Chapter III: Poland and the Entente (2)

With regard to Lithuania, our author allows that there would be included in the new Polish state two and a half millions of Lithuanians “linked to the Poles by religion and civilisation, who would find in the Polish state the conditions most favourable to their national progress.” Read in its context, which claims for the new state 38,000,000 inhabitants of which 70 per cent. are “Polish in culture, etc.,” this sounds as if ethnographically the inclusion of Lithuania might be admissible. But when we come to look at Lithuania itself, it wears a very different aspect. For according to the most reliable information obtainable the census figures for Lithuania are these[10]:--

Total population 5,728,000, of which 18.47 per cent. are Poles; or in detail:--

Vilna 26.3 }
Kovno 11.4 } per cent. of Poles.
Grodno 17.0 }

The Russian return of 10 per cent. Poles in the province of Vilna is certainly below the mark, in fact it shews considerably less than half the true population, which is 26.3 per cent. But it is not admissible on purely ethnographical grounds to claim as national territory a district in which the nation in question only numbers a quarter of the inhabitants. As for the rest of Lithuania the percentage is lower yet, consisting as it does of 11.4 per cent. in Kovno and 17.0 per cent. in Grodno. This minority, it is true, consists to a considerable extent of land-owning Poles, as opposed to the mass of the Lithuanian peasantry, for Lithuania, is emphatically a country of rural populations, and in the whole of its three provinces there are but seven towns containing more than 20,000 inhabitants,[11] but if the ownership of land constitutes a claim for Poland over Lithuania, the same claim of the Germans over Silesia holds good, for a quarter of all Silesia belongs to six German proprietors. If then on the Democratic principle Poland refuses to admit the German claim there, she must abandon a similar claim of her own with regard to Lithuania, in so far as it is founded on ownership of soil. And mere ownership of soil is a singularly poor Democratic argument.

Now since in these three provinces the total population is over five and a half millions, of which two and a half only, according to our author’s figures, are Lithuanians, and of which Poles form only 18 per cent., what of the remaining millions? The answer is that by an immense majority they are White Russians, who, both by blood and by language, are closely connected, not with Poles at all, but with the inhabitants of Great Russia. Out of the three provinces, Kovno is overwhelmingly Lithuanian by blood, for the Lithuanians constitute a majority over Great Russians, White Russians, and Poles all added together. In Vilna the White Russians constitute a similar majority, outnumbering Great Russians and Poles and Lithuanians, and also, though not so overwhelmingly, in Grodno. There in the western part of the province the Poles have a local majority, and by a small rectification of the frontier it would be easy to include in the new Polish state a slice of territory, contiguous to the present Kingdom of Poland, where Poles will be in an indubitable majority, and a similar inclusion might reasonably be made with regard to parts of Vilna. On ethnographical grounds, which are the only ones that the Governments of the Entente recognise as valid, these rectifications are desirable. But this is a very different thing from claiming for the future State of Poland a vast area of provinces which by no tie of blood or language can possibly be considered as authentically Polish. Kovno is overwhelmingly Lithuanian, Vilna and Grodno are overwhelmingly White Russian. In none of the three provinces of “Lithuania” is there an approach to a majority of Poles. The percentage in Vilna is the highest, for there Poles form one quarter of the total population. But to make an ethnographical claim on such grounds is to reverse the usual sense of the word “ethnographical.”

However, the will of the people, self-determination, may constitute, even if ethnographically the conclusion is unsound, a reason for the fusion of one nationality in another, and our author asserts that a Lithuanian plebiscite would vote for inclusion in this new state. But even allowing that reports from Lithuania are coloured in Germany (which in itself does not seem probable, since Germany has before now considered the possibility of uniting the Kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania under German suzerainty, and so would not emphasize the dissonance between Poles and Lithuanians), such evidence as is accessible does not bear out this assertion. For the inhabitants of Lithuania have repeatedly protested against a fusion with Poland, regarding the Poles as their bitterest enemies. In 1916, for instance, the Lithuanian Socialists demanded independence, and declared against union with Poland: the Union of White Russian peasants in the following year (at a Congress they held at Minsk) issued a proclamation demanding union with Russia; in 1917 the Lithuanian Army Congress in Petrograd demanded that Lithuanians then included in Polish regiments should be allowed to transfer themselves to Russian regiments. Such instances, it is submitted, are tangible evidence against a mere assertion, in support of which no evidence is produced.

