Ralph Butler

From The New Eastern Europe, Ralph Butler 1919

PREFACE

The chapters on Poland and Lithuanian originally appeared in the Contemporary Review, the chapter on Finland in the Fortnightly Review, and the chapter on the Ukraine in the Edinburgh Review the writer gratefully acknowledges in all these cases permission to reprint. The three chapters on Poland were written, the first just before the Russian Revolution, the second just before the negotiations at Brest, the third just after the Armistice at the end of 1918. It was originally intended to rewrite them from the standpoint of the date of publication. On consideration, however, they have been left as they were written, in the belief that it is no bad way of treating the difficult and complicated Polish question to record its development as it presented itself at three critical stages.

The matter of orthography in the case of a book on Eastern Europe is troublesome. In the case of Russian names the writer has generally followed the practice of Dr. Dillon, whose authority is quite unequalled in England, based as it is not only on an exceptionally intimate experience of Russian politics but on an expert knowledge of Slavonic philology. Little Russian personal names, however(but not place-names), are written in this book in the Ukrainian form : for example, Hrushevsky, not Grushevsky. The case of Polish is more difficult. To transliterate a language using the Latin alphabet, o write, for example, � Wuj � or � Woodge � for �  Łódz,� seems in the nature of a linguistic impertinence. On the other hand ,it is useless to expect English and American readers to acquire knowledge of the forty-six Polish letters and double-letters. The average reader ignores all strange-looking diacritical marks, and pronounced Łódz as � Lods,� indifferently whether the word is written � Łódz � or � Lodz.� ; The compromise adopted in this book is to omit all diacritical marks in the case of personal and place-names, but to include them in the case of any other Polish words. It is not a very satisfactory compromise. If Poland is once again to play a prominent part in Europe, some orthographic modus vivendi will have to be evolved for purposes of West European intercourse. The New Europe, whose services to the student of foreign politics during the War it would be difficult to overrate, has made an interesting attempt to solve the problem by writing all Slavonic names in Croat. It is, however, a solution which the other Slavonic nations can hardly be expected to appreciate.   (Etc.)

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. . .  on Russia there is available in English an extensive and excellent literature, and the events of the War period in Russia, at any rate since the Revolution, have been fully reported in the Press. On the East European nations, on the other hand, very little has been reported in the Press, and the literature available in English is peculiarly scant. Before the War there was perhaps no region in Europe of which so little was known in England. The Balkans, the Islamic lands, the Far East, were all better known. There was a certain interest in Finland ; for the constitutional dispute between Finland and Russia had attracted attention. There were some works on Polish history and politics; but the best of them, an Essay by the late Lord Salisbury, was half a century old.¹ On the Ukrainian Question a couple of pamphlets had appeared before the War. On Lithuania and the three races of the Baltic Provinces there were no sources of information in English at all. That the Foreign Office possessed a store of esoteric intelligence on all these countries does not appear probable from a consideration of the policy which it has pursued. Ministers have had to pioneer in terra incognita, without any of that preliminary clearing of the ground which is afforded by public discussion in books and newspapers.

The object of this book, appearing at an hour when the diplomats of all the belligerents are assembling to redraw the map of Europe, is not to discuss policy, still less to attack or defend the policy of this or that Government, but to give a conspectus of the material on which any discussion of policy must be based.  (Etc.)

      ¹ By far the best introduction in English to contemporary Polish questions is Mr. Geoffrey Drage�s Pre-War Statistics of Poland and Lithuania in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. lxxxi, pt. ii. (March 1918).  An English translation of Petite Encyclopédie Polonaise (Lausanne, 1916), one of the principal authorities used by Mr. Drage for the above paper, appeared at the beginning of 1919 (Poland, Her People, History, Industries, &c., London, 1919—the date on the title-page is wrongly printed 1909).
      Prof. Alison Phillips in his volume on Poland (London, 1915) has an interesting chapter on the Ukrainian Movement, written from a different point of view from that taken up in this volume.

London, etc. : Longmans, Green 1919, pages v - vi and 1 - 2.