Poland and Pilsudski
Phillips, Charles
92 THE COMMONWEAL June 2, 1926 POLAND AND...
...so that, though Poles did most miraculously remain Poles through it all, the "Russian" A NYONE who has seen Poland in the throes of Pole, "German" Pole...
...bider of time...
...that the man in the rare laymen of more ardent faith who came in actual pew, especially if he be poor in this world's goods, contact with missionaries...
...Unquestionably a "Russian" Pole, more keenly sensitive to the Russian Pilsudski thinks so, and unquestionably he has means menace than others, feels this and feels it so desperat his command, which others (certainly not outsiders) ately that he has resorted to arms to save his country have not, of knowing just how imminent that danger from falling a prey to a new Muscovite invasion...
...dominated them...
...It looks as if he withdrawing to the background of affairs...
...This is not, of course, to lose sight of the she was reassembling herself after over a century of geographical factor...
...But missionary zeal cies, program, and methods, that she is too hieratic was confined for the greater part to those who were in spirit and organization...
...lation under alien rule, makes them not only submit to He was sagacious in that...
...by refusing had figured the thing out neatly...
...The people's wearito stand for the presidential office in the first election...
...Whatever else has 94 THE COMMONWEAL June 2, 1926 been done by the several cabinets governing the country a few unofficial but rather obviously inspired guerrilla under the Constitution of 1921, they have not pleased attacks on Polish outposts...
...The lack of unity among the Polish people is funda- Poland was not lost...
...With seven felgrowth of the Faith...
...political life, his own hold on popular feeling, and He thinks and acts in his daily life, and has so thought especially his strongly intrenched leadership of the and acted all his life, in terms of defense against army...
...True, himself, in his early manhood, went in chains to Siberia he has struck at a terrible risk...
...This, in brief, is the story haps even a new partition...
...The Society for the Propacounts for nothing and has no voice in matters that gation of the Faith made a deliberate gesture of ap...
...His brother was exiled to Siberia...
...of that sole aim that had been his life's objective since "Corruption," however, is a stock phrase used by all his student days and his exile to Siberia-the freeing political leaders, on occasion, against their opponents...
...And it was then above all, with the conviction that the thing must be that he exercised his best wisdom and foresight, by done if Poland were to be saved...
...He went ahead field of conflict to an exhausting distance from the with the conviction that he would win at a comparaobjective, Warsaw...
...On the contrary, I believe of his present seizure of power...
...like Pilsudski, who is not only a military genius and The internal conditions of the Poland of today, and an ardent patriot, but likewise a "sectional" Pole, and the nature of the Polish people, can be discussed to- you will have, sooner or later, some such situation as gether...
...Hardly...
...no one denies that...
...The fact the Polish national legislature, has lately taken on a that the news despatches during the present upset have boldness and a force unprecedented in the history of brought assurance that under Pilsudski the conduct of the country...
...They have had plenty of other things to do the new pact between Lithuania and Germany which besides...
...Lithuania, near Vilna...
...and "Austrian" Pole, became, war and who has witnessed the self-sacrificing nevertheless, fairly distinct entities, each with his own efforts of the Polish people to save and rehabili- ingrained suspicion of the power that ruled him and tate their ravaged country, cannot escape a heart-pull his own sectional outlook on the fears of his brother at hearing news of new disasters there...
...is...
...latterly, during the the most unhappily situated country in the world, a past three years, in the background...
...It is the nature of the people that in large the present...
...But we have guessed, and that Pilsudski, being as he is is there any imminent danger in it...
...He will very likely remain in his time for renewed action...
...Whether one sympathizes or east or west, and with two hostile and dominating not with all his actions, his strength must be admitted...
...his uncle whole story of the Pilsudski coup...
...Pilsudski has never was killed, his aged grandmother and two of his aunts wholeheartedly concurred in the management of his were cast into a Russian dungeon, where the grandcountry's affairs since the constitution was passed and mother went blind...
...ness of anything resembling war, coupled with that and by virtually retiring when the office of Chief of general political inertia of which I have spoken, the State, which he had held under the provisional govern- result of generations of political division and emascument, ceased to exist...
...thanks to the heroism of Haller's volunaginative, and highly individualistic...
...of her inherent strength, to which Paderewski had which means that they are highly idealistic, highly im- awakened her...
