THE POLES
With the Poles our relations were not less constant than with the Southern Slavs. In America I continued the work begun in Russia, where we had held joint Czech and Polish meetings and I had maintained lively intercourse with the Polish leaders, especially with Grabski. Paderewski and Dmowski were in the United States ; and among the American Poles I remember the writer Czarnecki. Paderewski I had not seen personally before, though I had met Dmowski in England.
On September 15, 1918, we organized a gathering of the oppressed peoples of Austria-Hungary after the model of the Rome Congress. Paderewski represented the Poles, Dr. Hinkovitch the Southern Slavs, and Stoica the Roumanians. It was an immense gathering. The Carnegie hall was crowded, not only with Slavs and Roumanians but also with Americans. Paderewski was well known in the United States, and, doubtless,
many who had heard him as a pianist came also to hear him make a political speech. I had prepared a terse statement of our national and political programme ; but Paderewski, to whom I gave precedence, put me out of my intended stride. Of the Polish national programme he said little, but of me much. He gave a sketch of my life an praised me to the skies. This surprised me the more because Paderewski was a Conservative by conviction and I should therefore have expected him to treat me with some reserve. He had nearly finished before I could think how to answer him. At the last moment, however, I decided that, like him, I would say little of my programme but would speak for Paderewski by explaining the relationship of politics to art. Incidentally I wished also to defend him against those of his fellow-countrymen who opposed is political leadership because he could "only play the piano." Polish literature, particularly the writings of Mickiewicz and Krasinski, helped me to illustrate the bearing of poetry upon politics, and to reveal the artist Paderewski as a true political awakener of his people. Though non-political or, at least, not directly political, my speech made a considerable impression, as newspaper comment showed and as American politicians and journalists told me after the meeting. They had been curious to see how I should answer Paderewski and were greatly pleased. The incident helped to show that the most effective propaganda is not to be always harping upon one's own programme, but to arouse and hold public interest. This, at any rate, was my main method, especially in society and in private talk.
With the Poles, and notably with Dmowski, we frequently discussed in detail the post-war relationship of our peoples. Dmowski himself favoured the closest relations and often advocated federation. . . . . Dissensions were cause by individuals among our own people, as well as among the Poles, and I had often to take action to prevent public controversy. The Poles complained of oppression in Austrian Silesia and cited the poet Bezruc in proof of it, while our people taxed the Poles with pro-Austrian and pro-German tendencies ; and I stopped in the nick of time the publication of an attack upon Brückner, the Slavonic scholar of Berlin University who had shown pro-German leanings.
In Allied circles some degree of nervous irritation against the Poles was noticeable from time to time, and I was more than once obliged to give explanations of Polish policy. The Poles were accused of working with Germany as well as with Austria. From October 14, 1917, onwards, Germany and Austria had set up a Regency Council in Russian Poland. Between the two "liberators" this Regency Council was, one must admit, in a very tight place, for each "liberator" had its own Polish policy and, among the Poles, there were alleged to be pro-Austrian and pro-German tendencies. Austria and Germany had, indeed, one and the same purpose—to use Poland for their own ends. What those ends were can be seen from the fact that the protracted disputes which arouse out of the occupation of Poland in 1915 were only settled on August 12, 1916, by an agreement that Poland should belong neither to Austria nor to Germany. But, being stronger than Austria, Germany secured the supreme control of Poland and the command of the Polish army. The Warsaw Government, or Regency Council, recognized this Austro-German agreement more or less officially ; and thus a third tendency arose—that of the Regency, which sought to obtain compensation for Galicia and Poznania at the expense of Russia. This tendency derived strength from the anti-Russian feeling of the Poles. At the end of April1918, the Regency submitted a more definite scheme to Austria and Germany. It was discussed long and fruitlessly because neither Germany nor Austria would say the final word. Thus it came about that, towards the end of September 1918, representatives of the Warsaw Regency visited the Emperor William at Spa and then
went to Vienna. Of these, as of the earlier negotiations, I soon heard details ; and, at the moment, the important thing was that Warsaw had taken up a position hostile to the Allies—a hostility expressed, moreover in Polish disagreement with the Allied policy of intervention in Russia. The strengthening of Russia would have impeded the Warsaw policy of compensation which aimed at securing possession of Lithuanian, White Russia and parts of the Ukraine.
Though this Warsaw policy was psychologically and historically comprehensible to me, my own view, as expressed in my general programme, was that Warsaw had been too hasty in giving up Galicia and Poznania to Austria and to Germany (as early as the summer of 1918 the Austrian Emperor had thought he would lose Galicia) . . . These circumstances led to constant discussion of the Polish question with Allied politicians and statesmen, for the representatives of Russia repeatedly raised it. We had relations, too, with Little Russians of the Ukraine, Hungary and Galicia, including Sitchinsky who, some years earlier, had shot Count Andrew Potocki, the Lord-Lieutenant of Galicia. Sitchinsky lived in America and was an unexpectedly pleasant and sensible man. The Poles in America treated him very decently, albeit with comprehensible reserve ; and I had to be extremely careful not to annoy them by my intercourse with him and the Little Russians.
Cordial, though less frequent, was our intercourse with the Russians. Since the Bolshevist Revolution, the position of M. Bakhmetieff, the Russian Ambassador, had been peculiar. The American Government recognized him, though not unreservedly, possibly because not a few influential American journalists and politicians were, in theory, favourably disposed towards Lenin and the Bolshevists. Their sympathies went out to the adversaries of Tsarism, but they were sympathies nevertheless. The peculiar relationship of the American Government to the Bolshevists was illustrated by the case of Professor Lomonosoff who had been sent to the United States by the Kerensky Government in 1917. After the Bolshevist Revolution he joined Lenin�s party and attempted to open relations with the American Government as an official representative of the Soviets. Towards the middle of June 1919, in a big meeting at New York, he declared himself a Bolshevist and cased to be a member of the Russian Mission. Thereupon the American Government interned him.
Baron Korff and Prince Lvoff were also among the Russians then living in America. I had net the latter in Petrograd ; and shortly before leaving America I discussed with him the necessity of uniting Russians abroad on the basis of, at least, an outline of a common political programme. It was really painful to see how incapable of organizing themselves the Russians in foreign countries were. To me this incapacity seemed part and parcel of the general incompetence of the Russian intellectuals.