merely over a question of foreign policy, but was in a still higher degree over the rights of the Senate and the future of American democracy. He insisted that the League of Nations involved a radical modification in the system of government of the United States.

Our readers may now comprehend why the controversy over the treaty 5. of peace in the United States is first and foremost a constitutional controдалі versy, and the inevitable result of certain features of the American Constitution.

the

The organic law of the United States prescribes a strict separation of the powers of government. The President of the United States, elected by the whole people and not by the legislature, was not expected to be accountable for his policies to any other authority than the nation at large. It was provided, and we know that this is an idea which has appealed strongly to political theorists in France, as that cabinet ministers should be responsible exclusively to the President, and that members of Congress should not be eligible to such appointments.

Thus the Constitution of the United States fails to insure that constant har

mony between the executive head of the state and the elected representatives of the nation, which is the essence of parliamentary government. By omitting this it invites acute and unsolvable conflicts. It has ranged two competing powers against each other, which are inevitably rivals; whose attitude toward each other is sure to be one of opposition, since no means are provided for forcing the executive to yield to the legislature, so that the President is entirely within his rights in ignoring completely the wishes of the latter body. On the other hand, Congress is equally within its rights in refusing to defer to the desires and intentions of the executive.

On many occasions in the history of the United States 'presidential democracy,' as contrasted with our parliamentary system, has caused political crises in which we were concerned, and indirectly were the innocent victims. The same system has been adopted by the South American republics, where it has resulted in a succession of revolutions and insurrections; for the only way in which an acute conflict between President and Congress can be settled is to appeal to the people, or to the army, or to both.

L'Opinion (French Nationalist Literary Weekly), July 24]

1. Poland's Error

BY CHARLES RIVET

POLAND'S military position is as bad as its defective political organization, its improvised tripartite army, and its

VOL. 19-NO. 974

economic chaos might lead us to expect. Bravery alone is not enough. Even though Pilsudski and his aids. may ultimately stem the on-rushing tide of Bolshevism, they will have attained but an ephemeral success. The real salvation of the country lies in another direction.

It lies elsewhere because Poland's

than its military peril. Its political policies will not be influenced by material assistance from the Allies, and the dangers those policies are creating cannot be obviated by our efforts. Poland has been the artisan of its disastrous past and present. It alone must be the artisan of its future. The nation has a taste for suicide, which cannon, munitions, and reënforcements from Paris or London cannot cure. The only remedy is a much clearer understanding than we have in France of the rôle which Poland must play in the Europe we all desire to pacify, and particularly its rôle toward us, toward Russia, and toward Germany.

Before acquiring fixed frontiers on the West, adjoining the German empire, which are of primary importance for Poland, and which, indeed, condition its very existence, the country has hurled itself headlong against the barb-wired entrenchments of the Bolsheviki under the pretext of championing civilization and saving the continent from the hydra of revolution. Our political wiseacres characterize the danger there as 'a conflagration.' It gives us deep regret and pain to be forced to tell them that they are simply seeing a mirage of the Russian Steppes. The time has come when the facts and reason of the situation entitle and obligate every sincere friend of Poland to reprove rather than to pity the men who have voluntarily staked the future of their country in an adventure which may be its ruin.

Poland is said to have merely defended itself against attack. This apology comes from men who would indict the rulers at Moscow for every crime. However, the Bolsheviki have enough real crimes to answer for without unjustly shouldering this upon them. The truth is that hostilities between Poland and the Bolsheviki have

as

Dre

months, in spite of the fact that the Polish Left demanded that they cease, and attributed them explicitly to the activities of our French military mission in that country. However, this fighting actually served the purpose at Warsaw. Some day the diplomatic archives will reveal, to the painful disillusion of enlightened Polish patriots, that the government of that country has been preparing since November, 1919, to invade Russia, with the object of seizing Kieff and Smolensk, and to employ Petljura and Chernoff standard-bearers to carry freedom to the 'liberated populations' of those regions. Brusiloff's preventive offensive of March 15th aided this design by by giving a direct excuse for action. Taciturn Pilsudski once remarked in an e unusual impulsive burst of frankness: 'Neither Kolchak or Denikin will succeed; I am the man who will reconstruct Russia.' That would have been a fine and generous idea which we ach would have supported and encouraged in fact a sane and fruitful plan if it had been inspired by a real desire to deliver Poland's great neighbor from its tyrants, and to establish the permanent and intimate friendship with that country necessary for Poland's very existence. Unhappily the real design was very different. Reconstructing Russia meant reconstructing it in Poland's interest alone. It involved conferring fictitious independence upon a fictitious Ukraine, which Frenchmen coming back from that country will frankly tell you is impossible. It meant, furthermore, erecting a Lithuania and White Russia which wanted no favors from Polish magnates, and saw that this merely a scheme for usurping Russian territory in Poland's interest. In order to get everything before they had anything for certain, the Poles plunged

