November 9, igi6 
LAND & WATER 
II 
Germany's Gift to Poland 
THE stroke which the enemy threatened at the 
end of the summer, and which was mentioned 
and analysed tirst in these columns, has been 
dehvcrcd. The card has been played and the 
bid for Polish recruitment by the enemy is before us. 
Let us first recapitulate what was said here at the time 
when the first news of such a project reached us. 
The crying need of the enemy is for men. We know 
the condition of his reserves. He has, in the German 
Empire, remaining as absolutely the last reserve 
of men, within sight and upon paper, not a quarter 
of what he has in the field. He has in sight 
for the Austro-Hungarian Empire less than a sixth 
of what he has in the field from that Empire. 
This peril— the approaching impossibility of maintaining 
his effectives and of holding his ground, because of the 
impossibility of shortening his line without disaster now 
that he has put it off so long, is crying, urgent, immediate. 
It affects his power of munitionment, and, indeed, all his 
power of production, quite as directly and as menacingly 
as it does his maintenance of forces under arms, of their 
communications and of their auxiliary services. He is 
approaching the edge of a precipice. 
An Imperative Necessity 
He has long been approaching the edge of that precipice. 
He has seen it against the sky for many months past. He 
has been hoping against hope for some accident to relieve 
him before his fatal march should reach the gulf. But 
now it is in his innnediate neighbourhood, and a policy 
which he had threatened, but characteristically post- 
poned, has at last been urged upon him. and he at last 
attempts to approach the new recruiting field of the 
Russian Polish population. That recruiting field could 
give him some 500,000 men of military age, if all were 
obtainable. That is, if all vahd and able to pass the 
doctor were obtainable. Those two other portions of the 
Polish race subjected, one to the obscene tyranny of 
Prussia, the other, to the milder rule of Austria, have 
long ago been incorporated as conscripts. The Russian 
Empire had not this severity. Many Poles escaped 
service. The younger classes especially were not called. 
There is, therefore, within the district of Russian 
Poland occupied by the enemy this reservoir of about 
500,000 odd men. 
Those who think crudely upon the war have imagined 
that the Austro-German alliance could simply command 
such a recruiting field without any consideration of policy 
or compromise. Talk as fooUsh has been indulged 
in with regard to problems nearer at home. European 
problems are not of such simplicity. The chief concern of 
both the Central Empires for more than a century has 
been the subjection of the Pohsh people. The crime of 
Frederick of Prussia hangs round the neck of his 
dynasty like the murdered albatross of the poem. 
Acquiescence of the Austrian house in that crime, 
reluctant though it was and in part atoned for by some 
regard for civiUsation and tradition in their treatment of 
their Polish subjects, has none the less borne its own 
fruit for the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine. Even to 
speak of autonomy, an autonomy however modified, for 
2ven a portion of the Polish nation is on the part of 
Berlin to play a dreadfully hazardous experiment. It is 
as though a murderer were to play with occult forces 
that might restore his victim to life. 
But in the alternative if Berlin should attempt to 
recruit from this field without some promise at least of 
nationhood Prussia would provoke immediately behind 
that front which she now fears she cannot much 
longer hold, terrible reprisals. She would burden 
herself with the necessity for garrisoning, pohcing, 
and torturing something far vaster in extent than Bel- 
gium, less concentrated and with communications in- 
finitely less facile. Such a policy of mere tyranny would 
be insane. Yet the men she must have somehow. 'J hey 
are as imperative a necessity for her (now that she has 
fully realised the temper of England and France) as food 
for a star\ing man, and she has risked the great experi- 
ment at last : not when it would ha\'e been most useful 
and when it would have been most productive, but now 
when clearly in the eyes of all the instructed, even 
among her proposed victims, it is sheer necessity that 
is driving her. 
What are her chances of success in this experiment ? 
We must first of all remember that the accounts we 
shall hear from the enemy will be false. It is to his 
advantage to represent the new recruiting field as com- 
pletely satisfactory. He may add, in order to give 
verisimilitude to the falsehoods which he is almost com- 
pelled to tell in this regard, some exceptions. He may 
instruct his agents in Amsterdam and Copenhagen and 
his lesser avowed servants in the belligerent countries, 
to speak of a hitch here and there, of local revolts and 
difficulties, but it is fairly certain that he will attempt to 
impress the opinion of his executioners and of the neutrals 
who are watching the process of his execution that he has 
received the fullest possible support from the Poles. 
His own account, therefore, of the thing may be dis- 
counted beforehand. What we have rather to consider 
is the time left to him, the nature of the recruiting 
problem which he has to face and then to make our 
own judgment, though with grossly insufficient evidence, 
from elements so afforded. 
^ye note in the first place that he cannot make a true 
Polish army. He cannot provide within the very short 
limits of tirhe that remains to him even partially instructed 
national subalterns for the line, let alone giinners and 
engineers — still less a staff or staffs. 
Can he incorporate Polish contingents (should the Polish 
nation in part accept the paper offer made) with existing 
regiments ? He certainly cannot use them as ordinary 
drafts ; the material would be too hopelessly hetero- 
geneous. You could not draft the Poles of the Russian 
provinces by twenties and thirties to fill the gaps in a 
Pomeranian or Bavarian unit. Will he incorporate them 
with the Polish speaking units of his Ally, or with those 
of his own army who are more largely recruited from 
Prussian Poland than from elsewhere ? That is his only 
possible policy. 
Method of Recruitment 
He will pretend to form a national Polish army. He 
will certainly reject the impossible mechanical solution 
of treating the Polish population merely as general drafts. 
He will in practice create mixed regiments of Slavonic 
type dependent for drafts upon the new Polish recruit- 
ment. To what extent will that recruitment be forth- 
coming ? It depends upon a great number of factors 
which can only be dealt with here in as many brief 
phrases. 
There is first the factor of religious organisation. If 
the Polish rehgious organisation as a whole is suspicious 
of the proposal he will get no men worth speaking of. 
There is next the factor of the so-called national leaders. 
That is, the men bearing historic names connected with 
the Polish fight for freedom in the past, and justly revered 
not only in the Russian but also in the Prussian and 
Austrian provinces of that immortal people. Some of 
these names we know are borne by the men who have been 
deceived by this lengthy siege-war and by the impossi- 
bihty of obtaining information from outside, into believing 
that the Austro-German Empire can still save themselves 
from the justice of Europe. They would seem to have been 
further duped into believing that the Prussian policy here 
announced has something permanent about it. 01' that 
more in a moment. These men will prove the 'standby 
of the new experiment. Their local influence rather than 
their national influence will count, for they are great land- 
owners and certain of them have also a traditional in- 
fluence " over the population of the towns. But though 
we have not yet any sufficient evidence to guide us, we 
may judge from the immediate past that only a minority 
of such, leaders will be moved to act thus against the 
ultimate, interests of their race. They are men often of 
great wealth, always of high education. ' Their know- 
ledge of Europe and their comprehension uf western 
