CHAPTER IV

Poland’s Place in New Europe

At the present moment the policy of the National Democrats with regard to a united and independent Poland is concurred in by the Realists (landowners), the Progressives, the Christian Democrats, the party of Economic Independence and the National Union. Their united aims, including access to the sea for the new independent State, have been now centralized in the Polish National Committee, which has been formally recognised by the Entente Powers. M. Dmowski is its President in Paris, Count L. Sobanski represents it in England, M. Skirmunt in Italy, and M. Paderewski in America. But since many, if not all of the Polish Parties in the Kingdom of Poland (with the exception, a weighty one, of the Jews) would support its policy, if they thought that there was a chance of its being realized, it is very important that it should clearly be brought to their knowledge that the powers of the Entente are solid for the establishment of the new State, that, in fact, it forms an essential part of their scheme for annihilating the Mittel-Europa policy of Germany. It is true that there have been many single pronouncements on behalf of one or other of the Entente governments to this effect, but I would venture to suggest that a joint declaration[12] would be useful in order to restore in Poland a fuller confidence in the sincerity and unanimity of the Entente’s aims in this regard. During the events of the last year, owing to Germany’s success in her detachment of Russia and her crushing of Rumania, this confidence has undoubtedly been shaken, and an impression, zealously fostered by German propaganda, has been produced that the Entente, in the absence of a solid declaration on the subject, may be treating the question of Poland as a counter for bartering with. There has, too, been an ambiguity in the latest utterances of the Entente which has aroused suspicion, which it is most important to allay. Mr. Lloyd George, for instance, in January of this year, said “We believe that an independent Poland composed of all the genuine Polish elements desiring to form part of it is an urgent necessity for the stability of Eastern Europe,” and Mr. Wilson echoed the ambiguous “genuine Polish elements” by the phrase “incontestably Polish.”

This expression has been pounced on by Germany, and interpreted to the Poles as signifying the exclusion of any territory where the population is not completely Polish, and the insinuation has been made that since no territory is exclusively inhabited by Poles, the Entente mean to do nothing for them, except keep them as a make-weight to balance other concessions which Germany might have to make. It would restore Polish confidence in the sincerity of the promises made by the statesmen of the Entente, if it were possible for them to define their purposes a little more clearly, and “make known the interpretation thereof.”

Best of all would it be to demonstrate to the Poles that the existence not of a small Poland but a large one, not of a weak state but a strong one is as essential to the aims of the Entente as it is dear to the heart of all Polish patriots; that Poland’s interests are identical with their own, not merely for the reason that nations small and large have the right of a national existence, but because of the stark necessity of preventing German expansion at will eastwards. The motive of self-interest is always the clearest and most comprehensible to other people, and it is the self-interest of the nations of the Entente that Poland should be a nation too. The whole scheme is not difficult of explanation, and it is necessary to attempt it.

It may be taken for granted that when Germany has asked for peace and has obtained it, not on her own terms but on those of the Entente, the Dual Monarchy will automatically fall to bits. It is at present governed by two minorities, the Magyar and the German, which jointly exercise authority over a non-cohering congeries of nations alien to them in blood. Of such are the Czechs, the Croatians, the Poles, the Slovaks, etc., who are held together by the cement of German predominance. Touching but briefly on this, and as it were, for the instruction merely of Poles who do not understand how essential is the erection of the strong Polish state to the success of the policy of the Entente, we may note that, as has been incontrovertibly pointed out, another necessary link in the chain of Slav countries which will bar Germany’s progress eastward will be a new Bohemia, comprising the present Kingdom, Moravia, part of Austrian Silesia and perhaps the northern or Slovak portion of Hungary. This kingdom would consist of a large Czech majority, and would number altogether some eleven million inhabitants. This Czech obstacle in the middle of Germany’s highway to the East, is of the very first importance. A long frontier of this state would thus run between the New Poland and the New Bohemia, and the two would have between them the strong cement of a common German antagonism.

