Part 12

Regrettable as this may be, the following observations may be made upon it. In the first place, if the real facts were known, the ratio would undoubtedly be found to be much more favorable to the Poles. For the figures just cited are based upon the Prussian official language statistics; and it has been demonstrated by the most painstaking and detailed investigations--and it is admitted by honest people even in Germany--that these statistics are grossly inaccurate, are in fact deliberately falsified for the purpose of making it appear that Prussia’s Germanizing policy in her ‘Eastern Marches’ has been more successful than is actually the case. Some idea of the discrepancy between fact and fiction may be gathered by comparing these linguistic statistics with the Prussian school census, which is equally official but less distorted for political purposes. One finds, for instance, such glaring contradictions as that the circle of Lyck contains only 51% of Poles according to the linguistic census, but 79% according to the school census; Sensburg has 49% of Poles according to the linguistic census, but 78% according to the school census; Lötzen 35% of Poles according to the linguistic census, but 70% according to the school census. The Peace Conference, although knowing the character of the Prussian language statistics, nevertheless adopted them as its criterion in order to be scrupulously fair to the Germans; but the facts just cited suggest that the real number of Germans transferred to Poland is far less than Prussian-made statistics would indicate.

Furthermore, a large number of these Germans have, so to speak, no right to be there. Everyone knows with what infinite patience, vast expenditure of money and effort, and perfect indifference to justice or morality, the Prussian government has worked to fill its eastern provinces with Germans and to dispossess the Poles of a land which has been theirs for a thousand years. The chef d’oeuvre of this policy has been the work of the Imperial Colonization Commission, which in the last thirty years has spent over 500,000,000 marks in buying up property in the eastern provinces and settling German colonists upon it. Over 100,000 Germans have been brought in in this way. Half a dozen other official and semi-official organizations have been at work for the same purpose. In addition, the host of government functionaries and servants in these provinces, the administrative, judicial, financial, railroad, telegraph, postal, forest, school officials and employees, have been recruited almost exclusively from the Germans, and very largely from Germans brought in from the west by the promise of higher pay and other special privileges. It has been estimated that in the various districts of the east, from one-fifth to one-third of the German population is made up of those dependent for their livelihood upon the state--people brought in from outside or maintained for the sole purpose of impressing an artificial German character upon a Polish land. There is little reason to grieve very much over the prospect of seeing this more or less parasitical population faced with the alternative of submitting to the rule of the majority among which they live or else of returning to where they came from.

It is true, of course, that after making all such deductions, there will still remain in the provinces that have been or may be transferred to Poland, a much larger number of Germans than one would like to find there. But this is unavoidable. For centuries these territories have had a very mixed population. Old Poland opened her frontiers freely to German settlers, refraining from any effort to denationalize them, extending to them a tolerance, a liberality, a wide measure of local self-government which presents the most striking contrast to the treatment the Poles have received since the Germans have become the masters. As result of these earlier centuries, as well as of the work which the Prussian government has since carried on, the two races are everywhere intermingled. There are many German enclaves, towns and small districts of German majority embedded in the predominantly Polish areas. But how these ubiquitous German minorities and these isolated islands of German majority can be left to Germany without leaving a much larger number of Poles out of Poland, it is not easy to see. No large compact blocks of German population have been annexed to Poland. No territories have been awarded to Poland simply on the basis of historic rights. What the Peace Conference attempted to do was to disentangle two inextricably interlocked races, as far as that could be done; to define what might be considered--in spite of numerous German enclaves--the area of Polish majorities; and then to make the political boundary coincide with this ethnographic one, as far as was practicable. Since this ethnographic frontier presents an extraordinarily jagged and tortuous contour, some deviations from it had to be made in order to obtain a relatively straight and simple boundary; and naturally the effort was also made to avoid cutting railway lines too frequently. In spite of much that has been said, in the final delimitation of the frontier strategic interests were practically left out of consideration.

But what was most characteristic of the desire to be completely fair to the Germans is the fact that two large areas of incontestably Polish majority were not transferred to Poland, as they might well have been according to the Fourteen Points. Since there was a possibility of doubt as to the wishes of their populations, their fate has been left to popular vote.

The settlement is, on the whole, a pretty complicated one, too complicated perhaps. It deals in varying ways with six territories, each of which has its peculiarities and special problems, and each of which, for the sake of clearness, must be discussed separately.

