LAND & WATER 
November 22, 1917 
your foUv or from vour r pponentf^V-.innins or prcator ?tronglli 
-whateVrr tlx- cause muy lie- you have fiiilr<l. rn-.l mi^ht 
as well not have undertaken the efiort. 
In the case of the C.reat European War, we have a curu.nsK 
simple test afiordtxi ns : It is the test of Poland. 
Poland is a test for both parties to the great ^tniple. A 
Poland of the sort which the Allies desire to establish will be 
the proof, and one of the main guarantees of their ^"'tory a 
Poland of the sort which the enemv desires to establish will Ih' 
a proof and a guarantee of his victory With the possible 
exception <»f Sicilv during the first Punic war, there has hardly 
ever been so clean a test (not an object) of pihtical struggle 
and of its results. 
Unfortunately, this dean, obvious and, as if were, necessary 
test is not easily presented to Western eyes. It is a great pity, 
bm the pitv is inevitable , 
Of the four Western Allies^thc. word " I'ohsh . means to 
most Americans. I suppose, certain immigrants who come in 
large numbers, and most of whom have come in the past as 
subjects of the I^ussian Ivmpire. The same word means to 
the average educated linglishman a man coming from certain 
districts which once formed a State of which he has heard 
little, with which his ancestors came but little into contact, 
which lay far off, and which he vaguely understands to have 
disappeared. 
• France and Poland 
The French and Italians being Continental people and having 
J great deal in common with Poland, on account of tlie pre- 
dominant religion of the Poles being the same as that of the 
I'rcnch and Italians, ha\-e somewhat more acquaintance with 
the problem, and of the two probably the French, taking them 
all round, have rather more lamiliar acquaintance with it than 
, any of the other Allies— for Polish contingents have fought 
in "the French armies : the question of Polish independence 
occupied French policy in at least two very important moments 
—chiefly under Napoleon ist ; the fate<of Poland was largel\- 
Intermixed with tlie fate of the Revolutionary- Wars : there 
has always been a large Polish colony in Paris ; and there was, 
in quite modern times alliance between the French and the 
Polish crowns with a Polish King resident at Nancy. 
But take the Western Alliance as a whole, and the average 
icquaintance with the Polish (|uestion is small ; its apparent 
iirect connection with the various national objects of the 
Western Allies is smaller still. Geographical separation ; the 
3cstruction of the Polish State and its dismemberment ; 
the far more vivid and immediate problem represented by the 
Western aggressions of \'ienna and Berlin — all these obscure the 
BSSjential importance of Poland as a test of victorv'. 
In order to combat these inevitable difficulties, and to im- 
press upon Western opinion the truth, that what happens to 
Poland is the touchstone of the whole war, let us consider 
first of all this curious point, which, when it is examined will, 
I think, impress everyone. Poland, in some form or another, 
whether at the liands of the Germans ,or at the hands of 'the 
Allies; is now in active process of resuricction. A Polish State 
is about to be. ' 
If you were talking now in \'ienna (or still more, in Berlin), 
to the heads of afi'airs, you would find tliat they already talked 
of a Polish State as something in existence, and tlmt their 
principal preoccupation was the way in which they could 
make that State subservient to their aims. 
I have said that this point is " curious," and so it is. WJien 
yon think of the immediate past, the generation to which we 
all belong and its attitude up to the very eve of the Great 
War, nothing would have seemed more extraordinary during 
that period than the taking for granted of a Polish State by 
Russian statesmen and soldiers. The change is at least as 
astonishing as would be the change from, say, the wage system 
in this country to a system of guild-co-operation in one. of our 
own great industries 
The subjugation of Poland, the doctrine that Poland was 
never to be a State again, the conception that Poles were once 
and for all allotted as subjects to three alien Powers, whose 
business it was to concur in keeping them subject — all this was 
simply part of the political air breathed in Central and Eastern 
Europe. It was the cement which bound together Russia 
under the Czar, and Berlin under the Hohenzollerns. Every- 
body with any knowledge of Eastern Europe always said and 
justly — " Russia " (meaning the old Russia which has now 
disappeared) " will always tend to gravitate towards a new 
Prussian alliance because of Poland. Russia may be the Ally 
of France, but there will always be the insuperable ftifficulty 
af Poland. Russia can never push things home against Ger- 
many, nor Germany against Russia, because of the common 
interest of both dynasties in ihe subjugation of a dismembered 
Poland " 
Here was a very great State, as extensive 'in area as any one 
of the average great European States. Its active membership 
counting i.erhaps twenty miUions ; its culture spread 
I.ver a wider area, even than tliat ^vh.ch its active 
intriots occupied;- a State with a great historical past; 
one which the fathers of living men remembered as independ- 
ent and powerful ; one which had produced a formidable bid 
lor freerioni in arms within the memory oi men now only 
middle aged. The necessity for combining to keep that State 
dismembered was surely imperative upon those who were 
partners to its dismembermcnt-and profited by it. 