It is, moreover, a dangerous thing to lay too much stress on the value of the bond of religion in such a consolidation as this unless that bond is cemented by the stronger ties of blood, for while religious differences have often constituted a cause of quarrel, we do not, as a matter of practical experience, find that a unity in religion constitutes a very binding force, except when, perhaps, there is religious persecution which brings co-religionists together. Such has not been the case in Lithuania, and as a matter of fact Polish and Lithuanian co-religionists have before now arrived at a very acute pass in the matter of the language to be used in churches, Lithuanians advocating a Lithuanian ritual, in those portions of the mass where Latin is not used, and Poles championing their own tongue. In fact, the religious bond has been the cause of considerable differences in opinion, and free fights have taken place in churches. Accounts of such disturbances have no doubt been exaggerated, but it is important to avoid exaggeration on the other side, and find in a common religion a valid cause for incorporating Lithuania in the new state. This religious bond, moreover, whatever it is worth, is only applicable as between racial Lithuanians and Poles. But in the three provinces which constitute Lithuania the numerical majority of the inhabitants are White Russian, whose national religion is not Roman Catholic but Greek orthodox. If then a common religion binds two of these nationalities, the same bond is equally valid between Russians and White Russians.

Similarly in the Russian province of Minsk (the greater part of which is claimed by the National Democrats for the new state) and of Volhynia, we can find no ethnographical reason for this fusion since the Polish population of Minsk constitutes at the very outside but 10.3 per cent. of the total population, while in Volhynia it is slightly less, or 9.97 per cent. And in the absence of ethnographical support, have these districts shown any self-determination towards union with Poland? I think our author would have mentioned it if they had. Finally, in Eastern Galicia he only claims a minority of 25 per cent. for the Poles, and this seems, if we compare it with other estimates, to be rather a rosy view of the extent of the consanguinity.

There is then no sound ethnographical reason why these former Russian provinces should be joined to the new state, but there are very sound reasons why they should not. To begin with, the whole case for the unity of Poland rests on ethnographical grounds, and to incorporate provinces in none of which Poles form anything like a majority is to stultify those grounds. To incorporate these Russian provinces not by their act of self-determination, but as far as we can see, in direct opposition to their will, would be to introduce a constant element of friction in the new state. There are, God knows, enough Polish parties as it is, and the inclusion of these malcontent populations would have the result not of strengthening the new state by adding to its numbers, but of weakening it by introducing discordant and rebellious elements. The fallow-field has to be sown with corn, and if the Entente permitted this, they would themselves be sowing tares there.

But German politicians were more far-sighted--they the enemy sowing tares--than Polish patriots, who on the complete explosion of Russia ran to the spot and picked up fragments of the disjected structure. Germany from time to time has seriously considered a scheme for the union of parts of Lithuania with Poland, and ideas have been mooted for the colonization of Lithuania and Courland, in the further distant future, by Poles. Either of these schemes was worthy of her policy of dividing and so governing, and it was partly the more short-sighted sabre-rattling insistence of the Hindenburg Junkers and the opposition of Austria, who wanted a juncture between Poland and Galicia under a Habsburg prince, that prevented these policies from being carried into effect; partly, she anticipated serious trouble in Lithuania itself, if she attempted to carry out such an unnatural union. She would have liked to do it, for such policies were policies of disintegration, which are the sharpest arrows in the whole of German diplomacy, and the astonishing thing is that Polish patriots, who genuinely, but less long-sightedly, desire the union of Polish nationalities, should have advocated the same programme as Germany, with the opposite end in view, also desired. Germany, a thousand times was right in wishing to join Lithuania to Poland as a means of defeating the aims of the National Democrats. M. Dmowski and the National Democrats, I venture to think, are wrong in proposing this unnatural union as a source of strength to the future Polish State.

There is another reason, stronger than any yet, against this unhomogeneous welding together of states that by blood are in the main alien, that by religious conviction make a cause of grievance rather than a tie out of a common creed, and have only the historical bond, the fragrance of which is that of dried flowers, to bind together utterly dissimilar elements. Supposing the victorious Entente can construct the State of Poland as it chooses, what will be the result, either from the Nationalist Polish standpoint or from that of the foes of the Mittel-Europa policy, of this forced union? Some time and somehow, when once there is a bar erected against the Mittel-Europa expansion, there must, if that bar is to be effective, arise a Slav state, or several Slav states, eastwards of Poland. Russia, in some form or other, will arise from its ruins, possibly united again, but probably separated into a Muscovite state and a Little Russian state, and to make the bar against Mittel-Europa capable of resistance to German interests the State of Poland must infallibly orientate eastwards, and not look to the German frontier for its friends. But should Lithuania and the other provinces be forcibly torn away from Russia, they will form a new and acuter Alsace and Lorraine in the Slav power which it is our design to erect against the expansion of Germany eastwards. Muscovy and South Russia, or, if they are conjoined, both of them, will indubitably want to recover the lost provinces, while the State of Poland will want to retain them. And the ally ready to help either of them will be Germany. New Russia will appeal to Germany to recover her provinces, or New Poland will appeal to Germany in order to retain them. One or other will make such an appeal, and it will not fall on deaf ears. Russian and German arms, as in the case of the original partitions, will fall on Poland, or Germany in alliance with Poland (thus mending up the broken chain of Mittel-Europa again), will march against Russia. In either case, Germany will advance a step further on her eastward march. Should Russia and Germany come to an understanding, the new state will be crushed and repartitioning will begin again, should Germany and Poland come to an understanding, Germany will have affiliated herself to Poland afresh, and have a valuable ally against Russia.

