14 
LAND & WATER 
September 14, 1916 
man tinds himself eventually doing more work for the 
same pay. Why should he, bein^ not a saint but a nor- 
mal human being ? That enlightened policy of a few 
large-minded employers, hampered by the majority of 
their order, give as high wages as possible because " low- 
paid labour never pays," though it has a business not a 
moral motive behind it, jioints the way to a more national 
general attitude in the future. It gives us who help to 
make public opinion something to think about. 
In general may it not be said that we dishonour our- 
selves and our nation by accepting the servile relation 
that is so common here and not doing all we can to be 
rid of it. It is well to note what our overseas folks think 
of the quiet arrogance of the one caste and the drab 
servility of the other. This affects more than " labour," 
so called, but it primarily affects labour. The difference 
between the eyes of overseas men and our own fellows is 
enough to make one a wrecker of the old order ! 
Such thought as these universally circulated as current 
coin, are the preamble to the rebuilding of a new and better 
order. There would be little hope of tackling such a 
problem successfully with anything short of a revolution. 
But we have the revolution in the war. It has broken' 
so many of our old moulds, and we have made some 
astonishing discoveries ; that our friend the slack- 
working man becomes the salt of the earth in the trenches. 
Did digging a hole ever achieve so much ? Or wasn't 
he rather tliat before and will be again. Long hours 
don't mean necessarily greater production says the 
trained observer watching the workers with a fresh eye, 
because of the national need. Was there no national 
need before ? Good work is not done on low wages ; 
the general standard of health has been raised by the 
war in countless families — -these are further discoveries. 
Prussianism is of the devil. Is it less evil if under the 
form of autocratic direction of industry ? It is logical 
enough if you leave out the human calculation, but it is 
no sy.steni for a free people who have the biggest job of 
work before them that ever a free people had. And you 
don't, you really don't get silk ])urses out of sows' ears. 
That is why one of the chief businesses, of us of the 
public is to help clear away all the rubbish we have 
dumped down between labour and its better destiny.. 
We need " greater production." We shall get it on 
one condition — contented labour in honourable partner- 
ship. We shall get that the more quickly if we under- 
stand what is behind the passionate vehemence and the 
resolute statesmanship of Labour. 
The Establishment of Poland— IV 
In the next number of this journal there will be pub- 
lished a map, and with it a summary of the arguments and 
statements advanced in the course of this series of articles. 
Meanwhile they may well be concluded with a general 
judgment upon the policy of the Allies in this vital matter. 
\Ve have seen that the re-establishment of the king- 
dom of Poland, in some form or another, was the master 
card to be played by the one side or the other before the 
conclusion of the war. 
We have seen that the Germanic powers— the two 
Central Empires — being in actual possession of the greater 
part of Polish soil so far from the accident of war, and 
knowing very well that they will not retain that soil 
permanently under the present militarj- conditions, have 
offered to establish a limited autonomy at most, but 
to call it an independent kingdom and to establish it over 
a truncated but still important Polish State. 
Their inmiediate and principal advantage would be 
the raising of a very considerable Polish Ami}'. Their 
ultimate advantage would be this : 
They could say. " The Allies cannot, consistently 
with their principles, destroy that independent nation 
which we have recognised. The Poles had themselves 
consented to the bargain we made. We will have the 
portions of Poland which were under Prussian and 
Austrian rule before the war still under their rule." 
Using such arguments the defeated Central Empires 
would at least be certain of a State possessed of some 
historical gratitude for their action, of some moral 
support for their retention of at least a portion of Polish 
land, and at the same time they would be erecting a 
barrier between themsehes and the Slav power in general, 
which they so greatly dread. 
What is the alternative policy before us ? 
It cannot be otherthan a public declaration— and that 
not too much retarded— that the Allied programme 
includes the re-establishment of Poland in its integnlv. 
Such a policy is consonant with the whole spirit of the 
.\lliance. It is consonant with the famous declaration of 
two years ago, and, upon the lowest ground, of mere 
expediency, it is common sense. If it be the interest of the 
(iermanic powers to retain a portion at least, and if pos- 
sible the whole of that Polish territory which the Prus- 
sians have oppressed and misgoverned, the ,\ustrians 
more mildly administered for now a century undisturbed, 
then in exactly the same measure is it to the advantage of 
the great Alliance to restore to Poland those very 
provinces, most especially the eastern frontier, we have 
seen to be by nature and every historical circumstance 
vague and ill-defined. Upon the western frontier we 
can be sure enough. We know it to within a few miles 
from where it leaves the Baltic to where it traverses 
Silesia and touches the Carpathians in the high Tartara 
hills. .\nd that part it is — again upon the lowest ground 
of expediency — the district, the restoration of which to 
Poland would undermine the prestige of Prussia. 
It goes without saying that a restoration of this kind 
would repose upon the Russian just as a restoration 
proposed by our enemies would repose upon the Germanic 
side. What the nature of the link would be in its details 
it is for those who negotiate the fmal settlement to deter- 
mine. But the broad lines arc secure : a Polish nation, 
autonomous, free in its religion and in its speech and in 
its whole culture : free to arrange every detail of its 
educational and ecclesiastical system, and above all pos- 
sessed of a freeboard upon the Baltic. Fail to establi.sh 
that and you have re-established the Central Germanic 
influence in Eastern Europe, and so far at least as 
half the fruits of the war are concerned, you have politic- 
ally lost the war. 
Everyone acquainted with the map, let alone with the 
complex tangled details of Eastern Europe, will here 
suggest a real difficulty, which we should do ill to 
belittle. What of East Prussia ? 
East Prussia is German speaking. It would differ in 
long historical tradition, in religion for the most part 
and in all social habit from a Poland by which it would 
be completely surroundecT. Its centre, Konigsberg, is the 
historical heart of the Prussian monarchy and though 
Slav in race it is not consciously Slav. 
Well, the only solution of the difliculty is boldly to 
create such an island. , It existed similarly isolated for 
long in the past. Whether it would exist similarly 
isolated in the present, or whether it would — as is far • 
more probable — be slowly reabsorbed into the Slavic » 
world from which it emerged, it is for the future to deter- _ 
mine. But one thing is certain ; if you do not give your " 
autonomous Poland free access to the Baltic shore 
where such a long stretch of the coast is wholly Polish, 
in sympathies, historical tradition, religion, language, 
everything— if, to put it plainly, vou do not give her the 
port of Dantzig, German though "that port has become, 
then you are not re-establishing Poland at all. Be sure 
that the enemy would not be so timid before similar 
problems. He would not hesitate to make the most 
artificial boundaries. 
If the .\llies upon their approaching victory insist 
upon doing thoroughly here what is to their advantage, 
the whole future of Eastern Europe and ultimately of the 
west of Europe will be deflected in the direction that they 
desired when they undertook this great task of resisting 
the premeditated and abominable act of aggression 
which they have now suffered for over two years. If they 
are not sufliciently bold in tliis one matter they will 
throw away half or more than half the fruits of their 
labours. They will be creating for the moment a chaos, 
but something which in the near future will prove no 
longer a chaos but a recrudescence of Germanic influence 
over the whole of the Vistula basin and from that over 
all the east of Europe. 