The Romanoff Offer 
But all this was taking for granted two things : first, tliat 
Ihe dynasty of the Russian Empire would never be drawn 
into a war to the death with Gcrhiany, such that even the Polish 
f|uestion could be put on one side ; secondly that at least the 
Russian dynastic Empiie would survive. 
Once a war with fundamental issues of life and death broke 
out between the Russian dynasty and the Hohenzollerns, it 
was self-evident that some bid would have to be made for the 
Poles. We know how, immediately upon the decisive and 
fundamental character of the struggle being, recognised, the 
Russian dvnasty made that bid. 
When the Central Empires in iqi5 overran and occupied 
nearly the whole of Polish territory, they were compelled to 
consider the re-erection of a Polish State. Poland could only 
be kept nol a State b\' dismemberment among several very 
powerful neighbours, i" Poland could not be digested^ as a 
whole. A mere annexation of all Poland by the Iwo Central 
Empires alone would have been ruinous to "both. They were 
compelled by sheer necessity to propose a Polish State once 
they had covered with their armies Brest and Warsaw and 
occupied all but a small remnant of what was still the active 
and living home of the Polish people. 
If this were true, and we know it was true while the Russian 
dynasty still stood and while there was still a Russian State, 
that is, a number of diverse populations united under the 
autocracy of the Czar, it was still more true after the collapse 
of the system rather less than a year ago. Against an existing 
and organised Russian State, an autonomous Poland was 
necessary to the Central Empires as a barrier. W ith Russia 
in dissolution it was still more necessary, not as a barrier, but 
to prevent non-German elements dominating all Central 
Europe. The vast Polish territory, the millions of Polish 
people, with their combative energies, their strong and recent 
tradition of independence, their shaip separation from 
German speech and culture, could not be treated as mere 
provinces subject to Vienna and Berlin. 
In that group of Central Europe, which it is the whole ob- 
ject of the enemy to establish, Poland in some shape could 
only be a sovereign or reputedly sovereign State. The most 
careful state craft would be used to reduce its pcwer, to make 
certain that it was vassal, to limit its boundaries-; but as Poland 
it could not but re-arise. And it has re-arisen. 
There will now certainly be a Poland : weakened, cut off 
from the sea, in the orbit of the German influence, more or less 
openly subject to that influence, but still a State. Or, in 
contrast to this, a Poland strong, with its outlet to the sea, 
re-acting against German influence and threatening it — and 
all the more a State. 
In general, there are two issues with very little room for 
any modification of the one towards the other. Either the 
end of this war will see a Poland re-arisen, but part -of and 
greatly strengthening the German conception of a Central Euro- 
pean group under Prussian domination — a Central Europe 
controlling the Baltic on tHe north, the road to the East upon 
the south ; or there will be a Poland, much stronger, quite 
independent, acting as a counter-weight to the diminished 
and defeated Germanic Empires, claiming to trade freely with 
the West through the Baltic and so keeping the Baltic always 
open to the \\ estern Powers ; overhanging the Slav States 
of the south and so preventing any German possession of the 
road through the Balkans to the East ; a beacon also to the 
Slavs of the Austrian Empire. 
By that criterion we may judge our victory or defeat. If 
the first sort of Poland appears we are defeated. If the second, 
we are victorious. 
In order to judge this truth, which is still unfamiliar to most 
people in this country, let us suppose an extreme case and 
appreciate the consequences of it. Let us suppose the ques- 
tion, which seems, and is, so vital to Britain, the seaboard 
of the Low Countries, settled. Let us even suppose guarantees 
which prevent further aggression in the Netherlands and 
Belgium. Let us suppose the Italian claims to the Trentino 
and to Trieste itself to be granted. Let us even suppose the 
Kiel Canal to be internationalised, and, of course, Alsace- 
Lorraine to be restored. These are large suppositions, and, 
in the ordinary Western \'iew, almost complete suppositions 
of victor\-. 
But let us suppose with all this the abolish question to he 
