From Paris I took my way through Switzerland to Warsaw to recover anything that might remain of the home I had broken up five years previously. I found the Polish capital very changed. Even if it had suffered less destruction than many other continental towns, the traces of war were clearly evident. Most striking was that the great bridge over the Vistula had been blown up. The Polish country districts, over which the fighting ad swept backwards and forwards, had suffered incomparably more. But, for all their misfortunes, the Poles remained masters in their own house, and they had set themselves with immense energy to the task of building up their country again. It was with pride and confidence that they regarded their young army, which had cleared Poland of the Bolsheviks and even occupied parts of White Russia and the Ukraine.
My Polish friends gave me a warm welcome. They had succeeded in preventing my belongings from being requisitioned by the Germans, who had found them in a ware house under the name �Baron Mannerheim�, and had been about to seize them under an order issued by the occupation authorities confiscating the property of all Russian officers, not realizing that I was at that time Finnish Commander-in-Chief. At the Polish Club in Warsaw, of which I was still a member, I had the pleasure of seeing some of my old friends again.
I also paid a visit to Marshal Pilsudski, the great Polish leader who, on the withdrawal of the Germans in the middle of November 1918, had placed himself at the head of the young Republic. He resided in Belvedere Palace, a small castle beside the Lazienki Park, where the Brigade of Cavalry Guards had had their barracks. Pilsudski, whose manner was informal, simple, and natural, received me in his modestly furnished office, and our conversation turned almost at once to the Russian question which was so vitally interesting to us both. He realized to the full the necessity of co-ordinating the White Russian operations with those of the countries that had torn themselves away from Russia, but raised a characteristic difficulty:
�What am I to do,� said Pilsudski, �when the White Russian
leaders will not understand that it is a different Russia that has risen up out of the process we are now witnessing, and that Poland cannot, any more than Finland, form part of that State ? In September I sent General Karnicki with a military delegation to Denikin to inform him that we were in principle prepared to sacrifice Polish blood for the Russians, but when Karnicki took up the question of recognition of Polish independence, Denikin began to talk about indivisible Russia of which Poland still formed part. So long as this view prevails and Russian indivisibility is regarded as a basis for discussions, it seems to me hopeless to negotiates with the Russian leaders.�
In consequences of the fact that no co-operation was ever achieved between Pilsudski and Denikin were soon to be apparent. The passivity of the Polish Army in the autumn of 1919 allowed the Bolsheviks to detach troops from the Polish front and throw them against General Denikin, who was forced southwards until, at the beginning of April 1920, he found himself shut in in the Crimea. Then at last Pilsudski�s troops opened an offensive, which culminated in the capture of Kiev* at the beginning of May. By that time, however, Poland�s turn had come. The Bolsheviks opened a counter-offensive with forces liberated from the southern front and the Caucasus. Before long the Red Army threatened Warsaw itself, and it was only with difficulty that the Bolsheviks were flung back before the very gates of the town.
The Polish statesmen�s motives were understandable, and those who were chiefly to blame for the White Russian defeat were General Denikin and his advisers. A large share of responsibility for the collapse rests, however, on the Entente governments, which could have acted as arbitrators in the disputes which split up the anti-Bolshevik forces and which had every opportunity to intervene in their domestic quarrels. If that had been done in good time, quite possibly the result would have been the overthrow of the Bolshevik régime.
* One entirely trusts General Mannerheim�s report save some such clearly inadvertent omissions : Kiev was then captured by the Polish and Ukrainian allied forces led by Pilsudski and Ataman Simon Petlura.
I have seen authors who would mention the taking of Kiev then by Petlura but would not mention Pilsudski. In one instance I have seen such an omission seemed intentional and done with malice ; such do necessarily lead to confusion which the truly skeptical student wants not.
The brief Polish-Ruthenian (Ukrainian) alliance then seems worthy of attention as one of the developments which were clearly promising of solutions. One also notes the Polish-Russian anti-Bolshevik alliance occasioned by the work of Boris Savinkov in Warsaw.
While these developments were not then successful in terms of affording permanent solutions, they may be especially valuable instances to-day of the agreements then which, albeit stopped for decades by the Bolshevik calamity, might in some way or other be continued to-day. — (WPT).