Читать книгу The White Eagle of Poland - E F Benson - Страница 7

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As we have already seen, England, France, Italy and America have repeatedly declared, by the mouths of those officially pronouncing the will of their respective governments, that the union and independence of Poland are among the objects for which they are to-day waging war on the Central Empires. Russia, though no longer a member of the Entente, since her bastard government of the moment has torn up her treaty with her allies and has signed a separate peace with Germany, has also in the days before her collapse declared for the same policy, for the Grand Duke Nicholas in August, 1914, proclaimed the unity of Poland implying thereby the union of the Kingdom of Poland with Prussian and Austrian Poland, while the revolutionary government announced the independence of Russian Poland in March, 1917, thereby relinquishing Russia’s sovereignty over the Kingdom. Since then Russia has ceased to exist as a member of the Entente, and indeed, temporarily, as a nation at all, and so we may take it, without provoking argument, that the Entente is unanimous for Polish unity and independence.

Meantime, owing to the military situation none of the Entente powers have been in a position to accomplish this aim, which necessarily implies the total defeat of the Central Powers, without which neither Germany will give up a yard of Prussian Poland, nor Austria of Austrian Poland, nor either of them a yard of what once was Russian Poland concerning the partitioning of which between them, irrespective of Polish feeling on the subject, they have held and are still holding prolonged debates, occupying it in the interval with Prussian callousness. Whatever solution they intend to adopt, they will not unless compelled to do so by force, whether of internal trouble or military defeat or both, suffer their grip on any part of what was once Polish territory to be relaxed. Till then, a starved and subject country, sick with the deferred hope of autonomy which has been repeatedly promised to it, is in their hands to misuse as they think fit.

Now, broadly speaking, there can be no doubt, if any meaning is to be attached to words, what the general intentions of the Powers of the Entente are. They intend (as indeed they have declared) to unite those portions of Central Europe which are contiguous to each other, and in which the Poles are indubitably the predominant nationality, into one state, and to give that state independence in a political, an economic and a military sense. 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. Districts lying contiguous to each other and to the once-Russian Kingdom of Poland will be united to form this free and reconstructed realm, which will have in round figures a purely Polish population of about twenty-one million people. Some claim that the total will prove to be higher than that: some estimate it as less, but this figure may be taken as sufficiently correct. Historically, also, the new Poland has a valid claim to these territories that will be assigned to her, since up to the time of the three partitions, confirmed and modified by the Congress of Vienna, they formed part of the ancient Republic. If this is not the clear and obvious signification of the repeated declarations of Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, MM. Briand, Clemenceau, Ribot, Pichon, Signor Orlando, and Mr. Wilson it is impossible to guess what their signification is. 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. The Ukraine has declared peace, so too has Rumania; Bulgaria is her ally, Turkey is in her pocket, and she can penetrate eastward to Bagdad, until those countries are soaked with her influence and domination as a sponge is soaked with water, and when “Der Tag” comes again, she can sever our connection with India and Egypt and the British Empire will be hers. The Black Sea with its main ports is already now a German lake, as completely as if it were a mountain tarn in the Black Forest: and its main ports Varna, Costanza. Odessa, Batoum, Trebizond, and the key to them all, namely Constantinople are controlled by Germany. In the north the Baltic already, as the map stands, is a German lake, and no less is the Adriatic Sea, if Trieste, and the Austrian ports on the East Coast with their maze of defending and defensible islands remain in the hands of the Central Empires. Even the most ostrich-like of politicians when they consider this, can hardly miss the significance of Count Czernin’s pronouncement when in declaring for the freedom of the seas, he expressly and explicitly stated that the freedom of the narrow seas is not included in the freedom of the seas. In other words, the three seas which are of vital importance to Germany as bases are to remain her private and inviolable harbours which she can close at any time, and, when she desires, project a fleet from them.

But to make her road completely open it is essential to her that Poland, in the sense of the words in which the statesmen of all countries of the Entente have used it, namely a United Poland, consisting of some union of Russian, German and Austrian Poland, should be under the control of Berlin either directly or indirectly through Vienna. It is equally essential to the aims of the Entente that it should not. If, in fact, at the end of the war, Posen and West Prussia remain in German hands, Galicia in Austrian hands and the Kingdom of Poland, whether joined to Galicia or not (as by the Austrian solution), in the control either of Austria or Germany, then, whether or not Germany gives back Belgium with suitable reparation, and restores Alsace and Lorraine to France, the Entente will have lost the war. Indeed, so vital to the interests of the Central Empires is the retention of Poland, that M. Hervé (evidently with information behind him) has suggested that Austria would be willing even to cede Trieste and Pola to the Italians on condition of the Entente consenting to see the Kingdom of Poland joined to Galicia under a Habsburg suzerainty. This junction of the Kingdom of Poland with Galicia, is known as the “Austrian Solution,” and has been a policy debated between Germany and Austria since they occupied Poland in 1915. It is treated of in detail in Part II of this book.

Now it must clearly be understood that it is not merely nor even primarily in the cause of abstract justice that the pronouncements of the governments of the Entente have stated and reiterated their declaration with regard to Poland. A great wrong was undoubtedly done to the country when by the partitions and the Congress of Vienna more than a hundred years ago, a free nation was divided and wiped off the map. But the Entente did not go to war in order to redress that ancient wrong, though undoubtedly one of the main reasons, indeed the main reason, why they now cannot arrive at some basis from which peace-discussion could arise, is that they will not accept any such solution of the Polish question as implies unlimited German control over these territories. Nor is there any conceivable cause why Germany should yield in this matter until she is forced to, for the creation of such an independent Poland as the Entente demands, will be the most serious check that could possibly be dealt to her Mittel-Europa policy, and also implies an immense loss of territory for herself.

The historical claims then of Poland to these territories does not concern the Entente or the objects for which they are fighting. At the most it is a supplementary consideration marginally noted at the edge of the real question at issue. The historical claim is admitted, but it does not exercise weight. Calais once belonged to England, Syracuse once belonged to Athens, but nobody proposes to restore them to England and to Greece because they once belonged to them, and the Entente do not propose to restore either German or Austrian territories to Poland for the similar reason. But the ethnographical reason is a very different matter: the population of these lands is neither Russian nor German nor Austrian, but Polish. One nation inhabits them, and, as a nation, it has a right according to the programme of the Entente, to a national existence, for it has shown itself for centuries able to cohere and govern itself, and it was a series of unjust provisions that tore it apart. And this acceptance by the Entente of this ethnographical claim coincides with the necessity of securing a check to the Mittel-Europa expansion of Germany. It is essential for the peace of the world and the integrity of the British Empire that there should exist just here a strong state that does not lean on Germany, but shall be in itself a bar to German absorption eastwards, and shall naturally find its orientation and its development independent of and opposed to Teutonic penetration. At present as we all know and deplore, there is chaos east of Poland, and to lean on chaos is to be engulfed in the whirlwind. But no sane thinker, unless he believes in the sanity of Bolsheviks can doubt that some day out of chaos and outer darkness a light shall shine again, and a call of a people’s will shall be heard, and when fire and tempest have passed shall come the “still small voice” for which the prophet hearkened. 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. It is vital and essential to the peace of the world, unless by the “peace of the world” we imply a complete Germanic domination of the world, that a united and independent Poland should voice the will of a free people, and that her cry of “Liberty” should be re-echoed by Russia. Anything that makes for discord between the new Russia and the new Poland is a nail driven into the coffin that contains the corpse of a free world.