Reconstituted Poland received very liberal frontiers on the west at the
expense of Germany, with a corridor to the Baltic Sea, thus cutting
off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Danzig was made a free city
under the protection of the League of Nations, despite its purely
German population; but it was to be included in the Polish customs
frontiers, and its foreign relations were to be under Polish control.
Later plebiscites were to determine whether Upper Silesia and two
districts of West Prussia should remain with Germany or be handed over
to Poland. The Treaty of St.-Germain gave western Galicia to Poland,
and the Entente Powers agreed that eastern Galicia should have autonomy
for twenty-five years, under the protection of Poland, after which its
inhabitants were to decide their destiny by a plebiscite. The Poles
had expected to obtain a clear title to eastern Galicia, considering
of no importance the fact that they were hardly more than 10 per cent
of its population of over three millions. The outcry raised by the
nationalists at Warsaw over eastern Galicia forced Paderewski to resign
the premiership. His stormy year in politics had accomplished much for
Poland, but he himself was thoroughly discredited. He had not shown
himself as good a land-grabber as his compatriots had hoped. Paderewski
is back at the piano!
During the Peace Conference, and before Poland had an official status,
she found herself engaged in three wars. She was fighting at the
same time with the Czechoslovaks over the coke and coal of Teschen,
with the Ukrainians over eastern Galicia, and with the Bolshevists
over border-lands in a vast region whose political future could not
be decided. The Entente Powers, wanting to maintain relations with
reactionary Russian elements, had avoided fixing a Russo-Polish
frontier. Any line they drew would have offended the anti-Bolshevists
and the Poles alike!
The war with the Czechoslovaks was too ridiculous to last long. Both
states were in the embryo. Their future was being debated at Paris.
They were compelled to listen to reason, sign an armistice, and submit
the dispute to the Supreme Council. Teschen was eventually cut in two,
the line running down a street in the town. But the mining district
and the railway went to Czechoslovakia. The Poles were assured that
they would be compensated at the expense of Germany for this loss, if
something one had not yet had can be called that. The Ukrainian war
was complicated by the division of the Ukrainians into two parties.
The anti-Bolshevists eventually joined forces with the Poles against
the Bolshevists; and this mischance of civil war put the Ukrainians of
Eastern Galicia at the mercy of Poles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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