Five-sixths of the old province of Posen has been ceded outright to Poland. Even the German delegates at Versailles did not very seriously contest the justice of this award. Posen was the cradle of the Polish race and of the Polish state; it belonged to Poland uninterruptedly down to the Second Partition in 1793; it has always retained a strong Polish majority; and that majority has furnished the most conclusive proof of its Polish patriotism and its detestation of German rule. Posen is entirely an agricultural province, the loss of which will reduce Germany’s ability to feed herself from her own resources, but will not otherwise cripple her seriously. The acquisition of the province will be a great gain to Poland, however, since the Posnanian Poles, in the struggle which they have carried on for thirty years against the Prussian government, have learned to equal or surpass the Germans in the qualities of industry, thrift, organizing ability, and general economic efficiency--qualities which are not too well developed among the other Poles.

In West Prussia the problem was much less simple. West Prussia holds a position of such pivotal importance that it has been for six hundred years a battleground between German and Slav. Polish down to the beginning of the fourteenth century; seized by the Teutonic Knights in 1308; voluntarily reunited to Poland in 1454; Polish down to 1772; annexed by Frederick the Great at the time of the First Partition--such is the outline of its history. For centuries the province has been the meeting-place, the point of collision, between two streams of colonization--the German current from west to east along the coast of the Baltic, and the Polish current from south to north down the valley of the Vistula. As a result, the ethnographic map of West Prussia is almost as intricate a mosaic as that of Macedonia. Nevertheless, the general result is clear. West Prussia tails into three zones. The zone along the western border is predominantly German; and so is the northeasterly part, on the right bank of the Vistula. But the central zone and the southeast are predominantly Polish. There thus exists to the west of the Vistula an unbroken corridor of Polish-speaking territory extending through to the Baltic. In the collision referred to between the two streams of colonization, the south to north movement has been the stronger. The Germans have not succeeded in bridging the gap between the old German lands of the west and the isolated German colony in East Prussia. This is the first and principal reason for the establishment of the much discussed Polish couloir to the Baltic.

Poland needs territorial access to the sea--of that there can be no question. But the Peace Conference would probably not have granted her this wish, had it not been justified in doing so on ethnographic grounds. The Conference did not invent the couloir: that already existed and is written plain on every honest linguistic map of this region. The Conference merely recognized the fact, and drew the necessary conclusion by awarding to Poland that middle zone of West Prussia, which forms a compact, though rather narrow, corridor through to the Baltic.

There has been much criticism of this decision, on the ground that East Prussia, most of which will still remain to Germany, is thereby separated from the rest of the Fatherland--an anomalous and unjust arrangement, it is said, which the Germans can never be expected to put up with. Certainly it would be an undesirable arrangement if there were any just way of avoiding it. But it may be remarked, in the first place, that this is the only solution of the problem that corresponds to the ethnographic situation, to the unhappy way in which Germans and Poles have come to be distributed here as the result of centuries of conflict. This solution merely restores the territorial situation that existed for three hundred years down to the time of the First Partition. Moreover, the continuity of German territory cannot be maintained without denying Poland access to the sea. Either East Prussia will have to trade with Germany across Polish territory or Poland will have to trade with the outside world across German territory. It is a question of balancing the respective interests at stake. And who will argue that the right of the million and a half Germans in East Prussia[46] to have a land connection with Germany (they will always have easy communication by sea) outweighs the right of over twenty million Poles in the hinterland to a secure access to the Baltic? Clearly the Polish interest involved is incomparably the greater and ought to take precedence. Every effort has been made in the Peace Treaty to assure untrammeled railway and trade communications between Germany and East Prussia across the intervening Polish territory. Further than that its seems unnecessary to go to secure the interests of the rather small, detached German colony around Königsberg.

The question of the Polish corridor is closely bound up with the thorny problem of Danzig.

Historically Danzig has in the main passed through the same vicissitudes as West Prussia, of which it is the capital. It is an old Polish city, transformed into a German-speaking one since the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, German Danzig distinguished itself in the past by its loyalty to Poland. It took the lead and fought gallantly to effect the reunion of West Prussia with Poland in the fifteenth century. During the ensuing period of Polish rule, it was prosperous and contented. The whole sea-borne trade of Poland passed through its hands; it ranked as wellnigh the first port of the Baltic; and the wide measure of autonomy which Poland allowed it drew Danzig to her by affection as well as by interest. It was not without staunch resistance that the city surrendered to the Prussian usurpation in 1793, and as late as 1813 the City Council besought the Powers of Europe to reunite Danzig to Poland and not to incorporate it with Prussia.

Today the problem of Danzig revolves around two essential facts. The city itself with a population of about 170,000, is overwhelmingly German (over 90%), and so is the small district immediately surrounding it.[47] On the other hand, economically and geographically, Danzig belongs to Poland.