The restoration of a reinforced Rumania similarly, though not bearing directly on Poland, forms part of the scheme of the Entente; so too does the construction of the much-discussed Yugo-Slav state. Into all the intricacies of this, admirably set forth in the anonymous pamphlet quoted in the last chapter, it is not necessary to go, and indeed the mere analysis of the question is a matter for a separate treatise. To state the terms of it as briefly as possible, this Yugo-Slav state will consist of a population of Serbian speech, and include Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slavonia, and part at any rate of the Adriatic provinces of Dalmatia and Istria. This latter is of the first importance with regard to the effective combination of the Entente as touching Germany’s expansion eastwards, for it brings a new, powerful, Slav and anti-German state into touch with Italy and completes the cordon of the Western Allies.

It will be seen from this mere enumeration what the general policy of the Entente is with regard to these Slav countries. The Entente want to make the largest possible political units of them. To attempt to bar Germany’s progress by the creation or by the retention of a series of small states, would but give the signal for Germany to begin her nibbling again. Solid masses, not sundered units, must be put in her path, not a handful of pebbles which she can remove one by one, but ponderous rocks against which she will break in vain.

It is for this reason that the Yugo-Slav combination has been propounded, and for precisely the same reason the policy of the Entente demands a Poland that shall be powerful and united, not leaning for support on Germany, nor easily to be penetrated by her, but joined for all future years in sympathy and interests with the Slav nationalities that will be at her back for her support and buttressing, as she faces the power that tried to enslave her and failed. A small Poland, not uniting the vast majority of its nation, has no part in Polish aims, and it has none in the aims of the powers that will her unity. To be of practical use to them they must enable her to realize her own aspirations. To-day the powers of the Entente are facing a front of Germans and German vassals that stretches from Ypres, solid and unbroken through Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey, as far as Hit on the Euphrates. Behind it, at the disposal of the Central Empires lie the once-free countries they have enslaved or conquered, and, as in a barred room, their diabolical surgery goes on in the bodies of the bound, helpless but alive nations. But presently it shall be otherwise, and instead, a ring of living and vigorous peoples shall confine the power that once thought to enslave the world. From the shores of the Baltic, right across Europe to the shores of the Black Sea and the Adriatic, and from those shores westwards through Italy and France and northwards to England (the fort set on the seas that are free), and so across to the Baltic again shall the circle be formed, of which every part is essential and irreplaceable. And like some inexhaustible regiment in reserve America watches from the west.

But it is not only by land to check the soaking of the corrosive German acid eastwards, “peacefully” distilled by Jews and Turks, or to stay the march of German legions that a free and united Poland shall stand insolubly linked to anti-Teutonic forces, but by sea also that she shall hold in her hand the containing cord. As we have already noticed, the Central Empires have let slip what they really mean by the freedom of the seas, and by their gracious permission they concede to the rest of Europe undisputed passage over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: but they have explicitly told us that the freedom of the high seas does not extend to the narrow seas. The Black Sea therefore and the Adriatic and the Baltic must remain as they are to-day, German lakes, where perhaps ships of other nations may cruise for their own pleasure or for Germany’s profit, so long as Germany has not more serious business on hand. Then up shall go the signal “Closing Time,” and they shall be barred to us until Germany, behind fortified entrances and mined waters shall have made her naval preparations. There is no exaggeration about this: this is precisely what Germany means, and what she has said.

Thus not on land alone Poland shall be significant for the freedom of Europe; she will be, with the coast of the Baltic in her hands, significant as regards the freedom of the narrow seas over which Germany claims the sole control. For not only will the loss of this coast be an open door into the sea which otherwise Germany, in her present domination of the Baltic, might close at will, but in a far larger measure than this Poland will be an essential link in the chain that by sea no less than by land will effectually bar the limitless expansion of Germany’s scheme of slavery for the world. For here will be the northern termination of the line of unbroken anti-German states that will extend in a south-easterly direction across Europe to the ports of the second of the narrow seas that to-day is German, and from Dantzig to Costanza the line of federation will be complete. There on the Black Sea to-day every port is in German control. Through Turkey’s subordination to her she has her finger on Trebizond and Batoum, and the key to the whole of that littoral, Constantinople; by her peace with the Ukraine she is port-master of the South Russian harbours. By her conquest of Rumania, Costanza is controlled from Berlin.

