Alexander Bruce Boswell : Poland and the Poles

The vague knowledge we possess in this country of the Poles as an oppressed people with a great past does not extend to the country in which they dwell. Poland was divided up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria long ago, and for an hundred and twenty years disappeared as a geographical and political entity. Its very name was ruthlessly blotted out from the map of Europe. The partitioning Powers successfully accomplished their task of persuading the world to forget the name of Poland, and under such names as Galicia, Posen, the Vistula provinces, we did not recognize the fragments of one of the greatest States of Europe. To us Poland has been a mere name, a vague region of dim romance, east of Germany, and connected in some mysterious way with Russia ; a land of chivalry and revolution, a land that sends us musicians and Jews. It is indeed difficult to give any accurate description of Poland as a whole. Parts of it appear in the Blue Books of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, in three different languages, introduced in a fragmentary way, with the object of deliberately suppressing truth. Are we, then, to discuss the vast territories that comprised the former Polish State, or to describe the far smaller region that is ethnically Polish to-day ? Are we to treat Poland as a whole, or according to the political divisions that existed before

 Poland has now become once more a political and economic body. Its boundaries are not yet fixed. Hence it will be best to describe all the region where Polish civilization is an important element, without claiming that all the territory described, historically part of Poland, is to belong to the new Polish State.

Poland — in Polish, Polska — means the country of the plain (Pole — field), and comprises the great expanse of East Central Europe between the Baltic sea and the Carpathian mountains, forming the transition from the smaller German plain to the greater plain of Russia. It differs from the former in its greater size and its magnificent forests, from the latter in its lofty mountains and its seaboard. The chief features of Poland, apart from the Carpathian mountains, are its great rivers, which flow either north-west or south-east. The chief rivers are the Upper Oder, the Vistula, the Niemen, and the Dvina, all flowing into the Baltic ; the Pruth, the Dniester, the Bug, and the Dnieper, flowing into the Black Sea. These rivers, with their tributaries, form the chief geographical feature of Poland, but do not form natural frontiers. In fact, Poland is completely open, both on the west and on the east, so that the boundaries of Poland towards both Germany and Russia must always be vague and fluctuating. Poland, then, is a great plain, practically unbroken, except by rivers, and was once covered by the great central European forest, in which the early Slav tribes lived, quite unknown to the Romans. To-day, these forests have been cut down, except in isolated spots, and the land is almost all cultivated and thickly populated. The forest, however, played a great part in isolating the Polish tribes from each other, and from their neighbours.

 It will be interesting for those who regard Poland as part of Russia to realize that Warsaw, a central point in Poland, is as far from Petrograd as it is from Aix-la-chapelle, as far from Moscow as from Flushing. Further, Warsaw is equidistant from Paris and the Crimean seaboard ; it is half-way between Portsmouth and Nizhni-Novgorod. These few comparisons give some idea of the vast expanse of the region we are considering.

Poland can be divided according to its geological formation into five regions : The Carpathian mountains, running from the west in a south-easterly direction ; the southern plateaux ; the central region of plains, cut by the marshy valleys of the rivers ; the northern region of uplands, marshes and lakes ; and the seaboard. These five regions run across Poland roughly from east to west, and may be described in more detail.

The Carpathian chain extends from the Moravian gap (where the railway runs from Warsaw to Vienna) to the Roumanian plain. South of the principal chain of the Carpathians, above the upper waters of the Dunajec, are the Tatra mountains, which soar from the forest and pasture regions up to heights of bare rock and eternal snow, 2662 metres above the sea level. This is the Alpine region of Poland ; and the village of Zakopane in this district attracts tourists from all parts of the country for its magnificent scenery and its mountainclimbing, where the picturesque Polish Highlanders act as guides. Further east, the Carpathian chain is divided into the West and East Beskid mountains, which are covered with forests, and were the scene of much bitter fighting during Ivanov's winter campaign in 1915. This mountain region is of great economic importance for Poland.

The region of the southern uplands may be roughly divided into four distinct plateaux, extending from west to east, from the Upper Oder as far as the Dnieper and the steppes of the Black Sea. These districts are : Upper Silesia, Lesser Poland, Lublin and Podolia. Silesia (in Polish, Slansk), once a purely Slav State, was long disputed between Poland and Bohemia, and finally fell to the latter, and then to Austria. It was seized in the eighteenth century by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Though the northern part has been Germanized, Upper Silesia is still mainly inhabited by Poles, who have always maintained a strong hold on the richest agricultural and industrial part. Upper Silesia is one of the richest industrial regions in Europe. A small part remained in Austria, but the main portion fell to Prussia. It contains a large coalfield which extends into Russian Poland and Galicia. The union of this divided coal area will give a strong industrial basis to the newly formed Polish State. The plateau of Lesser Poland was the most important part of the former Polish State ; it was, and is still, the centre of Polish culture, containing as it does the old capital of Cracow, with its ancient university and its artistic treasures, the monastery of Czenstochowa with its religious and military traditions — a venerated shrine visited by pilgrims from all over Poland — and the Holy Cross hills, renowned in Polish folk-lore and guerilla warfare.