This is not a fantastic conclusion, for Germany, never fantastic, has already foreseen it. As long as a year ago (February, 1917) 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. One or other of them she would be bound to draw into her net, and Mittel-Europa, checked for the time by defeat in the present war, would resume its progress. Either the independent Polish state, created with such care by the Powers of the Entente, would be organized and armed and employed by her, or she would make friends with Russia, and crush the new Polish state out of existence. In either case she would “score.”

So, for both reasons, namely the homogeneity of the new Polish state, since the inclusion of Lithuania and Minsk and Volhynia would undoubtedly lead to internal disruption, and for the quashing of the Mittel-Europa policy it is of primary importance that the new state should not contain discordant elements, or elements that belong not to her, but to the Power with which she must be affiliated, namely the Slav element eastwards, and not the Teutonic element westwards. One or other of the new states, either some form of Russia or the more distinct form of an independent and united Poland, must otherwise, if the new state attempts to incorporate provinces that are Russian by the ethnography which is the basis of the new state, be driven into the embraces of Germany, who, as already noticed, will be ready to receive it with open arms.

Such, outlined as briefly as possible, seems the only really debatable point about the programme of the National Democrats with which, otherwise, the policy of the Entente is in complete accord. If united Poland, according to the programme of M. Dmowski and the National Democrats, ever succeeds in including Lithuania, Minsk and Volhynia, she will have sowed the seeds of her own destruction. 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. The new state of Poland, with the perpetual menace or the insidious Mother-Wolf smile of Germany on one side of her, must be buttressed by the Slav interests contiguous to her on the East, and to sow cause of dissension between a resurrected Russia and the recreated state would be an act, in the opinion of the present writer, of political imbecility that positively calls for trouble, and he finds it hard to see how there can be any divergence of opinion among those who recognise the actual and potential menace of Germany’s _Drang nach osten_. To attempt to enlarge Poland by the introduction of discordant elements, unsupported by ethnographical validity, at the expense of the country with whom she must be allied is to create a quarrel between those on whose union of interest the whole anti-Mittel-Europa policy depends.

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. If the new state is to prosper it must be built on such democratic foundation as that on which Russia will sometime arise again, and not on the principles by which Germany annexes and governs. She, the friend of tyrants, knows democracy to be her bitterest and most dangerous foe, and to found a Poland which is not hallowed by democracy would be to create a friend to Germany in the people whom we desire to establish in impregnable resistance to her. And the pillars which support that state must be the undivided and invincible will of all those who compose it.

What, then, must be the fate of Lithuania if the Polish solution is inadmissible? Either she must form an autonomous state, or revert to some, as yet non-existent, Russian combination. So long as Russia is in its present condition of chaotic anarchy, it is quite impossible to foretell what that combination will be, but it is unthinkable that such chaos is anything but temporary. Given the defeat of the Central Empires and an end to their unhindered policy of disintegration there, order will eventually be restored and a firm political establishment emerge, to which Lithuania, considerable sections of which are in favour of the Russian solution for their country, will be attached. Other sections of opinion there vote for independence, but the political objection to that is the smallness of a possible Lithuanian state, while its complete isolation implies a territory strategically indefensible among more powerful neighbours.

I have presented the case against the proposed absorption of Lithuania in the new Polish state at some length, because the principle involved, namely, that of securing harmonious relations between the states which will form the barrier to the unlimited expansion of Mittel-Europa eastwards, appears to me of supreme and vital importance. It is only fair, therefore, to state with equal clearness the views of the leading National Democrats on the question who are in favour of the inclusion of Lithuania in the new Poland.