But in order to ensure the freedom of the seas (by which we do not mean a freedom in the sense so clearly laid down by Count Czernin, according to which the control of the three European seas that are of supreme importance to Germany is excepted), it is vital to the interests of the Entente that the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles should remain no longer in Turkish hands. Earlier in the war the expulsion of the Turkish government from Constantinople was laid down as among the aims of the Entente in the prosecution of their purpose, but a few months ago that provision was cut out (perhaps with a view to inducing Turkey to desert the Central Empires), and she was told that she might keep Constantinople. This formed the subject of satirical comment on the part of a certain Turco-phil portion of the English press, and we were reminded that it was but reasonable to tell Turkey that she might retain that which we had been unable to take away from her. But whatever was the object of that concession it failed to detach Turkey, and it is most sincerely to be hoped that since Turkey rejected what she certainly understood to be an offer of terms to her, that offer and that concession will now be considered to be withdrawn. They were made, they were rejected, and—there is an end of them. For with Constantinople still in Turkish hands there can be but an insecure freedom of the Black Sea. It is impossible, however firmly, in a territorial sense, we may separate Germany from her present vassal, to prevent her reconstructing her hold over the Ottoman Empire. And with Constantinople and (in consequence) the Straits in Turkish hands, it will be worth Germany’s while to intrigue and permeate again, so that, at her bidding, Turkey can close the Straits, as she has often done before, when convenient to Germany. Our policy here, in fact, ought not only to aim at securing a reliable freedom of the Black Sea, but by the removal of the Turkish power from straits and capital alike, to make Turkey useless to Germany. Unless the Entente abate more of their demands, Turkey will at the conclusion of the war lose Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Arabia, but so long as she holds the straits in her hand she may be of use to Germany. And when a thing is of use to Germany she generally picks it up, and puts it in her pocket. She has already done that to Turkey, and though at the end of the war we must take Turkey out of her pocket again, she will assuredly put her back there some day when we are not looking (which occurs most days) if Turkey still holds the Straits.

It is, then, quite essential to the completion of the chain of seas which form part of the barrier that will prevent the armies of the Central Empires from progressing eastwards in accordance with any new scheme of conquest which they may frame, that the Black Sea shall not have doors that turn it, when closed, into a German lake: and equally essential is it that the Adriatic shall not have ports and harbours and defensive islands linked by interior lines of communication with the Central Empires. Treitschke once declared that Trieste was more important to Germany than Hamburg, and earlier yet Bismarck pronounced—and none of his utterances goes further to prove the genius of his statesmanship—that Trieste was the point of the German sword. That is profoundly true to-day, and since that sword-point is sharper now than ever, and flashes, poised with graver menace, it is the business of the Entente to break that point off and weld it shining and strong on to the sword of Italy. Europe is not to see the Adriatic with its long Italian coast-line on the one side, and the Dalmatian ports and islands on the other, turned into a German lake, according to Count Czernin’s programme. Too long already has the Adriatic constituted the cleavage between the East and West of Europe, with the powers of the Central Empires bridging it at the top, thus enabling them to menace and strike now East, now West. In the new Europe Italy shall join hands with the Yugo-Slav State on the East of that sea, with coast-line for both, and the Adriatic shall be under the guardianship of those to whom its shores belong.

It is not by bombing the holy places and palaces of Venice that Austria will cow the eternal youth of Italy into a senile submission, and though in sheer wantonness at the bidding of German Kultur she wrecks and makes irreplaceable the loveliest things that the hand of man has builded in answer to the instinct of the heart that loves beauty, she destroys not them only, but, irreplaceably also, her claim to be a civilised power, being naught else than the vassal of her mistress whom the world will never forgive. Like the St. George of Donatello, Italy stands there to guard her land, and her feet are beautiful upon the mountains and swift upon the plains where the Huns are gathered to destroy the loveliness of all the ages. By her are Jeanne d’Arc and St. George of England, and when the menace of Attila has been hurled back, Italy will reach out her hand across the narrow sea that Germany designed to be one of her harbours. And what Italy is in the south of Europe, and as regards the Adriatic, that precisely is Poland in the north and as regards the Baltic. Each links together the East to the two quarters of the West, completing the circle of free states that shall form the barrier against enslaving Powers. Each section of that encircling barrier is equally essential, for no security can come to the world till it is welded and complete.