The city derives its importance almost wholly from the fact that it is the natural port of the Vistula valley: it is to that river what Marseilles is to the Rhone or Alexandria to the Nile.[48] Supremely prosperous during the best days of its union with Poland, Danzig has decayed and stagnated under Prussian rule. It has sunk to be a third-rate port, far outdistanced by Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, or even Königsberg. It is doubtful whether it would have any future at all, if it were left as a German city, almost surrounded by Polish territory and cut off by political and economic barriers from the hinterland on which its life depends.

For Poland this is almost the most crucial of all questions. Poland is essentially the valley of the Vistula. That river has always been the main artery of the country’s economic life, and scarcely any other European nation has its settlements concentrated in one river valley in like degree. The Vistula is a magnificent river system, a basin of 60,000 square miles with 3100 miles of navigable streams, and a possibility of opening good and easy connections with the Dnieper, the Dniester, and the Niemen--i.e., with half of eastern Europe. But the utilization and proper development of this unique system of transcontinental waterways by Poland depends on her control of the great port at the mouth of the Vistula. Moreover, Danzig is not only the natural outlet to the sea for this whole country, but it is the only outlet that is in any sense available. The narrow strip of coast which Poland has received to the west of Danzig contains no real ports, and it is doubtful whether any satisfactory port can be developed there.

It has, of course, been suggested that even if Danzig were left Germany, Poland could enjoy free use of the port by special commercial treaties guaranteed by the League of Nations. But on this very question Poland has had such sad experiences of the way in which Germany keeps treaties that she cannot rely on such arrangements. And whatever may be one’s hopes as to the League of Nations, in the present state of the League it is scarcely fair to ask a nation to stake its most vital interests upon the efficiency of such a guarantee.

It is well known that the Danzig question led to something of a contest at Paris. On the one hand, Poland had received the promise of a free and secure access to the sea; on the other hand, it was difficult to transfer to her outright the Danzig territory with a solid population of about 300,000 Germans. Finally a compromise was agreed upon, a solution intended to safeguard both the national rights of the Danzig Germans and the economic interests of Poland.

According to the new arrangement, Danzig and its territory are to be entirely separated from Germany and to be organized as a free city under the protection of the League of Nations. In economic matters, however, this small republic will be very closely connected with Poland through a treaty to be drawn up by the Allied and Associated Powers. This treaty will have for its object to include the Free City within the Polish customs area, and to insure to Poland complete control over the railways, posts, telegraph lines, waterways, and port facilities of Danzig.

If this arrangement is honestly put into practice, it will restore substantially the relation which existed so happily between Poland and Danzig from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, for Danzig was at that time virtually a free city under the protectorate of Poland. This historical precedent has helped a good deal to reconcile the Poles to the compromise, and there is reason to think that a considerable section of the Danzigers are rather well satisfied with it.

Posen, part of West Prussia, and the Danzig territory are the only regions which Germany has definitively lost to Poland. There are, however, three other territories which Germany may lose, since in all of them plebiscites are to be held to determine whether their inhabitants wish to remain with Germany or to be united with Poland.

The first of these plebiscite areas is the Marienwerder district on the right bank of the Vistula in the northeastern corner of West Prussia. This small territory is of much importance to Poland, since it borders upon the Vistula and, if left in German hands, might menace the security of communications along that river. Moreover, the most direct and convenient railway from Danzig to Warsaw runs across this territory. Nevertheless, since the district contained in 1910 about 114,000 Germans as against only 24,000 Poles, the Conference decided to refer its fate to a plebiscite. Apart from Danzig, this is the only considerable district with a German-speaking majority which may be taken away from Germany.

A plebiscite is also to be held in the southern zone of the province of East Prussia, in the territory commonly known as Mazuria. This secluded region of forests, lakes, and marshes has a decided majority of Polish-speaking population. The ancestors of these Poles were called into the country in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the Teutonic Knights to replace the original Prussian population, which the Knights had largely exterminated. The Mazurian Poles have remained politically separated from the rest of their nation for six hundred years; since the sixteenth century they have become Protestants, while almost all the other Poles are Catholics; and because of these facts and also because of their economic, intellectual, and spiritual dependence on their German landlords, teachers, and pastors, the Mazurian Poles have long been completely estranged from the rest of the Polish nation. They have on the whole shown no very marked signs of Polish national consciousness, and there was room to doubt whether they desired reunion with Poland. Hence, a plebiscite was clearly in order here.

