POLAND

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 3, 14 February 1944, Page 23

POLAND

A KORERO Report

Within the last few weeks the Governments of Russia and Poland have ventilated in public those grave differences which have long been implicit between them. There has been talk of a Polish problem, of frontier disputes about former boundaries, and reference to the Curzon Line. What is the meaning and origin of this trouble ?

In brief, it may be said that the Polish problem exists because the Poles are a highly destinctive racial group who have few clearly defined natural boundaries. The south is the exception. There the Carpathians form a sort of natural frontier which elsewhere in Poland can scarcely be said to exist.

Over a thousand years ago the Polish state began to take shape between the Oder and Vistula rivers. Poles have generally tended to expand to the east and on the west to entrench

themselves against their Teutonic foes behind the Oder. Up in the north the Germans have usually managed to

maintain their supremacy in the Baltic, for the Poles have rarely been a sea-going people. The very name “ Poland ” means a field or flat land, and there, in the absence of geographical boundaries, lies the source of Poland’s ills.

In the east frontiers have been very vague and have shifted much over the last eight centuries. The Polish kingdom at one time extended to within a few hundred miles of Moscow. The only real dividing-line between Poland and Russia is that of culture and religion. Poland received the Christian faith not from Constantinople, as one might have expected, but from Rome. As a result she has continually looked to the west as the source of her culture, the model of her way of life. Historically she has

always been the last bastion of western influence, the buffer between Europe and the east.

In the past her Catholicism divided her from Protestant Prussia on the one hand and from Russia’s Greek Orthodox tradition on the other. To-day it cuts her off just as much from the Nazism of her western foe as from the Communism of her neighbour in the East.

For over a hundred years before the last war Poland as an independent nation had ceased to exist. In 1772 her three powerful neighboursßussia, Prussia, and Austria — to lop off bits. A

further partition came in 1792 ; the end was three years later. By that time four-fifths of the country was in the hands of the Czar, the rest divided between Prussia and Austria.

During the Great War each of her masters promised her liberty. But so did the Allies, and by 1917 the majority of the Poles had staked everything on an Allied victory.

Look at Map A and you will see how on her western front Poland was reconstructed after the last war. Austria gave up the province of Galicia ; Germany had to hand over West Prussia and Posen. A plebiscite was ordered in East Prussia. It was carried out in 1920, the result being favourable to Germany. The rich industrial triangle of Upper Silesia, with its hopelessly mixed population, returned seven to five in favour of Germany. The frontier, therefore, had to be drawn on a proportional basis, with results far more satisfactory than could have been hoped. Danzig became a free city and the port of Poland.

On map B you will find the famous Curzon Line, a provisional administrative fine fixed in 1920. However, the Poles fought on. winning from the Soviet Union in 1921 an important stretch of country to the east of the Bug River. These gains were consolidated by the capture of Vilna two years later. Poland was now a satisfied power with strategic frontiers behind which alone she could feel secure. These gains are marked in

Map A. The new boundaries were acknowledged by Britain, France, and the United States in 1923.

However, the Sudeten crisis developed a new threat from the west, so Poland occupied the small but economically important area of Teschen, which had long been matter for dispute with Czechoslovakia.

The total population of Poland was 32,000,000 in 1931, an increase of onequarter since the last war. About twothirds of her population before the present war were Polish. Less than 3 per cent, were Germans ; 9 per cent, were Jews, now greatly reduced by Nazi methods of extermination. White Russian and Ukrainians together totalled 17 per cent. ; they inhabit the eastern districts now annexed by the U.S.S.R.

In 1939, as you will see in Map B, Poland was again partitioned by Russia and Germany. The new Eastern Frontier, the so-called Ribbentrop Line, agrees in part with the Curzon Line of 1920. Notice, however, the significant acquisition by Russia of the important bulge of which Bialystok is the centre. There the population is almost purely Polish.

To-day Poland has no boundaries except such as are hastily established and as quickly abandoned by her enemies. 1 he true face of Poland is for the moment obscured by the ebb and flood of battle, wave upon wave of her historic foes clashing together on Polish soil.