It was in January of this year that a Polish member of the Chamber of Deputies in Vienna called attention to the iron oppression which Germany exercises over his native land, and a fellow-member whose nationality need not be indicated said to him—

“Dear Colleague, you forget that Germany is the power that has saved you.”

“If I fell into a river,” replied the other “and my saviour after pulling me out of the water refused to let me go, but constantly repeated ‘Now I have saved your life, you must be my slave,’ then I would pray God to save me from my saviour.... Stop this rescuing! Enough of this Salvation!”

And there in bleeding drops spoke the heart of Poland.

PART II

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF POLAND

CHAPTER I

The Russian Proclamation

Now the meaning which it is natural to attach to this proclamation about which there is a vague and sumptuous magnificence, is that Russia intended (i) to grant independence to Poland; (ii) to restore to it (as it indeed states) freedom in religion, in language, and in self-government, thereby acknowledging that Poland, in spite of the promises made it, had not hitherto enjoyed these benefits; and (iii) to unite to it, “by the annihilation of the frontiers which divide it,” the territories which at the three partitions in 1772, 1793 and 1795, were assigned to Germany and Austria. Poland was henceforth to be free and united under the suzerainty of the Tsar. Owing to the defeat of the Russian armies by those of the Central Powers, the Government was never in a position to effect this reunion, for a year afterwards Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland were in the hands of the enemy.

But during that year no practical steps of any serious or sincere sort were taken to give the smallest effect to this proclamation, and, without cynicism, it seems more reasonable to suppose that the motive behind it was in the main a defensive one on the part of Russia with “disarming intent.” Russia was proposing to advance victoriously on Berlin and Vienna in the crushing manner of the steam-roller about which our Press was once so irresponsibly resonant, and she knew very well that to have in the rear of her armies a race that for a hundred years had seethed with discontent at the withholding of the freedom that had been promised it, was to court disaster. It would have been necessary for her security to leave at least 20 per cent. of her forces to guard the lines of communication, and ensure quiet and order; moreover, in the Russian armies were enrolled some 800,000 Poles, who were being led against the armies of the Central Empires, which contained nearly the same number of men of their own race, drawn from the districts of Posen, Silesia, West Prussia and Galicia, and love of Russia, founded on detestation of Germany, had to rise superior in the breasts of her Polish soldiers, to love of race. The mention, moreover, of Grünwald, and the Grand Duke’s confidence that the Polish sword had not grown rusty, indicate that Russia asked for Poland’s loyal and unstinted military support. The Poles, soldiers and civilians alike, were for the moment capable of being a grave menace to the Russian arms, and this proclamation, endorsed as it soon was by the Governments of the Entente, was the surest way of commanding their loyalty and co-operation. In fact, the Grand Duke Nicholas did precisely what Alexander I had done a hundred years before, when in the Napoleonic wars Poland was able to constitute a menace to Russia, and had proclaimed the independence of Poland, in order to kindle Polish enthusiasm on Russia’s behalf. On that occasion, Poland, as we have seen, did not respond to this invitation, but joined the cause of Napoleon, with the result that in place of the fulfilment of the fine words, there followed for her the Congress of Vienna, which, instead of giving her independence, but confirmed the partitions and ushered in a century of oppression.

A further point to be noted about this proclamation is that it contains no hint that the provinces of the ancient republic now part of the Russian Empire, such as Lithuania, should be included in the reunited Poland to which the Grand Duke alluded, or that Russia contemplated in the faintest degree placing within the frontiers of the new autonomous state those territories which for the last hundred years she had incorporated into herself, and which were in fact ethnographically non-Polish, since the bulk of their inhabitants were White Russians or Little Russians. The National Democrats, and their allied groups also, who for years had worked for the unity and independence of Poland, at that date made no such claim, though their policy to-day includes the reunion with Poland of these provinces, but they accepted the Grand Duke’s manifesto as meaning that Russia intended to reunite with the Kingdom of Poland, Prussian Poland and Austrian Poland, and to place the whole with self-government, under the sceptre of the Tsar. Had Russia advanced into Germany and Austria, and made good her advance, so that in conjunction with France and England she could have dictated a peace, it is pretty clear that this was what she meant to do, and she probably would have been obliged to do it, since the Grand Duke’s proclamation as regards Poland was presently endorsed by all the Allies.