Ου

ம்

of

P

offe

at t

to t

t

into the vast spaces of the East, thus weakening their front against Germany, which recently contested at Spa their rights in Upper Silesia and their precarious status in Dantzig – that is to say, coal and the sea, indispensable for a Poland which is not to be tributary to its enemies. Then, as if the country had not been sufficiently hard pressed already, the Polish government started a violent campaign against its neighbors, the Czecho-Slovaks, as if bent on acquiring a third enemy as soon as possible!

On every hand men clamor 'Poland in peril!' Unhappily this is but too true. But the Bolsheviki are not responsible for this. They are a transient danger. The true peril is the peril of old; one which the government has revived by inviting from the moment of its rebirth the enmity of both Russias - Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist; and by opening the gate wide for Germany to start a new chain of alliances against Poland for its own future profit. We cannot remove that danger by shipments of munitions. Only Poland can remove it; and we are entitled in our own interest as well as in the interest of that country, to insist that this be done.

If the situation created by Warsaw thus early in its career as an independent nation is harmful for Poland, it is injurious beyond measure for France. Viewing conditions coldly and dismissing that sentimentality which does nothing but mislead, we see that the fcrisis is not one that calls for sympathy and pity. France and Poland cannot live live upon the memories of the past. Practical exigencies of the day take precedence of sentiment. It is better to descend from the tripod of the prophetess and listen to prosaic and ungrateful truths. The relations between France and Poland must be determined solely by practical interests.

Is this the policy we have adopted hitherto? We must answer in the negative. With expansive generosity we tried to repair a historical crime-to restore from a distance the Poland of romance. The nation was a little maiden to whom we benignantly promised a joyous and happy future. Is it surprising if this child of our creation thus spoiled, petted and indulged in its infancy, whose status in the world was defined only by hopes and uncertainties, should now appeal to its guardians to repair its errors, after trying to confront Europe with the accomplished fact of a Russian frontier fixed by itself alone? We created an irresponsible state; it naturally conducted itself without a sense of responsibility.

Poland had a rôle to fill from which it would have benefited supremely. Its task was to create a barrier between Germany and Russia; a barrier more significant from the moral than the territorial point of view. Its first obligation was to win the permanent friendship of Russia, if necessary by leaving to that country a few kilometers of disputed frontier. It should have kept within the territories occupied by people of Polish blood and speech. These were guaranteed it. Indeed it was given regions truly Polish which even the optimist scarcely hoped forterritories which were extorted from Germany almost at the point of the bayonet, and for which we had to struggle not only with Fahrenbach but with Lloyd George himself.

Now, what has Poland actually done? Forgetting the questions vital for its existence, it has dreamed of heading a grandiose alliance of alien nationalities, and has imperilled its very existence to bring that ambitious scheme about even before its own government was completely organized. Poland has ignored a profound truth. Forgetting its own dramatic history it

has alienated the Slavic world, both the Czechs and the Great Russians, and has converted them into allies of Germany through their common hatred of its government. Poland has thus disregarded its obligations to itself and to France. Its officials are fond of saying that Poland is the barrier between the two colossi of the East. Instead it has made itself a pathway for their union. Poland will bring upon us a Russian-German alliance, the most frightful nightmare we can conceive, if we persist in considering it a martyr and do not sternly indicate the boundaries with which it must be content in order to insure the safety both of its own country and of ourselves. We should defend Poland against its own misguided leaders rather than against the Bolsheviki.

Is the case hopeless? It depends upon the Poles and upon us whether we solve the present crisis by some better agency than machine guns. Unhappily we are at a loss to discover a man powerful enough to resist the flood of feverish and unhealthy imperialist ambitions which has engulfed Warsaw. If such a man arises we must support him vigorously. That is the only remedy which will be efficacious and durable. Any other measure will be a palliative which will but-postpone the inevitable tragedy.

