POLAND REBORN.*
THE liberation of Poland, after more than a century of partition and subjection, was one of the happiest results of the War. Yet for political reasons the Poles have received scant sympathy from Britain in their efforts to begin life anew. We may assign various reasons for this. The Prime Minister apparently did not like the Polish representatives at Paris and was impatient of their demands. The Labour Party, eager to show themselves good Internationalists by taking the side of the Germans and the Bolsheviks, adopted a strongly anti-Polish attitude and went so far as to threaten a general strike in the summer of 1920 if the Government dared to help Poland against the Bolshevik invaders. The Polish politicians made matters worse by showing little tact and forbearance in their dealings with their small Slav neighbours, and by appearing to flout the League of Nations in regard to Vilna. They were unwise enough also to offend the Jews, whose whole influence has therefore been exerted against Polish claims ; and they co-operated with the French in a policy in Upper Silesia which had not British sanction. But Poland has suffered in English estimation mainly because little is known here of her past history and present condition. We are glad to draw attention to an interesting book by an English traveller, Mrs. Devereux, who has taken the trouble to visit various parts of Poland and to describe the main political and economic problems which the Poles are trying, not unsuccessfully, to solve. Her book, though not perhaps very profound, is free from mere sentiment and embodies a good deal of recent information from Polish sources which is not easily accessible.
Mrs. Devereux reminds her readers that the reunited Poland, with twenty-eight million people, is a large and populous State which cannot be treated cavalierly as if it were a Latvia or an Esthonia. Unfortunately, the three sections formerly under Russian, German and Austrian rule have had so widely different an experience during the past century that it is difficult for
- • Poland Reborn. By Roy Devereux. London : Chapman and Hall. Lilt. net.] them to work together. The Poles who endured the harsh and thorough Prussian discipline are the best off. They did not suffer materially from the War and they are well educated and well organized. The Poles of Galicia had a good deal more liberty under the Austrians, but they received little education and could not make full use of their rich country. The Poles of what was Russian Poland were the most unhappy, for they were subject to a despotism that was at once arbitrary and inefficient. The task of the Polish Government is to bring all the provinces up to the standard of Posen and West Prussia and to get rid of the old Russian and Austrian laws and customs that hamper the development of agriculture and industry. The average yield of corn in Galicia and Congress Poland, for example, was only half as great as in Posen, partly because the Germans did all they could to increase the harvest all over Germany while the Austrians and Russians were inclined to discourage Polish farmers. The demand of the landless labourers for a rapid extension of peasant proprietorship, after the Galician model, is troubling the Warsaw Government. The demand can hardly be resisted now that the Russian peasants have everywhere seized the land for themselves. But it is foreseen that, if the land is divided up too quickly, before the cultivators can be properly educated and taught the value of co-operation, the corn crops will suffer a disastrous reduction. In Poland, as formerly in Russia, it is only the large farmers with capital and knowledge who can increase the annual produce of the soil by using modern motor-ploughs and by keeping plenty of stock. The small peasant holdings are too often very badly tilled. Poland should be able, in any case, to feed herself, but, as the author points out, she will be greatly inconvenienced if she has no longer a surplus of wheat for export in exchange for the Western manufactures that she needs.
Mrs. Devereux gives a lucid account of the Lithuanian and Ruthenian problems, showing how extremely difficult it is— if not impossible—to apply President Wilson's doctrine of " self- determination" in border-lands with mixed populations, irrespec- tive of strategic and economic considerations. She accuses the Lithuanian leaders of being mere tools of the Germans, and there is no doubt a good deal of truth in the charge. When we remember that Kosciuszko, the typical Polish patriot, was by birth a Lithuanian and that Mickievicz, Poland's chief poet, and Sienkievicz, her leading novelist, were born in Lithuania, it becomes difficult to suppose that a hard and fast line can be drawn between Lithuanian and Pole. If the Poles had a little more tact, they might even now incorporate Lithuania into a federal State, as their ancestors did ; the small Lithuanian territory marked out by the Allies can hardly become self - supporting. Mrs. Devereux deals fully also with the Jewish question. She recalls the fact that some at least of the Jews assisted the German and Austrian invaders and denounced many Poles, who suffered imprisonment and death. She points out that, while Bolshevism does not appeal to the Poles, a large section of the Polish Jews is in close touch with Moscow and the Third International. The Jews are, however, divided into at least three camps, Orthodox, Zionist and Communist, and their former control of wholesale and retail trade is being challenged by the Polish co-Operative societies. If the Russian Jews formerly expelled from Russia and forced to live in Poland could return to their former homes, the problem which they present would be simplified. As it is, Poland finds four million Jews unduly troublesome. Mrs. Devereux gives reasons for believing that Poland will have a prosperous future, provided always that she is given time to recover from the bitter experi- ences of the War and from the blighting effects of Russian tyranny. But she needs the moral and financial support of Western Europe. The Poles are still obsessed with the fear of a renewed German-Russian alliance against them, and it cannot be said that their suspicions of Berlin and Moscow are without foundation.
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