Now Russia never had the opportunity of fully vindicating her good faith with regard to the proclamation, for while she was in a state of war, and must needs strain every nerve to the vigorous prosecution of that, it would have been unreasonable to expect her to devote energies to the accomplishment of her promise, and within a year her armies, as we have noticed, had retreated from the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia altogether, leaving the enemy in possession. But during that year the Russian Government, distrusting perhaps the effect of the Grand Duke’s proclamation, did not endorse it by any practical measure, but on the other hand preserved and pursued a policy which was distinctly anti-Polish. Notices on the railways and in other public places written in Polish were suppressed, and the Russian advance through Galicia was followed by the importation of civil servants from Russia to replace Poles. As a guarantee of good faith, the Government might at least have begun placing Poles in official positions hitherto held by Russians, but nothing of the sort was done. Up till August, 1915, when the Germans were at the gates of Warsaw, the Russian Government made no official announcement about Polish independence, nor did they take any practical steps to warrant sincerity. All that the Russian Government did with regard to the fulfilment of the Grand Duke’s proclamation during that period was to nominate a Russo-Polish Commission in May, 1915, with the object of elaborating a project of Polish autonomy. There were six Poles on this commission, including M. Dmowski and Count Wielopolski, and six Russian representatives under the Presidency of the Prime Minister Goremykin. They could not come to any agreement, and the Polish members thereupon drew up and presented to the Government their own proposals. These dealt with two points: (i) immediate changes in the administration of the Kingdom of Poland, (ii) a constitution for Poland which recognised her as a separate state, under the Russian sceptre. This project was never even considered by the Russian Government, and, as was only natural, the sincerity of the Grand Duke’s proclamation came to be seriously questioned. But it is most significant that at the moment of Germany’s advance into Poland, Goremykin, then Minister of the Interior in Russia, announced to the Duma the granting of autonomy to Poland. The object of this was perfectly clear: now, when the enemy was in possession, the Government at last confirmed the Grand Duke’s promises in order to prevent the Poles from embracing the cause of the Central Empires and furnishing recruits for their armies. The confirmation, in fact, of the original proclamation, unrealisable, since the German armies were in occupation, was made in the same spirit as the proclamation itself. We may then, I think, take it for granted that no independent Polish state, to include all the territories of ancient Poland, was ever for a moment contemplated by Russia, nor demanded by Polish Nationalists, and that, as far as practical steps can supply a criterion of motive, the proclamation of the Grand Duke was little more than a defensive measure against Polish disloyalty in the face of the enemy.

Had there been any seriousness of purpose in the Russian Government of granting Poland the national rights so long promised her and so long withheld, some earnest of that purpose would have been given during the year when Russia was in a position to do so. Nothing of the sort was done, and it was not till Germany was in occupation that the independence of Poland was announced to the Duma, and then again no hint of any reality behind this can be ever so faintly detected, for when the Tsar summoned a conference in February, 1917, to discuss the constitution of Poland, it got no further than to debate whether the Polish National prayer might in special circumstances be recited in church! This weighty question was left, as far as I can ascertain, undecided.

In their retreat the Russian armies did their utmost, in obedience to the necessity of the military situation, to render the country a desert in front of the advance of the Central Powers. According to the report of a Dutch Relief Committee, 5,000 villages were destroyed, two million head of cattle and a million horses were requisitioned or died from want of fodder, and 400,000 workmen were out of work. The Russians cut down trees and dragged them across the fields where the crops stood high, thus helping to create the famine from which Poland still suffers; they dismantled industrial establishments, smashing up the machinery and carrying away such as they could transport into Russia, and in the midst of the desert they had made there were left more than a million Polish peasants homeless and absolutely destitute. Others, the more able-bodied, fled in front of the retreating army, and the country was stricken with the sufferings and the horrors that resulted from the débâcle of the Russian armies. These acts of devastation were, no doubt, dictated by the military necessity, but it was no wonder that they produced the greatest bitterness in the minds of an indigent and starving population, to whom, less than a year before, independence had been promised and the dawn of the fulfilment of their national aspirations proclaimed. Those weeks of the retreat from Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland did more to embitter Polish feeling against Russia than decades of neglect and misrule. Instead of freedom, this military disaster gave them famine, and made a desert of the territory that had been promised liberty.