The third plebiscite area is in Upper Silesia. In this case, likewise, there was an indisputable Polish-speaking majority: 65.6% of Poles for the region as a whole, and in many districts 80 or even 90%. So strong was the Polish claim that the original decision of the Peace Conference was to award Upper Silesia to Poland outright. It is well known, however, that, as a result of the vehement objections raised by the German delegation at Versailles, this decision was ultimately modified. The territory in question was extraordinarily rich in minerals and important industrially. In the period just before the outbreak of the War, its coal production was 44,000,000 tons a year--three times as great as that of the Saar basin, 23% of Germany’s total output of coal. It also furnished 34% of her production of lead ore; and 81% of her zinc. The loss of so immensely valuable a territory would mean a severe blow to the economical life, as well as to the pride, of the German people. It was a sacrifice that could be fairly demanded only if the majority of the population in Upper Silesia clearly and unmistakably desired union with Poland. As to the wishes of that population, the evidence available was strongly in favor of Polish claims, but it was not absolutely conclusive. Hence the Conference finally resolved that in so grave a matter the decision must be left in the hands of the people themselves through a plebiscite.

To sum up, Germany has definitively lost about 17,500 square miles of territory and about 2,900,000 subjects. If all the plebiscites go against her, her total losses in the east will amount to an area of about 27,500 square miles and a total population of nearly 5,800,000. In other words, she risks losing in the east an area five times as great as Alsace-Lorraine, and a population three times as great.

There is no denying that this is serious business. The Powers who have decreed and sponsored these arrangements have thereby assumed responsibilities and liabilities, the gravity of which ought not to be overlooked or minimized. There is a common belief in Germany (though a wrong one) that Prussia has never permanently lost any territory she has once held, and that after every Jena comes a Leipzig or a Waterloo. And what must be the feeling of true-blue Prussians over the loss of these ‘Eastern Marches’ on the maintenance of which, Prince von Bülow was wont to declare, “the fate of Prussia, of the empire, nay of the whole German nation depends”? The resulting dangers to the peace of Europe are obvious. But it should not be imagined that these dangers would have been avoided, or even much reduced, if the Allies had demanded less for Poland. Without a far greater change in German mentality than we have had any evidence of as yet, any territorial cessions at all in favor of the despised Poles were sure to be fiercely resented. Even Professor Delbrück, one of the most moderate of Prussian politicians, declared years ago, “All Germany would have to be hewn in pieces before we would allow even Posen to be taken away from us.” The Paris Conference was always faced by the dilemma that ‘the peace of reconciliation,’ of which the Germans talked, would have been one that left Germany intact, unpunished, and impenitent; while the peace of justice, demanded by the principles which the Allies had proclaimed, raised the vision of an embittered Germany thirsting and plotting for revenge.

At all events, one may rejoice in the fact that, in spite of the risks involved, the Peace Conference had the courage to carry through a Polish-German settlement based on principle and not upon expediency or selfish convenience, a settlement which, in Mr. Lloyd George’s phrase, “leaves Germany no just grievance,” and which does right a great wrong from which the conscience of Europe has suffered for one hundred and fifty years.

* * * * *

Turning to the territories that belonged to the late Hapsburg monarchy, we may note that Poland has had an unhappy dispute with Czecho-Slovakia over the duchy of Teschen and the small territories of Zips and Arva, which lie south of the Carpathians. After two weeks of fighting and nine months of negotiation, it has now been settled that the populations of these districts are to decide by plebiscite to which of the two new republics they wish to belong.

Much more serious and difficult has been the problem presented by Galicia. The western part of this province was from the earliest times an integral part of Poland and is overwhelmingly Polish today. There is no real question here, and the possession of Western Galicia has already been assured to Poland. But with the remaining two-thirds of the province, the case is altogether different.

Eastern Galicia was originally settled by a population historically known, and still commonly known as Ruthenians. They are a branch of that Little Russian race for which the general name Ukrainian is now coming into use. After belonging to various Ruthenian principalities in the early middle ages, Eastern Galicia was conquered by Poland in 1340; it remained a part of the Polish state down to 1772; and even under the Austrian rule the Poles have continued to be the dominant nation. Today the ethnographic situation in Eastern Galicia may be summarized by saying that the Ruthenians make up 59% of the total population, the Poles 27%, and the Jews 13%. Although usually in the minority, the Poles are found in large numbers in almost every part of the territory. Lemberg, the capital of the province, and most of the other large towns are mainly Polish and Jewish in population; and there are several large rural districts of Polish-speaking majority.