“In all Europe there is no other people, with the possible exception of the French, which is naturally so gifted. No one can study Eastern Europe without feeling that they are infinitely the most attractive of the peoples with which he has to do. They are the only ones in whose composition there is included that subtle differentia which marks off the ‘big nation’ from the ‘small.’”[49]
On the other hand, it must be admitted that in the past the Poles have shown themselves deficient in organizing and administrative ability, in economic enterprise, in cohesion, solidarity, and discipline. A century and more of servitude to foreigners has not been the best of schooling for orderly and efficient self-government, nor has it permitted the nation to keep altogether abreast of the West in intellectual and economic progress. And Poland, wedged in between a vindictive Germany and a presumably none too friendly Russia, occupies what may fairly be called the most exposed and dangerous position in Europe.
Nevertheless, the brilliant and original genius of the Polish people; their ardent and unsurpassed spirit of patriotism; the lessons which they may be presumed to have learned from their misfortunes; the reassuring evidence supplied by their conduct during these last two critical years—all this affords ground for hope, not only that Poland has permanently recovered her independence, but that she is capable of becoming again what she was for so many centuries in the past: a bulwark of liberty, republicanism, and Western civilization in the troubled East of Europe.
Bibliographical Note
One of the most useful aids to the study of questions relating to Poland is Professor E. Romer’s admirable Geographic and Statistical Atlas of Poland, published in Polish, French, and German: Warsaw and Cracow, 1916. An English edition is soon to be issued.
Almost all sides of Polish life today, political, economic, intellectual, and artistic, are described in compendious and scholarly fashion, and with an abundance of maps, statistics, and historical information, in the works published during the War by the Committee for Encyclopaedic Publications on Poland. This Committee has published La petite Encyclopédie polonaise, Paris-Lausanne, 1916 (translated into English under the title: Poland, her People, History, Industries, Finance, Science, Literature, Art, and Social Development); and the larger Encyclopédie polonaise, Fribourg-Lausanne, 1917-19, of which vols. i (geography and ethnography), ii, pt. 3 (territorial development of Polish nationality—in four volumes), iii (economic life), and iv (political and administrative regime) have hitherto appeared.
A very convenient handbook of statistical data about Poland is the Annuaire statistique polonais by E. Romer and I. Weinfeld, Cracow, 1917.
E. H. Lewinski-Corwin’s Political History of Poland, New York, 1917, is perhaps the best account of the subject available in English, although marred by a certain amount of patriotic exaggeration and party prejudice.
Among works dealing with the several territories which have been in dispute, the following are notable:
On Prussian Poland: Ludwig Bernhard, Die Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910. (A moderate German view.) Joseph Partsch, Schlesien, pts. 1-2. Breslau, 1896-1911. “Liber” (C. Andrzejewski), Das Deutschtum in Westpolen (Preussisch-Polen), seine Zahl, seine Gliederung, sein Stärkeverhältniss gegenüber den Polen. Posen, 1919.
On the Galician question: W. Lutoslawski and E. Romer, The Ruthenian Question in Galicia. Paris, 1919. H. Grappin, Polonais et ruthènes. La question de Galicie. Paris, 1919. Both these works are partisan statements from the Polish side. M. Lozynsky, Les “Droits” de la Pologne sur la Galicie. Lausanne, 1917. E. Levitsky, La Guerre polono-ukrainienne en Galicie. Berne, 1919. This and the preceding represent the Ukrainian point of view.
On the question of Poland’s eastern frontier: L. Wasilewski, Die Ostprovinzen des alten Polenreichs. Cracow, 1916. By all means the most complete and illuminating survey of Poland’s past relations with Lithuania, White Russia, and the Ukraine, and of the recent growth of nationalist movements in those regions. K. Verbelis, La Lituanie russe. Geneva, 1918. (Lithuanian views and claims.) T. Savtchenko, L’Ukraine et la question ukrainienne. Paris, 1918. (Views of a Ukrainian nationalist.)
POLAND
FOOTNOTES:
[43] Here and in the ensuing chapters the word ‘race’ is used in its popular sense, as virtually equivalent to ‘people’ or ‘nation,’ rather than in the strict sense in which the word is employed by ethnologists. R. H. L.
[44] The Peace Conference appears to have adopted last autumn some sort of a provisional boundary for Poland on the east. As far as I understand the matter, however, this boundary represents only a minimum line. Whatever lies to the west of it is indisputably Polish, and henceforth in the opinion of the Conference should belong unconditionally to Poland. It is not implied, however, that Poland may not have valid claims to additional territories farther east—claims which can only be settled by negotiations between Poland and Russia.
[45] If the territory of the Free City of Danzig be included in this reckoning, the number of Germans that may be separated from the Empire would rise to 2,400,000 in round numbers.
[46] This figure refers to that part of East Prussia which will unquestionably remain to Germany. If the Mazurian and Marienwerder plebiscite areas vote to remain with Germany, the number of Germans cut off from the Reich by the Polish couloir will be a little over 2,000,000.
[47] The total population of the city and its district in 1910 was 324,000, of which number only 16,000 were entered in the census as having Polish as their ‘mother tongue.’
[48] I owe the comparison to Mr. L. B. Namier’s excellent article on “Poland’s Outlet to the Sea,” in The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 81 (1), Feb. 1917.
[49] Ralph Butler, The New Eastern Europe, p. 4.