The native Polish population took the German entry into Warsaw in silent composure. They ignored, they disregarded it, except that in some of the streets blinds were drawn down, as if in protest or in mourning, when the troops passed. Hostile demonstrations were out of the question, but assuredly among the mass of the population there was no enthusiasm. After the manner in which the Russians had treated this unhappy country, both during the hundred years of their possession and at this crisis, it is no wonder that there possibly were, if the German accounts can be trusted, certain local exhibitions of thanksgiving over the removal of the Russian yoke, or that on the anniversary of the German entry in August, 1916, there was a demonstration, organised by the pro-German Club of the Polish state at the memorial set up at Warsaw to commemorate the death of Polish insurrectionists who had been shot by the Russians in 1864. Otherwise only the Jews, who constitute 35 per cent. of the inhabitants of Warsaw, hailed the Germans as deliverers, and on the same day on which the pro-German Club of the Polish state held their commemoration, we find recorded in the Warschauer Tageblatt, a Jewish organ, an enthusiastic celebration of the German entry, which proclaims that this day should be inscribed in golden letters in the records of Polish Jews. “The spirit of Europe,” it remarks, “entered in contrast to Asiatic tyranny,” and it speaks of the Sporting Clubs, the Scout Societies instituted by Germans, in which orders are given in Yiddish for the sake of the Jews now at length allowed to become members of them. For German administration proclaimed full equality for Jews, gave their children religious education, and admitted them to hold office in various state departments hitherto not open to them. This treatment of the Jews was part of German policy to accentuate the acute bad feeling already existing between them and the Poles, for anything, according to German views, which sows discord in the non-German population of her empire is to be encouraged, since it relatively increases her own ascendancy. But we cannot possibly take these demonstrations as illustrative of the Polish national spirit, for they were not of Polish but of Jewish origin. Beyond doubt the Poles, by now, bitterly detested the Russians, who had cajoled them with empty promises of which the fulfilment was famine, but they were not a whit the more friendly to the invaders.

Apart from the defeat of the Russian armies, Germany and Austria hoped that the acquisition of Poland would supply the Central Empires with man-power and with foodstuff. In both these respects they suffered a considerable disappointment, for neither came within leagues of their expectations. But they used the dearth of supplies caused by the destruction in the Russian retreat and augmented by the needs of their own armies as an instrument whereby they might encourage emigration of Poles into Germany for industrial work, while to accentuate the sharpness of this instrument both they and the Austrians laid hands on such foodstuffs as were available. Before the war the production of grain in Russian Poland completely covered the country’s own consumption, and a certain amount was exported; now, owing in part to the Russian destruction of crops, and in part to this commandeering of supplies, there was an acute bread famine. Train-loads of potatoes and wild geese left for Vienna, while Germany during the ensuing months managed to secure 253,000 wagons of provisions, chiefly corn and meat, from the districts of Lomza, Plock and Kalisch, where the Russian retreat seems to have been too hurried to allow systematic destruction, and setting her tabulating statisticians to work she calculated that Poland should be able to send annually into Germany sixty million eggs and a million wild geese. It was also ordained that Poland should support the army of occupation, and permission was given to soldiers to send parcels of food to their relatives in Germany, the contents of which should not be deducted from the rations of the recipients. Similarly all copper, tin, lead and pewter were requisitioned for the needs of the army. At the same time large quantities of seed-corn were brought into the country from Denmark, making a provision for the army and possibly for the Poles in future years.

