E. F. Benson

“ Socialistic, revolutionary against the order of those things that have been swept away, it will no doubt be, but what it will not be is the mad destructive hurricane which at present is the only manifestation of the power behind it. Unless Germany wins the war, there will be a democratic Russia, sympathetic in blood and in constitution to a democratic Poland. Out of the disintegration that Germany has made in the nation of her foe, will arise order again, but it must not be order as established by Germany. ”

“ Just as Russia will not, according to the view of the National Democrats, object to the loss of Lithuania, so Lithuania will not object to Poland’s gain. Educated opinion there sees as clearly as the National Democrats themselves that she cannot stand alone, for that would speedily mean that she would be penetrated by Germany, and her most natural affiliation is to Poland. By blood she is a non-Russian country, and though by blood she is not predominantly Polish either, yet the Poles form a not negligible percentage of her population, while her civilization is purely Polish. ”

“ But when we come to the National Democrats and their allied groups we find for the first time in this short analysis of the main Polish parties, one that is as solid as the Jews, as well organised as any political party, largely dispersed and severed from its native land, can be, completely in accord in its aims, and representative not only of themselves but of many other parties in Poland, who would undoubtedly ally themselves to them, if they thought that the aims of their policy could be realized. These groups have as their entire aim the unity and independence of Poland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before that can be accomplished German arms must suffer a complete defeat, but unless it is accomplished, the Mittel-Europa policy will have won over the Entente and especially over England, Germany’s chief opponent in this little matter of world-wide dominion, a victory of the most decisive nature. For should Poland remain in a condition of dependence on the Central Powers—whom for the future it will be truer and more convenient to call simply “Germany”—and be obliged to lean on them, there will no longer be possible any bar or obstacle to the victorious advance of Germany eastwards. ”

“ This was a short-sighted and foolish reply, for the Jewish problem in Poland, if we are to see a strong and united Poland, is not to be solved by belittling their importance, or by hostility to them with a view to eliminating them. It cannot, indeed, be too strongly stated that a liberal policy with regard to Jews is absolutely essential to the coherence of the new Polish state. They are far too important and numerous to disregard, and hostility to them would merely result in making a strong pro-German party in a state which, in order to exist, must purge itself of pro-German elements. ”

“ Those who maintain that Turkey is a nation of peaceful and gentlemanly agriculturists, harassed in the past by the unwarrantable aggression of Russia, and now desirous only of being left to live a calm and Arcadian existence, are merely not aware that Turkey at the present time has no existence except as a military province of Germany, an acquisition of the very astute politicians of the Mittel-Europa school, who have hoodwinked them as completely as they have hoodwinked Turkey itself. ”

“ But it is one thing to stifle the expressions of national feeling, and quite another to extinguish the spirit that animates them, and in that regard they have signally failed. Austria alone for the last fifty years has acquitted herself of her obligations, and has granted to Galicia a fair equality of rights with the other races who compose her patch-work Empire, and a reasonable measure of autonomy. But it is not equality of rights among the subjects of different nations that the Polish National spirit desires. It does not ask for decent treatment at the hands of Germany or Russia or Austria. ”

“ Herr Gothein, one of the most acute of German political writers, advocated that Russian territories mainly inhabited by non-Poles should be united to Poland, because Poland would then be in a “natural permanent antagonism to Russia.” Germany would create, in fact, an Alsace-Lorraine problem, such as existed between her and France. But in this case she would, again on the principle of ‘Divide et impera,’ create it between her antagonists, an undeniably attractive scheme. ”

“ Austria would not give way to Germany, nor Germany to Austria, and as far as Poland was concerned, this disagreement postponed any solution of the political impasse. All the time famine was raging in Russian Poland, and also in Lithuania, where the mortality among children was terrible. Yet still parcels of food could be sent to Germany by occupying troops, without deducting from the food-rations of the recipients, and still Germany refused to guarantee—whatever her guarantee might be worth—that foreign relief for the starving Poles should be used for them and not for exportation into Germany. ”

“ The acquisition of German Poland and access to the sea are naturally part of the Polish ideal, but since Germany can never entertain such an idea these aspirations must be given up once and for all. As long as the war lasts, Poland must be content to be in German occupation. Poland can only prosper under German and Austrian protection, and the Poles must see to it that they use their rights in a way corresponding to German interests, for both Germans and Poles know that it was not sheer humanitarianism that called the new state into life, but the consideration of important political interests. ”

“ And if the powers of the Entente, successful, as is postulated from the first, over the Central Empires, consent to such an arrangement, they will have sowed tares among their corn.
The harvest that will eventually be reaped will have been of their own deliberate sowing. They will have sown the seeds of dissonance between their own allies, and when that harvest is ripe it will be Germany who will put in the sickle. A new Russia is essential to their aims as well as a new Poland, and it is vital that the two shall not start life growling over a contentious bone. ”

