DEBT TO POLAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1944, Page 7

DEBT TO POLAND

BRITISH RELATIONS

SURVEY BY. PROR : MILES

"The terms of the treaty of August 25, 1939 i the terrible sufferings of the Polish people, the great services of the Polish armed * forces—particularly ofi those* Polish;airmen who may. well have been the decisive factor in the battle of • Britain—demand ■ that within the limits of the possible Great Britain should do all she can for the restoration of-'Poland,'1 said Professor. -F% F. Miles, of- Victoria University College, at the conclusion of aii address to the annual meeting of the League of Nations Union last night. Professor Miles, in a historical survey of Britain and the question of Polish independence, said that Britain, in signing the 1939 treaty, took a step quite . unprecedented in AngloPolish relations. That these relations, while amicable, should have been of the slightest character was sufficiently explained by geography and historyDuring the long period of Poland's greatness (1350-1700) England was a Power of the second rank on the western fringe of Europe. The eighteenth century was for Poland a period of decline and eventual eclipse, for England one of great maritime and commercial expansion. But while Great Britain became a world Power in the eighteenth century and was the first world Power in the nineteenth, it was seldom a military Power of even the second rank on the Continent. To preserve the balance of power ai Europe, continued the speaker, Great Britain always tended to support a Power with a strong, but not the strongest, army in Europe. In the eighteenth century Poland was one of that middle band of States which included Sweden and Turkey, whose natural ally was France against Russia in the east and the German States in the west. The result of the relations between Great Britain and one or other of the partitioning Powers, and the lack of an army on the Continental scale, was that, while strong sympathy was often expressed in Parliament for the Polish cause, in the whole period between 1772 and 1918 the British Government was never prepared to risk anything substantial, although it did at times protest vigorously. QUESTION REOPENED. The war. of 1914-18 i-eopened the question, and President Wilson took the first step by making the independence of Poland, with, an assured (access to the sea, one of his 14 Points. The collapse of three great empires made the question practical. Mr. Lloyd George favoured a minimum solution of the boundaries, as against Clemenceau, who wished for a restoration of something like historic Poland. In reality, the western Powers had little power or influence in eastern Europe, and the boundary with Russia was eventually settled by the Treaty of Riga, which came into force on April 30, 1921. The boundary with Russia was almost exactly that of 1793, after the second partition. The revived State was faced with serious problems—defence, the lack of education, poverty, and unsatisfactory land tenure of a numerous peasantry on a ravaged land; the existence of considerable ethnic minorities inextricably mingled with those who were Polish by mother tongue and Catholic in religion. However, ori the evidence of Sir John Russell, of Rothamstead, who took a party of English students each year for ten years to study agriculture in Eastern Poland, very great progress was made in the land question. The achievement in education was even greater. A long period of peace was, however, necessary, and it was hoped that this would have been secured by the pact with Russia signed in 1932 and renewed on May 5, 1934, to run till December 31, 1945; and the pact with Germany, January 26, 1934, valid for ten years.