It is no wonder that, when we consider that these levies were made on a population that was already starving, the destitution of thousands became appalling, and in especial the mortality among infants. In many towns milk and all fats were absolutely non-existent; we read of children so soft of bone that they could not stand upright, and of a plague of scurvy in Warsaw, which affected 90 per cent. of the poorer classes. Food-riots were frequent, and were suppressed with Prussian thoroughness. Yet when the British Foreign Office asked Berlin for a guarantee that supplies let through the blockade should be used for Poland and not for Germany, and that the native foodstuffs should not be used for the maintenance of the occupying armies, it was refused. Needless to say, a chorus of vituperation burst from the Press at British inhumanity, which inhumanity consisted precisely in this, namely, that the British Government did not see its way to let the charity of other countries revictual Germany. Such relief as reached Poland by land routes was put into the hands of Hindenburg to administer, which augured well for the comfort of German soldiers, if not for that of those for whom it was sent.

This policy of starving the Poles in order to supply their own wants both Germany and Austria continued brutally to exercise, and as late as November, 1917, innumerable trucks of fruit, corn and potatoes were passing out of the starving country into that of its occupiers. We may judge from this what fraction of foreign supplies would have been allowed to feed the people for whom they were to be sent.[14]

The starvation which was intended to further Polish emigration into Germany failed in its effect, and we find that only about 21,000 Poles were induced to go, of whom a certain number were taken by force. They did not respond at all eagerly to the bait of “peace and plenty” in the Fatherland, and they viewed with a suspicion that their “deliverers” could ill understand, letters purporting to come from their countrymen there who spoke of the delightful conditions prevailing in Germany. On one occasion von Beseler, the German Governor of Warsaw, sent such an account to the Editor of a Warsaw paper, who refused to publish it unless he inserted a footnote saying that the entire communication came from the German military authorities. For this contumacy he was fined 4,000 marks. Those of the Poles who went were, like the Jews and natives from Lithuania, not permitted to return, and we hear of some of them at work in the Zeppelin sheds at Oldenburg, while interned Polish prisoners were trained and sent to the front.

Similarly the man-power desired by the Germans for recruits in the armies of the Central Empires was not forthcoming at all. Germany had made a grave miscalculation, for though there were tens of thousands of Poles ready to fight against Russia from patriotic motives, there was not one per cent. of these who were ready to fight for Germany. Germany, according to the official German view, had delivered the country from the Russian yoke, and had zealously proclaimed her liberating rôle. But what she failed to understand was that the national sentiment of Poland had no greater affection for Germany than it had for Russia. There were few, except the Jews in Poland, who looked on Germany as their deliverer, though Germany made the most of the very gratifying remarks which they addressed to the Kaiser about the invincibility of his armies. But as a practical test of the extent and depth of such emotions, the result of recruiting for purely German purposes after the declaration of the Polish state was not encouraging. For the Poles resented the Germanization of Posen and Silesia just as much as they resented the Russification of other parts of the ancient realm. The result, in any case, of the appeal to die, not for Poland but for Germany, as we shall see later, was highly unsatisfactory. The occupied territories made no response whatever.

CHAPTER II

The First Year of the German Occupation

Germany seems to have realised from the first that the management of the occupied territory of the Kingdom of Poland would present difficulties, and, apart from its systematic starvation, necessitated by the needs of her armies, and her desire for industrial emigration into Germany, she adopted a wiser policy than she did, for instance, in Belgium. Warsaw was taken on August 5, 1915, and schools were reopened there by August 25th, and both in primary and secondary classes Germany allowed Polish to be taught. German and Polish in fact were compulsory languages in schools, and German was taught by Poles. Russian, however, was completely prohibited, and no books or papers other than those that had passed a German censorship were allowed to be introduced into the territory at all. Similarly as an anti-Russian measure she permitted the Byzantine ritual for Greek Catholics, which Russia had prohibited. Now Germany had barred the teaching of Polish in schools in the Duchy of Posen and Prussian Poland, but then she had definitely annexed them and incorporated them into the German Empire, and any attempt at conciliation there was mere weakness. But she was still doubtful whether this fresh conquest was ripe for a similar coercion, and in the interval she tried with an amazingly small degree of success to establish friendly relations with the inhabitants.