“ Germany insists that the whole well-being{205} of Poland depends on its German orientation—no mention of Austria occurs at all—and that to stand well with Germany it must prove its devotion by the shedding of its blood in the cause of Germany. [19] It has to take Germany on trust, blind, identify itself with German aims, give up all its aspirations, and revel in its independence! ”

“ In Russia, Germany’s programme, in accordance with the policy of Mittel-Europa, has been to sow the seeds of self-destruction in foreign fields, and when that crop was reaped to fertilize them afresh with vigorous Teutonic grain. A strong efficient Russia would always have been a barrier to her progress; for Russia, mistress of herself and her millions, and competent to develop her inexhaustible riches of men and material, would have been fatal to Germany’s unlimited expansion eastwards. ”

“ Poland, in fact, was being wooed by both the Central Empires, not so much, perhaps, as a desirable maiden, but as a fly that hovered between the webs of two spiders, and Austria, as a measure of enticement, ceded the district of Cholm back to Poland. But this scheme of uniting Galicia with Russian Poland, under a Habsburg regent was not, as we have seen, acceptable to Germany, particularly when Austria suggested that the Duchy of Posen should also become part of the new independent kingdom. ”

“ They demanded this, one and all, not primarily as a belated act of justice, nor, perhaps, primarily as the right of nations to a national existence, but as a measure of future defence against Germany, for Poland is a vitally essential part of the breakwater which they must erect against the hammerings of the Mittel-Europa billows. Without such a breakwater, without such a wall against the encroachments of the hungriest sea that ever beat upon a coast, the world will undoubtedly be battered into wreckage, and eventually be submerged. ”

“ From the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Seas the Russian armies are marching. The dawn of a new life is breaking for you. May the sign of the Cross illuminate this dawn, symbol of the Passion and the resurrection of the nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pilsudski was always ready to take the “best chance” for the independence of Poland (as when in 1904 he went to Japan and offered on behalf of the Socialists to organize an armed rising in Poland against Russia) and thus, since Russia at the outbreak of war was the wrongful holder of Lithuania and Poland, he raised the legions to fight against the most conspicuous opponent of Polish independence. Whatever Power, be it Russian or German, was in possession of Poland, that Power was Pilsudski’s enemy, and he always “went for” his enemy. ”

“ For over a hundred years Poland had been a dismembered kingdom, part of which belonged to the Tsar, part to the German, part to the Austrian Empire, and yet the course of the war has caused all the allied countries in turn to demand and to reiterate their demand for the independence of Poland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would raise a national army that would easily suffice to protect its national interests and independence, its size and population would perhaps even give it rank among the Great Powers, for already the Poles themselves constitute numerically the sixth European nation. Dawn would break on the night that has lasted for a hundred and fifty years of starless darkness. Such are the aims and the aspirations of the groups of Polish patriots, of whom the National Democrats are the chief. ”

“ Germany knows that no less well than we, and though her armies might be beaten in the field, and though she might be compelled to accept a peace without other annexations, coupled with the retrocession of Alsace and Lorraine to France, with the restoration of Belgium and the re-establishment of Serbia, if she could make an arrangement about Poland and the problems of her eastward expansion which are bound up with it satisfactory to her own statesmen, she would be entitled to consider herself at any rate undefeated. ”

“ And though such part of the native populations as is not of use to Germany may be starving, Turkey’s value as a military, an industrial, and an economic asset is vastly greater to-day than it ever has been, for Germany has set the Ottoman house in order since it is an annexe in the plans of her own world-wide palace, and Anatolian soldiers are a wheel in the great German war-machine, which shall Juggernaut its way over the entire globe. ”

“ Finally, on grounds of even wider and more essential expedience, this inclusion of Lithuania and the other Russian provinces in the new state of Poland is undesirable, since it would be an anti-democratic step, based not on the will of the people, but, precisely, on the Imperialistic spirit which our armies and our navies are fighting. The mere desire of possession is all the reason that can be produced for the National Democrat claims to Minsk and Volhynia, while ownership of land, which is at the base of the plea for Lithuania, is scarcely less Imperialistic than the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They intend also to give it access to the Baltic, without which it cannot hope to prosper or maintain itself. While the affairs of Eastern Europe are in a state of such chaotic flux, it would be useless to lay down with any approach to definiteness the actual frontiers of the new realm, or the territories which it will embrace, but the Governments of the Entente have singly and jointly proclaimed as one of the objects for which we are now fighting, the foundation of this new Poland the inhabitants of which may properly be described as Polish in blood, culture and sympathies. ”