They argue that this cession of Lithuania to Poland is not in the least likely to cause friction between the Polish and Russian states since, according to their views, Russian politicians recognise that the country was wrongfully wrested from Poland by the partitions, and that though its inhabitants are not in the main of Polish blood they are just as little of Russian blood, but form a nationality of their own, too small to be constituted into a wholly independent state, and therefore to be attached with some considerable degree of self-government to a neighbouring state. That state should in equity be Poland, of which for four hundred years Lithuania formed a part, whereas only the political crime of the partition has joined it wrongfully to Russia for a quarter of that period. The National Democrats place second to none of their aims the rehabilitation of Russia, but as Russia is now, and must continue for many years yet, in a state of disorganization, it is vital to the anti-Mittel-Europa policy of the Entente that Lithuania should not remain in loose confederation with a Power whose whole energies and resources will be taxed to the uttermost for years to come in establishing order and government among the peoples who directly belong to it. Furthermore, the most sanguine of optimists cannot expect that Russia can recover her strength and solidity before the lapse of many decades, and it is necessary that while Russia is weak, so, proportionately, should new Poland be made as strong as possible in order to render firm the barrier to Germany’s expansion eastwards.

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. The two countries have a common religion, and economically she is far more closely bound to Poland than to Russia, and for years her trade has gravitated to Warsaw and not to Petrograd or Moscow. Linguistically also, though the native language has as little to do with Polish as it has with Russian, no educated Lithuanian is ignorant of Polish, and it is impossible for an educated man to live there with interchange of ideas and civilized thought without speaking Polish. Russian is merely the official language imposed by the dominating state, and the necessity of the employment of the Polish tongue was seen when, during the advance of the German army, the troops passed out of Poland into Lithuania. For the Germans arriving there dismissed their Polish interpreters under the impression that Russian alone would now be needed. But they could make no headway whatever in that language, and had to send for their Polish interpreters again.

It is with these arguments, many of which have undoubtedly considerable weight, that the Polish leaders of the National Democrats support their claim for Lithuania. The matter does not admit of compromise, for Lithuania must be united either to Poland or to Russia. Ethnographically she strictly belongs to neither, but with all due respect to the right of separate nationalities to enjoy a national and independent existence, it is clearly possible to push that principle too far. Basques and Bretons are not ethnographically French, nor are the Welsh English, but just as no sane thinker would dream of demanding for any of those a separate independent existence, so no one who has studied the problems of Eastern Europe could wish to create an independent Lithuania. She must be joined to Russia or to Poland, and the reader who reflects on the arguments advanced on the one side and the other must make up his mind in which direction wisdom points.

NOTE.--_Mr. Harold Williams has very kindly read over and discussed
with me the foregoing arguments advanced by the National Democrats
for the inclusion of Lithuania, and has sent me the statement of
his view’s on the question, which I append:_--

“NOTE ON THE CLAIM OF THE POLISH NATIONAL DEMOCRATS TO LITHUANIA.

“The National Democrats are powerfully influenced by the Polish
historical tradition. That is their strength, but it also creates
certain difficulties in the search for an equable solution of the
problems of Eastern Europe. Without going into the larger question
of the extent of territory that may ultimately be included in the
reconstituted Polish state, it may be sufficient to point out in
reference to Lithuania:--

“(1) That it includes a very considerable White Russian population
which is certainly more Russian than Polish. The official language
of the Lithuanian state which under Jagello was united with Poland
was White Russian, and the ground of the claims of the Grand Dukes
and Tsars of Moscow and Russia on Lithuanian territory was the fact
that Lithuanian territory was largely ‘Russian,’ and included
principalities which in the Kiev period formed a part of the
loosely federated Russian state. This purely historical argument
has little force now, but the ethnographical argument retains its
weight.

“(2) The Lithuanian National movement, which has developed in
recent years, is predominantly anti-Polish, and is not
anti-Russian, though it strongly opposed the oppressive measures of
the Russian Government. Russian was not merely an official
language. It was, next to Lithuanian, the principal language of
civilised intercourse used by the Lithuanian educated class. It is
true that numbers of educated Lithuanians also spoke Polish, but in
their modes of thinking and methods of action the influence of
their training in Russian schools and universities is very
noticeable.

“(3) The assertion that the inclusion of Lithuania in Poland would
not cause friction between Poland and a reconstituted Russia is
hardly tenable, and would certainly not be upheld by responsible
Russian politicians of any party. The restoration of an independent
Poland within her ethnographical frontiers is an axiom of Russian
statesmanship, but to my knowledge it is equally certain that
Russian political leaders do not admit any Polish claim to
sovereignty over Lithuania. If the physical possibility of
deliberate and unfettered choice can be established, it is of
course for the peoples of Lithuania themselves to decide with which
neighbouring political unit they prefer to be more intimately
connected. But from the standpoint of political stability in
Eastern Europe, which is the consideration of greatest importance
to the Allies, it would be more desirable to see Lithuania
federated in some way with Russia, while giving certain economic
privileges to Poland. The ideal solution would be one that would
make Lithuania a link, and not a bone of contention between Russia
and Poland.

HAROLD WILLIAMS.”