the
worldly goods to be picked up and appropriated on the wearisome journey
toward ideal goals. The atmosphere they have thus renewed is peculiarly
favorable to the growth of cant, and tends to accelerate the process of
moral and social dissolution. And the effects of this mephitic air may
prove more durable than the contribution of its creators to the
political reorganization of Europe. If we compare the high functions
which they might have fulfilled in relation to the vast needs and the
unprecedented tendencies of the new age with those which they have
unwittingly and deliberately performed as sophists of sentimental
morality and destroyers of the wheat together with the tares, we shall
have to deplore one of the rarest opportunities missed beyond retrieve."
In this criticism there is a kernel of truth. The ethico-social currents
to which the war gave rise had a profoundly moral aspect, and if rightly
canalized might have fertilized many lands and have led to a new and
healthy state-system. One indispensable condition, however, was that the
peoples of the world should themselves be directly interested in the
process, that they should be consulted and listened to, and helped or
propelled into new grooves of thought and action. Instead of that the
delegates contented themselves with giving new names to old institutions
and tendencies which stood condemned, and with teaching lawless
disrespect for every check and restraint except such as they chose to
acknowledge. They were powerful advocates for right and justice,
democracy and publicity, but their definitions of these abstract nouns
made plain-speaking people gasp. Self-interest and material power were
the idols which they set themselves to pull down, but the deities which
they put in their places wore the same familiar looks as the idols, only
they were differently colored.
FOOTNOTES:
[127] In February, 1919.
[128] The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon, undertook to
recognize in principle the independence of Esthonia, provided that
Esthonia would take over her part of the Russian debt.
[129] In the first version of the Covenant, Article XIX deals with this
subject. In the revised version it is Article XXI.
[130] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 19, 1919.
[131] In July, 1919.
[132] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 19, 1919.
[133] The armistice concluded with Hungary was grossly violated by the
Hungarians and had lost its force. The Rumanians, when occupying the
country, demanded a new one, and drafted it. The Supreme Council at
first demurred, and then desisted from dictation. But its attitude
underwent further changes later.
[134] _The New York Herald_, (Paris ed.), August 20, 1919.
[135] _Ibid._, May 4, 1919.
[136] I discussed Belgium's demands in a series of special articles
published in _The London Daily Telegraph_ and _The Philadelphia Public
Ledger_ in the months of January, February, and March, 1919.
[137] In Frisia and Ghelderland.
[138] In August, 1919.
[139] By Article XXI of the Covenant and Article CCCCXXXV of the Treaty.
[140] I was in possession of a complete copy.
[141] Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, August 24, 1919.
[142] In February.
[143] Cf. Chapter, "Censorship and Secrecy." The writer of these pages
was the journalist.
[144] _Le Temps_, July 8, 1919.
[145] At the close of August, 1916.
[146] I was one of those who at the time maintained that even in the
Allies' interests Rumania ought not to enter the war at that
conjuncture, and anticipation of that invasion was one of the reasons I
adduced.
[147] Also known by the German name of Theiss.
[148] Cf. _Le Temps_, July 28, 1919.
[149] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), September 5, 1919.
[150] On June 13, 1919.
[151] On July 11, 1919, some days later, the decision was suspended,
owing to the opinion of General Bliss, who disagreed with Foch.
[152] On July 17, 1919.
[153] On July 20th.
[154] Estimated at 85,000.
[155] Moritz Kuhn, who altered his name to Bela Kuhn, was a vulgar
criminal. Expelled from school for larceny, he underwent several terms
of imprisonment, and is alleged to have pilfered from a fellow-prisoner.
Even among some thieves there is no honor.
[156] Italy was represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli, who resided
in Budapest; Britain, by Col. Sir Thomas Cunningham, who was in Vienna,
as was also Prince Livio Borghese. Later on the Powers delegated
generals to be members of a military mission to the Hungarian capital.
[157] At Bruck.
[158] On July 20th.
[159] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 4, 1919.
[160] This is a larger proportion than was left to the Germans by the
Treaty of Versailles.
[161] _Le Temps_, July 8, 1919.
[162] It was the habitual practice of the Conference to intrust missions
abroad to generals who knew nothing whatever about the countries to
which they were sent.
[163] _Le Temps_, August 8, 1919.
[164] Armistice of November 13, 1918, which had become void.
[165] On June 13, 1919.
[166] Composed of four members, one each for Britain, the United States,
France, and Italy.
[167] On July 20th.
[168] Paris journals ascribed it to Mr. Balfour, although it does not
bear the hall-mark of a diplomatist.
[169] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 13, 1919.
[170] Pertinax in _L'Echo de Paris_, August 10, 1919.
[171] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.
[172] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 13, 1919. Article by Auguste
Gauvain.
[173] General Gorton is the one who is said to have despatched the
telegram.
[174] In the beginning of September, 1919.
[175] The French government having prudently refused to furnish an
envoy, the British chose Sir George Clark.
[176] On June 10, 1919.
[177] The actors in this episode were not all officers and civil
servants. They included some men in responsible positions.
[178] In Teschen.
[179] On Friday, April 18, 1919.
[180] The Rumanians, on the contrary, had been ordered to keep to the
old conditions, although they, too, had lost their force.
[181] That is exactly what happened in the end. But the delegates would
not believe it until it became an accomplished fact.
[182] About twenty-five thousand had already left France.
[183] The Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Little Russians are racially the
same people, just as those who speak German in northwestern Germany,
Dutch in Holland, and Flemish in Belgium are racially close kindred. The
main distinctions between the members of each branch are political.
[184] The Messrs. Wilson, George, Clemenceau, Barons Makino and Sonnino.
M. Clemenceau was the nominal chairman, but in reality it was President
Wilson who conducted the proceedings.
[185] Bomst is a canton in the former Province (Regierungs-besirk) of
Posen, with about sixty thousand inhabitants.
[186] Minutes of this conversation exist.
[187] An interesting Russian tribe, dwelling chiefly in the provinces of
Minsk and Grodno (excepting the extreme south), a small part of Suvalki,
Vilna (excepting the northwest corner), the entire provinces of Vitebsk
and Moghileff, the west part of Smolensk, and a few districts of
Tshernigoff.
[188] La Société des Études Politiques. The discourse in question was
printed and published.
[189] In Germany and Russia the same view was generally taken of the
motives that actuated the policy of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The most
elaborate attempt to demonstrate its correctness was made by Cr. Bunke,
in _The Dantziger Neueste Nachrichten_, already mentioned in this book.
VII
POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE
Casting a parting glance at Poland as she looked when emerging from the
Conference in the leading-strings of the Great Western Powers, after
having escaped from the Bolshevist dangers that compassed her round, we
behold her about to begin her national existence as a semi-independent
nation, beset with enemies domestic and foreign. For it would be an
abuse of terms to affirm that Poland, or, indeed, any of the lesser
states, is fully independent in the old sense of the word. The special
treaty imposed on her by the Great Two obliges her to accord free
transit to Allied goods and certain privileges to her Jewish and other
minorities; to accept the supervision and intervention of the League of
Nations, which the Poles contend means in their case an
Anglo-Saxon-Jewish association; and, at the outset, at any rate, to
recognize the French generalissimus as the supreme commander of her
troops.
Poland's frontiers and general status ought, if the scheme of her French
protectors had been executed, to have been accommodated to the peculiar
functions which they destined her to fill in New Europe. France's plan
was to make of Poland a wall between Germany and Russia. The marked
tendency of the other two Conference leaders was to transform it into a
bridge between those two countries. And the outcome of the compromise
between them has been to construct something which, without being
either, combines all the disadvantages of both. It is a bridge for
Germany and a wall for Bolshevist Russia. That is the verdict of a large
number of Poles. Although the Europe of the future is to be a pacific
and ethically constituted community, whose members will have their
disputes and quarrels with one another settled by arbitration courts and
other conciliatory tribunals, war and efficient preparation for it were
none the less uppermost in the minds of the circumspect lawgivers. Hence
the Anglo-Saxon agreement to defend France against unprovoked
aggression. Hence, too, the solicitude displayed by the French to have
the Polish state, which is to be their mainstay in eastern Europe,
equipped with every territorial and other guaranty necessary to qualify
it for the duties. But what the French government contrived to obtain
for itself it failed to secure for its new Slav ally. Nay, oddly enough
it voted with the Anglo-Saxon delegates for keeping all the lesser
states under the tutelage of the League. The Duumvirs, having made the
requisite concessions to France, were resolved in Poland's case to avoid
a further recoil toward the condemned forms of the old system of
equilibrium. Hence the various plebiscites, home-rule charters,
subdivisions of territory, and other evidences of a struggle for reform
along the line of least resistance, as though in the unavoidable future
conflict between timidly propounded theories and politico-social forces
the former had any serious chance of surviving. In politics, as in
coinage, it is the debased metal that ousts the gold from circulation.
Poland's situation is difficult; some people would call it precarious.
She is surrounded by potential enemies abroad and at home--Germans,
Russians, Ukrainians, Magyars, and Jews. A considerable number of
Teutons are incorporated in her republic to-day, and also a large number
of people of Russian race. Now, Russia and Germany, even if they
renounce all designs of reconquering the territory which they misruled
for such a long span of time, may feel tempted one day to recover their
own kindred, and what they consider to be their own territory. And
irredentism is one of the worst political plagues for all the three
parties who usually suffer from it. If then Germany and Russia were to
combine and attack Poland, the consequences would be serious. That
democratic Germany would risk such a wild adventure in the near future
is inconceivable. But history operates with long periods of time, and it
behooves statesmanship to do likewise.
A Polish statesman would start from the assumption that, as Russia and
Germany have for the time being ceased to be efficient members of the
European state-system, a good understanding may be come to with both of
them, and a close intimacy cultivated with one. Resourcefulness and
statecraft will be requisite to this consummation. For some Russians are
still uncompromising, and would fain take back a part of what the
revolutionary wave swept out of their country's grasp, but circumstance
bids fair to set free a potent moderating force in the near future.
Already it is incarnated in statesmen of the new type. In this
connection it is instructive to pass in review the secret maneuvers by
which the recognition of Poland's independence was, so to say, extorted
from a Russian Minister, who was reputed at the time to be a Democrat of
the Democrats. As some governments have now become champions of
publicity, I venture to hope that this disclosure will be as helpful to
those whom it concerns as was the systematic suppression of my articles
and telegrams during the space of four years.[190]