Russia, moreover, in this summer of 1915, was far from disabled, and there might still be severe fighting on the Eastern frontiers of Poland. It was wise therefore, firstly, so long as no sacrifice was entailed, to seem to adopt a more liberal policy of government than Poland had previously enjoyed, in order, if possible, to make the inhabitants of the occupied territories better content with her rule than that of Russia. Just as in 1914 the motive of the Grand Duke’s proclamation was to avoid having a disloyal and discontented population in the rear of the Russian armies, so in 1915 such indulgences as were given to the Poles were granted by Germany for precisely the same reason as they had been dangled in front of them before by the Russians. Secondly, a fresh invasion of the occupied territory from the East was still to be reckoned with, and her armies might be pushed back. In that case she would have secured, once more in the rear of the enemy’s line, a population that found it had fared better under her temporary rule than under that of the power which had laid their country waste. A third alternative was that she would remain permanently in possession of Poland, and so she proceeded apace with her usual penetrative work, on which we will touch presently.

But what chiefly occupied her with regard to Poland was the determination of what she wanted to do with it. Given that Poland was not going to be reconquered by Russia, there were the proposals of her Austrian Allies, who were meditating a programme far more attractive to the Poles than was any arrangement which Germany had the slightest intention of proposing, to be digested and disposed of. In brief, this “Austrian solution” was as follows the Kingdom of Poland, hitherto Russian, should be joined to Galicia, ceded by Austria, to form a self-governing state under a Habsburg prince, who, being Catholic, would be acceptable to the nation. This scheme obtained some adherents among the Poles, especially the Poles of Galicia of the class whose interests were bound up with the Austrian government, for during the last fifty years they had received far better treatment at the hands of Austria than either Russia or Germany had granted to the provinces that fell to them through the partions. Hatred of Russia combined with hatred of Germany, who made no corresponding proposal about the cession of the Duchy of Posen, inclined many of the more moderate Polish groups, such as the League of the Polish State, to welcome some such Austrian solution as the best that they were likely to secure, and almost immediately after the German occupation of Warsaw the Austrian government published the manifesto of the Galician Supreme National Council, which set forth the general terms of the proposed arrangement. Germany strongly objected to this as inopportune in its appearance, the inopportunity chiefly consisting in the fact that she had not sanctioned it, and did not mean to. In consequence, a similar resolution of the Polish Parliamentary Club in Vienna was only privately circulated. Simultaneously Count Julius Audrassy announced that the Central Powers were agreed that Poland should never go back to Russia, that a new partion would be dangerous, and that she should form a political body with assured individuality as a state with a Polish government. This was confirmed in December, 1915, by a joint declaration of Baron Burian and Bethmann-Hollweg. As we shall see, the consideration of the Austrian solution, and the discussion over it between the two Central Empires lasted more than a year before Germany finally vetoed it, declaring on November 5, 1916, to the Poles of the Kingdom of Poland, the establishment of a State of their own. From the first she viewed this Austrian solution with distrust, as checking her own development Eastwards, for it was a very different matter from creating a state which she herself could penetrate, easily riddling it in an economical and political, and, in spite of the fiasco she was about to experience with regard to recruiting, in a military sense. But it was objectionable to contemplate a new Kingdom of Poland, subject to a Habsburg prince, interposed in the eastward march of German influence. Much might be gained, no doubt, by the withdrawal of Polish representatives from the Reichsrat who would henceforth sit in the Diet of the new state, thus increasing German preponderance in the Reichsrat. Indeed, since the occupation of part of Russian Poland by Austria, many high Polish officials in Vienna had been drafted into the Administration of Poland, and their places had been taken by Germans, but Germany was uneasy about it all. Possibly Austria, with this fresh accession of territory, and the chance of raising an army where Germany had failed, might assert an inconvenient independence of Berlin, whereas at present she was bound to her. For the dependence of Austria on Germany, her indissoluble Alliance, which amounts to exactly the same thing as her complete subjugation, was a thing not lightly to be risked.

But though the solution of the Polish question might wait, there was no reason why a revised system of taxes should do so, and by March, 1916, Germany was in receipt of a very handsome revenue from her occupied territory. The chief of these taxes were as follows: