Geoffrey Drage

“ Minerals.—The most important production in Galicia was that of petroleum, which was estimated, in 1914, as being 3% of the world's output and 9% of that of Europe, including Russia. The petroleum industry has attracted an abundant flow of international capital and has thus been able to adopt every device for profitable exploitation.
The chief coal-fields are those of Silesia where the production in 1911 was some 36 million tons, while that of Galicia was 11/2, and that of Poland 53/4 million tons. Other notable mineral industries are those of iron, zinc and lead. ”

“ Poland was methodically laid waste. . . . Only blackened ruins marked the site of villages, and since the German army ate up all supplies, famine stalked through the land. . . . The material damage can scarcely be estimated ... all labour and industry have been swept away.” In addition to the devastation, the currency was depreciated and the Customs, which might have provided revenue, were to go to Germany and Austria.
The Council was responsible for the drawing up of a constitution. A committee was formed in which all shades of opinion were represented. ”

“ Competition with Russian industry was a different thing to competition with German industry, especially under the protection of the Russian tariff wall. Hence the growth of a strong middle class in which the Jews took a considerable part, some of the leading Jewish families even marrying into and being received as part of Polish society in Warsaw. The economic development became a strong bond of union with Russia and Polish textiles penetrated through the empire as far as Turkestan. ”

“ He is usually a middleman or intermediary. In towns the majority of the shops are owned by Jews, but they are a race apart, hated and despised by the rest of the population, devoted to their religion, which is a primitive type of Judaism.
The Jews have been settled in Poland between 800 and 1,000 years so that they can hardly be considered “strangers” in the land, in fact the Slavs cannot be considered very much more native than they. It was not, however, until about 20 years ago that the present quarrel between the Jews and the Poles began. ”

“ The industrial development of Germany had brought about a great immigration of Polish labourers to work as agriculturists in eastern Germany and as miners in Westphalia. Bismarck descried danger here and after unsuccessfully trying to prevent it by expelling the immigrants essayed to counteract it by further Germanization of Poland. The appointment of the Land Commission in 1886 with £5,000,000 to buy land from Poles in Posen and W. Prussia and sell it to German colonists was the first step in the policy of German colonization which was pursued till the outbreak of the war. ”

“ Agriculture was most highly developed in Prussian Poland where the latest agricultural implements and scientific manures were employed. The breeding of domestic animals, especially horses, showed distinct progress before the war. In the kingdom of Poland pig-breeding was particularly encouraged. Cattle and pigs were most numerous in Posnania and W. Prussia while in Galicia the horned stock were well up to the average for Austria in general. ”

“ The Jewish Question.—One of the most important questions to be considered by the new Polish State is that of the Jews. Numerically they form roughly one-seventh of the population. In Warsaw a third of the population are Jews: in many provincial towns four out of every five inhabitants are Jews and in some nine out of ten, and of these the vast majority are Eastern Jews who in language, religion and customs differ from the population. Their language is Yiddish, a Middle-High German dialect ”

“ As regards railways, in 1912 the kingdom of Poland had 2·9 km. per sq. km., the Polish provinces of Prussia had 9·27 km. and Galicia (1911) 5·24 kilometres. As the railways were constructed for the most part from a strategical point of view, industry did not benefit so much from them as it might otherwise have done. The poor railway system between Russia and Danzig was one of the causes of the decline of the trade of that port. ”

“ From 1877 onwards the “Polish Club” in the Reichsrat became a governmental party and used all its influence to build up piecemeal the fabric of Polish autonomy in Galicia. On the whole the Poles did not use their power well. By the establishment of an academy of science at Cracow they did indeed encourage learning, but they did nothing to improve the economic condition of the people. The peasants remained ignorant and thetowns were neglected. No Polish middle class was created and hence the Jewish element predominated in trade and commerce. ”

“ At first both the Austrians and the Germans distrusted the movement as they stood to lose should Pilsudski achieve the national independence for which he was working. Austria moreover was hostile to any idea of Polish union and to anything which might lead to increased autonomy in Galicia. Recruiting, therefore, was forbidden. Later the Germans, realizing that the strength of Russia would be decreased as the strength of the Polish legions was increased, allowed recruiting to take place among the Russian Poles. ”

“ The third and most important war was that with the Bolsheviks. The war was caused by the German troops evacuating the eastern territories in a way which was contrary to agreement and which allowed the Bolsheviks to occupy the territory before the Polish troops could be brought up. The local population in the occupied zones appealed to the Poles for aid and, as a further advance seemed imminent, the Poles were forced to fight. The Poles have been accused of entering into this war with the Bolsheviks with imperialistic and aggressive aims. ”

“ Economic autonomy is established by means of chambers of agriculture, commerce, industry, etc., which will together form the Supreme Economic Chamber of the Republic, the competence of which required further legislation. ”

“ The kingdom of Poland had 17 agricultural syndicates in 1909, for selling agricultural products and buying machinery, manures, etc., the most important of these being the Central Society of Agriculture, founded in 1907. These societies were most developed in Prussian Poland, particularly in Posnania, where in 1913 there were 388 Polish agricultural societies. There were also numerous cooperative societies. Galicia also possessed agricultural, cooperative and mutual insurance societies. ”

“ That a genuine and not a “masked” equality be accorded to the Jewish population of Poland. That all outrages against the person and property of the subject, irrespective of race or religion, should be promptly punished and the names of the delinquents published. That the Jews in E. Galicia be restored to their official positions in the same manner as non-Jews have been. That no restrictions should be placed upon the number of Jews admitted to the universities. ”

“ The aim of this party was the independence of Poland. In 1900 he was arrested on account of his socialistic writings but he escaped to London, after simulating madness, and two years later returned to Poland. At this time he and his associates “adhered to Socialism because they recognized in it the only powerful revolutionary and democratic force of our time and their supreme aim was, by revolutionary means to win Polish Independence.”
In about 1904 Socialism in Poland became a wide popular movement. Pilsudski was responsible for organizing the military element in the new party. ”

“ The Cooperative Societies' Bank, founded in 1910, formed a financial centre for the societies. With regard to savings banks, by the end of 1912 there were in Galicia 53 banks with deposits amounting to 336 million francs. In Prussian Poland cooperative societies were established on the principles of Schulze-Delitzsch and on the Raiffeisen system—after 1900 buying and selling societies were founded. The Polish credit institutions in Prussia, deriving their capital solely from Polish sources, had at disposal the sum of 498,631,000 francs. ”

“ The legislative power is given to a Diet and a Senate, which are summoned, adjourned and dissolved by the President. The Diet is composed of paid members elected for five years, upon a system of proportional representation. Suffrage is universal—all who enjoy full civic rights and who are over 21 being qualified to vote, but, since voting is personal, soldiers on active service are excluded. Citizens over 25 are eligible for election to the Diet with the exception of members of the Civil Service, who cannot be elected for the district in which they hold office. ”

“ When the Polish independence parties at Warsaw asked for the nomination of Pilsudski as the commander-in-chief of a Polish army all the concessions previously granted by the Germans were withdrawn. Pilsudski then appealed to the Austrians. The Austrians' ideas with regard to Poland had undergone a slight change, and though suspicious of Pilsudski and his legionaries, the Government decided to encourage them in the hope that a union might be effected of the Polish kingdom and Galicia under Austrian protection. ”

“ The production of coal in Congress Poland and Galicia does not suffice to cover the requirements of the countries at present constituting the Polish State. The Reparations Committee assigned to Poland only 250,000 tons of coal per month from Silesia; and the Polish Coal Sub-Committee has granted a lump sum of 450,000 tons of coal. This lack of coal is one of the most serious hindrances to the reorganization of Polish industry. ”

“ He is elected for seven years by the National Assembly, that is, the Diet and Senate acting together. Laws are to be signed by him and by the President of the Council and the minister concerned. The President has the supreme power in the army, except in time of war when the Minister for War is responsible for all military affairs. The President can declare war and make peace only with the consent of the Diet. He has the right of pardon.
For purposes of administration Poland is to be divided into palatinates, districts and urban and rural communes, these forming the units of local government. ”

“ In 1915 the Polish situation was again changed by the military campaigns. On June 22 Lemberg was retaken from the Russians and on Aug. 5 the Germans entered Warsaw: thus German power was established in Russian Poland and Austrian power reestablished in Galicia. Among the Poles themselves, in 1915, party differences seemed to decrease. In Dec. the Radical Socialist elements formed a central national committee. It was composed of the Peasants' party; the Union of Workers; the Polish Socialist party and the Club of Polish Statehood (Studnicki) . The aim of the league was to work for independence ”

“ The oil industry was not much devastated by the war, but for the first five months of 1919 the Boryslaw-Truskawiec basin and that of Bikhov were under Ukrainian administration, and oil had to be used instead of coal for working the shafts. In 1920 about half the textile industry had been mobilized and many factories started in Lodz and also in Czenstochowa, Kalisz and Bielsk. ”

“ The war left Poland in “a pitiable economic situation.” The country was devastated in the first years of the war and then its resources were drained by the German occupation. The mobilization of Polish industry depends on currency stability, improved transport conditions and an abundance of available coal. The following statistics show the number of industrial workers employed before the war and on Jan. 1 1920:—
It will be seen that the coal industry has, in spite of housing and provisioning difficulties, increased from the pre-war standard. ”

“ It was decided by the Allied and Associated Powers that Eastern Galicia should be given autonomy for 25 years under the protection of Poland, after which settlement was to be made by plebiscite. Although the majority of the inhabitants of Eastern Galicia were Ruthenians the Poles claimed the territory and this decision of the Powers caused an outcry in Warsaw. ”

“ By the splitting-up into small parcels of the large estates an ever increasing class of peasant proprietors was instituted because the small freeholders, who included in their numbers members of the smaller gentry or Schlachta, as well as the former serfs, desired to increase their holdings and found themselves more and more able to pay the prices demanded by the landlords. Though the kingdom of Poland was and remains essentially an agricultural country, a great industrial change has also taken place. ”

“ These Socialist societies, however, had always a Nationalist tendency because capital was largely in German and Jewish hands. The most noteworthy was the National Democratic party which came into existence before the end of the century, after several earlier revolutionary societies had failed, and set to work by means of private educational efforts to oppose Russification and definitely awaken the spirit of nationality. ”

“ The incorruptible Prussian official, the inexorable Prussian schoolmaster and the brutal Prussian drill sergeant had disciplined a talented people hitherto uncultured and rendered them capable of organizing and acting for themselves. ”

“ Wright's only recommendation is that the richer Jews should study the condition of the poor Jews who either trade as small middlemen, as hawkers or touts, or labour as unskilled, or almost unskilled, and fill the sweating dens as sweaters or sweated when they emigrate. ”

“ All citizens are equal in the eyes of the law, protection of life, liberty and property being assured to all inhabitants. State protection is given to labour and insurance for unemployment, illness and accident is guaranteed. Roman Catholicism is the recognized religion of the country but others are allowed provided they are in accordance with the law. ”