The plateau is bounded on the south by the Jura hills near Cracow, on the north by the Holy Cross hills and the Bald Mountain (Lysa Gov a). The country is not fertile, except in the south-east towards Sandomierz, where a famous kind of wheat is grown. East of this region, and separated from it by the Vistula, is the plateau of Lublin, the most fertile part of Poland proper, abounding in cornfields and orchards of fruit. This region was the earliest part of the border lands to be colonized from Great and Lesser Poland. It was this early migration which brought the Poles into contact with the Russian tribes in the neighbourhood of Chelm, which is still disputed between them. There are still here remains of the former primeval forest, masses of oaks, beeches and limes. The south-eastern part of the plateau is the beginning of the famous Black Earth belt of Southern Russia, which has allured Polish settlers from the earliest times.

One of its chief features consists of the great ravines, where the villages are grouped round lakes in the wooded valleys, while the cornlands spread over the boundless plain above, so that all signs of habitation are invisible from the plain. A great Tartar track ran from the Crimea to Lemberg in former days. The chief city of Western Podolia is Lemberg (Polish, Lwow), a cosmopolitan city, once a great depot for Oriental trade, where the West meets the East. It is partly Polish, partly Ruthenian or Ukrainian, and contains many Jews and Armenians. Western Podolia was officially known as Eastern Galicia, and Lemberg was the administrative capital of the Austrian province of Galicia. Eastern Podolia, before the war, formed the Russian province of Podolia and parts of the provinces of Kiev and Volhynia. In 1917 it became part of the Ruthenian State of the Ukraine. Kamieniec, a city on a rock near the Dniester, was a great Polish fortress, a bulwark against Turkey ; and many great battles took place between the Poles and the Turks at Chocim, on the opposite side of the river. Other fortresses against the Cossacks and Tartars were at Bar, farther east, and at Kudak, on the Dnieper. The capital of the Ukraine is Kiev, the centre of the early Russian State. The city was for five hundred years under Lithuania and Poland. There is still a considerable Polish population there, and the Polish gentry are very numerous all over Podolia, while the peasants are Ruthenians and the middle-class traders are Jews. Towards the south, Podolia merges in the steppe region, and agriculture becomes more and more difficult owing to drought and the ravages of mice and locusts. This region never belonged to Poland, and was only won to civilization from the Tartars in 1783 by the Russian soldiers of Catherine the Great.

The Germans occupy the less fertile districts, having been unable to oust the Poles from their settlements on the more fertile portions of the plain. But despite the assistance of the German Government, these recent German settlers have been unable to drive out or absorb the Poles, who are to-day increasing in numbers far more rapidly than the Germans. The long racial struggle has produced a very sturdy type of Polish peasant, far superior in education and science to the peasants of Russian Poland. The peasantry of Poznania will be the backbone of the new united Polish State, and have already given many great men to the nation. There were fewer magnates in Great Poland than in Lesser Poland ; and the gentry of this region have always been distinguished for their patriotism. It was with the rise of vast estates in the Ukraine, whose magnates could outvote the more patriotic gentry of Poland proper, that the decline of Poland began. There is little mineral wealth or industry in Great Poland. It is an agricultural region, which the advance of agricultural science and education have made into the granary of Prussia. Especially important is the cultivation of beetroot for sugar ; and such industrial enterprise as exists, consists in the exploitation of the agricultural produce of the region, i.e. sugar refineries, distilleries, breweries, etc.

East of Kujawia stretches the great plain which once formed the southern half of the Principality of Mazovia, which was the third and most backward part of the Polish State. The main geographical feature of this region is the river Vistula, on the banks of which has risen the great city of Warsaw. The northern part of the plain is a moderately fertile region, intensively cultivated, and chiefly occupied in the production of sugar beets. This region formerly supported a great number of poor squires or yeomen, and it was the in-corporation of democratic Mazovia in the Polish kingdom which led to the transformation of Poland from a monarchy into a republic. The southern part of the plain was formerly a thinly populated region of woods and heaths. But there grew up here in the nineteenth century the great industrial area which has become the most prosperous part of Poland. Lodz, formerly a village, became a great city, and is to-day the headquarters of the textile industry of Poland, and the centre of a network of towns and villages, all thickly populated and occupied in industry. The whole region round Lodz and Warsaw forms the greatest industrial area in Eastern Europe, especially since 1850 when the Customs frontier between Russia and the kingdom of Poland was abolished. The Mazovian plain is also of great military importance, and has been the scene of many great campaigns and battles. All its rivers have become well known in military history, as their marshy valleys form serious obstacles to armies marching from west to east. Besides the Vistula, such small rivers as the Bzura are well known as the scene of the obstinate resistance of the Russians to the great offensives of Hindenburg and Mackensen in the Great War. The industry and commerce that centre in this plain and in its capital, Warsaw, together with its position in the middle of Poland and on the great routes from west to east, must inevitably make Mazovia not only the nucleus of a great State, but one of the greatest centres of population, industry and commerce in Europe.

Alexander Bruce Boswell