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From Russia and the Polish Republic 1918 - 1941 by R. Umiastowski, 1945
Ancient Poland had based her strength as a great power on a Commonwealth of Nations, a union composed by free-will alone. And Pilsudski, as the first president of Poland had returned to this conception. He tried to revert to the frontiers which Poland had possessed before her partition in 1772. The nations who were living in this area could only be liberated by the Army of the Polish Republic, and by becoming her allies against Russian [then the Bolshevik] Imperialism. Pilsudski, therefore, aimed at the creation of a White Ruthenian State, having Minsk as its capital, and with Kiev as the capital of a free Ukraine and similarly Kovno the capital for a free Lithuania. In order to carry out this plan, Pilsudski adopted a policy of co-operation with the peoples of the former Polish Commonwealth, and gave assistance first of all to Latvia. The Polish troops re-conquered part of her territory together with the town of Dynaburg from the Soviets and handed it back to Latvia in 1919.
This Polish programme for the formation of new states east of Poland, and federated with her, was announced by Pilsudski when the Polish Army liberated Wilno from the Bolsheviks in April, 1919. In his proclamation to the �inhabitants of the former Great Lithuanian Duchy� he wrote:
� For many years oppressed by the enemy, Russians, Germans and Bolsheviks, this country has forgotten the meaning of freedom—living under a regime which never consulted the people but which imposed on them strange ways of living, and, after breaking their lives, bound their will with iron chains. This ceaseless slavery, so well known to me, having myself been born in that unhappy country must be once and for all removed, and once and for all this country, forgotten by God, must achieve its freedom, the right to express its desires and aims freely and without interference. The Polish Army under my command has come here to remove the rule which acts against the freedom and will of the population. . . . I desire to give you the opportunity of solving the problems of your internal life, and your national and religious problems yourselves without any attempt at pressure or violence from Poland. Thus, although blood is being shed and guns are still echoing in your country, I do not propose to establish a military but a civil government to which I shall summon the sons of your country.�
London : "Aquafondata", 1945, pages 84-5.
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