A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM--1916


We must start from the assumption that promises made by proclamation at
the beginning of this war may be binding on the individuals who made them
under the stress of coming events, but cannot be regarded as binding the
Governments after the end of the war.

Poland has been presented with three proclamations. Two of them were in
such contrast with the avowed principles and the historic action for the
last hundred years (since the Congress of Vienna) of the Powers
concerned, that they were more like cynical insults to the nation's
deepest feelings, its memory and its intelligence, than state papers of a
conciliatory nature.

The German promises awoke nothing but indignant contempt; the Russian a
bitter incredulity of the most complete kind. The Austrian proclamation,
which made no promises and contented itself with pointing out the Austro-
Polish relations for the last forty-five years, was received in silence.
For it is a fact that in Austrian Poland alone Polish nationality was
recognised as an element of the Empire, and individuals could breathe the
air of freedom, of civil life, if not of political independence.

But for Poles to be Germanophile is unthinkable. To be Russophile or
Austrophile is at best a counsel of despair in view of a European
situation which, because of the grouping of the powers, seems to shut
from them every hope, expressed or unexpressed, of a national future