...And having become a leader, having once tripartite Poland, and specifically to Pilsudski's been made a hero of by the people, it was equally own idea of Polish destiny and Polish security...
...Thus it was that Pilsudski, though tively small cost of public disturbance and life, and, under a cloud, really "came back...
...I do not believe that Pilsudski's action was Russia...
...and of the two factors, the geographical was knowledge of his invincible strength driven home to obviously the more decisive one, as is witnessed by the them...
...foreign affairs would remain unchanged is to me patent All this is public fact...
...but of that all that need be said partitions, the figure of Pilsudski was omnipresent...
...The rapid dent of twenty in an academic environment that was spread of the society within a twelvemonth was not frankly materialistic, he saw the need of doing somedue solely to the foundress but more especially to the thing, as he himself confessed, "to insure the life of zeal for spreading the truth which is a natural out- my faith through works of charity...
...We on the outside do know that for a long time Whether he is only further endangering his country, there has been unrest along the Russo-Polish border...
...Pauline Jaricot, who in some mysterious way had The second attempt resulted in the foundation of heard of a missionary idea suggested five years before the Saint Vincent de Paul Society at Paris in 1833, by at Paris to Mrs...
...Charles Phillips to treat authori- 1919, to expect such a people to be politically united tatively of Marshal Pilsudski, whom he has known personally, or politically strong...
...and add the factor of a leader Whether it result in good or ill, time only can tell...
...For, though his istics which make them politically weak...
...For, though he failed, and apparently brought fact that where Poland has natural frontiers-that is, his country to the last verge of ruin, he did not go in the south, where the Carpathians cut her off from down...
...Yet, at the Poles...
...But he was only biding him but accept him...
...not only the risk of a and served his time, only to be later re-arrested and bloody civil war, but of a new foreign invasion, per- imprisoned in Petrograd...
...peal to the average Catholic, not only for prayers for The first great movement which came with all the the success of the work of the missionaries, but also novelty of a revelation to an age that had seen little for alms to carry on the necessary exterior part of participation of laymen in the works of religion, was the campaign...
...What is it, what was and tenaciously, under the Russian regime, building up it, in the conduct of the country's government that he the "underground" which was to place him eventually has now so violently risen up to protest against...
...We are simply told that it was "corever he did, whatever he accepted, he never lost sight ruption in the government" that moved him to act...
...In 1916 he had accepted the Is he merely ambitious, in a selfish way...
...Is in a position of leadership when Austria and Germany he opposed to constitutional government...
...The Church has always been low students of the Sorbonne, he hit upon an idea the...
...but to his mind, as I would interpret it from opens a Russo-German corridor across the north of a first-hand study of him, and from at least one il- Poland...
...This article will be followed, in a forthcoming issue of The Commonweal, with a paper by Professor Robert partitions, in spite of the fact that the disembodied H. Lord, who served as American civilian representative on soul of Polish nationality lived on, the three parts, the first Interallied Commission to Poland and who has been Russian, German, and Austrian, inevitably were honored with a degree from the University of Lemberg for his stamped with the image and color of the life that studies in Polish history and culture.-The Editors...
...As a stuDubourg, second bishop of New Orleans...
...During the years from power and carry affairs through to his own liking for 19 14 on, he had made a name for himself as a careful some time to come...
...This he appears, for the moment State" created by Poland's Teuton conquerors...
...measure has produced those conditions...
...It goes back to the divided nature of the be kept free...
...But from my slight knowl- of Pilsudski's relationship with Russia...
...place these people in a position of sudden new conditions of the country, and the nature of the people freedom, out of which the most complicated problems and their political heritage, this coup was inevitable...
...of Poland from alien rule...
...Perhaps the latter, a little-if one be sion necessary and expedient to do ; his policy appeared quite sure of his definition of the Mussolini complex...
...At any rate, this as much like diplomatic talk for international con- is one plausible interpretation of the Pilsudski coup sumption as the charge of graft against the Witos which those who know Poland can reasonably make regime reads like pretext for domestic consumption...
...Thanks to the consciousness mentally the result of a racial trait...
...and finally he has struck...