Preparations for the plebiscite in the Teschen territory have been accompanied by as much friction and bitterness as those in the Prussian districts, where a popular vote is also to be taken. A year ago, when I was in Prague, the Czech papers were filled with reports of Polish usurpations in Teschen; to-day the Polish press is filled with exhaustive and sensational accounts of the injustice, trickery, and violence of the Czechs in this contested and valuable region. The Poles assert that the country is overwhelmingly Polish and consider it an outrage that the question should even be put to a popular vote. They regard the suggestion to arbitrate the matter as a Czech intrigue against their interests.

Still other circumstances have cooperated to chill the enthusiasm of the Poles for the Allies. The English have never been very popular. The character and the temperament of the two nations are too different to permit much sympathy between them. Now, however, the Poles frankly mistrust England. They think that Great Britain is much too conciliatory toward Germany; they fear its designs at Danzig; and they are angry because the British have not given Poland active support against Russia. One can judge how far this ill-feeling goes when I say that I have heard many Poles express the opinion that Great Britain was supplying the Bolsheviki with munitions. Where do they get their tanks then?' This is an illustration of the wild fancies a patriotic and excited Pole can entertain.

On the other hand, neither is sentiment toward the French as friendly as formerly. One hears complaints on every hand that the innumerable Frenchmen who have descended upon the land since the armistice, take advantage of the exchange to plunder the natives ruthlessly. More recently in

tri

to

as

1,2

teste

the

t to

Pres

their bitter disappointment over their set-back against the Russians, they are beginning to hold France responsible for this failure. The irritation finds expression in an unpleasant controversy between the Polish papers and the local French paper, the Journal de Pologne. Of course, too much importance should not be attached to this. France and Poland are firmly united by their common hostility to Germany. The truth is, however, that the Poles no longer like anybody, and the alliance with France is already publicly referred to as a 'marriage of convenience.'

At the same time Polish opposition papers point out, quite justly, that the offensive in the Ukraine has not improved Poland's position with the allied governments. That campaign has created the impression that the country is greedy for territory, and has raised the question whether the Polish republic may not prove to be a disNorderly and inconvenient factor in the political affairs of Eastern Europe.

che

e t

er

Gra

The alliance with Petljura and the Ukranian offensive are logical developments of the government's borderstate and coalition policy, which is known in Poland, from the residence of Marshal Pilsudski, as the 'Belvedere programme.' It is a mere subterfuge to pretend, as some people try to do, that Poland's policy in the Ukraine is part of a larger defensive scheme against Bolshevism. The latter motive was merely contributory. As a matter of fact, the Poles are not interested in Bolshevism, but in Russia. Responsible men in political life are perfectly frank on that point; and it has been explained to me with the utmost definiteness from many sources. For example, a well-known Polish political leader of whom I inquired whether the alliance with the Ukraine would still be important if a new government

were erected in Russia, answered without the slightest evasion: 'It would then be more important than ever.' In talking of the boundaries of 1772, no one outside of a small uninfluential group of men, half-crazed with national ambitions, considers seriously incorporating in the new republic all the territories which belonged to Poland at that date. They signify by this slogan the 'Belvedere policy,' which I have just said is to form a coalition under Polish leadership. If possible they would have this coalition extend from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In this way Poland would erect a powerful bulwark against the future Russia. It is probable, therefore, that the Russian refugees, like Rodicheff and Savinkoff, who are now in Warsaw, in order, as Rodicheff told me, to create 'a psychological basis' for a friendly settlement of all controversies between Poland and Russia, have little prospect of success.

Obviously this ambitious coalition policy of Poland rests on a very weak foundation. Let us leave the Baltic governments entirely out of question. An alliance with them would have practically no value unless Lithuania joined it. But the Lithuanian minister of foreign affairs, Valdemaras, has just stated publicly that Lithuania wishes to be absolutely independent of Poland and would rather sacrifice Vilna than become a member of a federation including that country. We can assume without question that whatever kind of a government may be erected in Lithuania, its attitude will be the same as that just expressed, and that it will seek support anywhere else rather than from Poland. It will prove as impossible to bring about a voluntary alliance between Poland and Lithuania as it would have been to ally the Baltic countries with Germany. In the same way that the Esthonians and Letts are