...It was Those who witnessed his famous invasion of Bolshevik this unfortunate situation, coupled with the still more Russia in 192o, and the colossal failure of that attempt unfortunate lack of unity among the Poles, that led of his to set up a barrier of small protective antito the original tragedy of the Polish partitions 15o Russian states along Poland's eastern frontier, had the years ago...
...and that reedge of him, I believe that he has done so with the lationship is the key to his political philosophy...
...that the Russian danger to Poland is more acute than The Russian menace exists...
...Before that he had been working quietly But what is his own liking...
...He was born in years, was in danger of not preserving her freedom...
...himself...
...same time, anyone who knows Poland cannot be al- Given, then, a people without political experience, together surprised at the turn of events revealed by an idealistic people set down, and divided, between the recent Pilsudski coup...
...It was at that Roumania and Hungary-there Poland has friends, time that he uttered his classic phrase, in response to not enemies, for neighbors...
...Pilsudski's conviction that Poland, "his" Poland, as we find some of his ancestors enacting roles in she has been governed during the past three or four Sienkiewicz's historical novels...
...But he has remained in the of his estates...
...wide-open prairie land, without any natural frontiers He is a strong man...
...We know, too, that Pilsudski in the matter of Russia...
...and acteristics which make the Poles the most interesting in the long event Pilsudski's eastern drive proved to and romantic people in Europe are the same character- be a large factor in her salvation...
...He at least, to have refused...
...inevitable that he should feel that the new Poland, To understand just what Pilsudski's political philwrought out of the wreckage of the old, was in a osophy is, one must look into the story of the man degree "his" Poland, a Poland of his making...
...92 THE COMMONWEAL June 2, 1926 POLAND AND PILSUDSKI By CHARLES PHILLIPS (Years of intimate association with Polish citizens, among crushed and political inertia nourished...
...must inevitably arise...
...his whole life has been colored At long distance, this seems to me to be the key to the by the tragedy of the Russian borderlands...
...All the more so when we conand of the general background which he has discussed in The sider the fact that during the century and a half of the New Poland...
...He is, as I have said, a "sectional" Pole...
...The assurance reads to me tent, facts of which Pilsudski is aware...
...And still further, we know that Russianluminating conversation with him, the Russian question inspired communistic activity in Poland itself, even in is "the" question for Poland to consider...
...does he dream "regency" and became a member of the "Council of of a dictatorship...
...We have learned very recently, also, of danger...
...make for the good of religion...
...controlled the country...
...Petit by Monsignor Louis W. that chosen missionary, Frederic Ozanam...
...And this invasion of Russia seemed to have been the cause preinherent weakness has been accentuated by generations cipitating the Bolshevik attack, as a matter of fact that of alien rule under which political initiative was invasion was the deciding factor in defeating the red June 2, i9z6 THE COMMONWEAL 93 armies, through the simple expedient of removing the that it has been thought out for years...
...countries for neighbors, Germany and Russia...
...but never absent...
...It is this thought, in my belief, that is back hasty or unpremeditated...
...Is he suffering from a Mussodid all this, and everything else that seemed on occa- lini complex...
...rather than saving it, by precipitating an internal situathere has been Bolshevik raiding and banditry and not tion favorable to foreign invasion, is another question...
...They are Slavs...
...This does away forever with the trite as a perpetual reminder to the people that upon them, and unfounded charge, so frequently in the mouths too, devolved the duty of doing their part in spreadof those who are dissatisfied with the Church's poli- ing the good news of salvation...
...He stood, and he "came back...
...Sooner or later, given the hostile nations without any natural frontiers to protect strong personality of this popular leader, the internal them...
...in just here is to reiterate the obvious fact that Poland is the foreground most of the time...
...In this case it is difficult to escape the conviction that Now it was inevitable that a man of this nature Pilsudski has used the "corruption" charge as a prewould not only play a leading part, in due time, in the text...
...that her priests are too minded to consecrate their all to the cause, or to those high-handed and domineering...
...He background, waiting...
...The present situation appears to hinge entirely on He is a "Russian" Pole, of old eastern Polish stock...
...but in the mind of Pilsudski ple toward the general muddle of their still unformed the Russian menace is paramount and omnipresent...
...THE BEGGAR OF THE EUCHARIST By THOMAS M. SCHWERTNER THE fact cannot be stressed sufficiently in this missionary in her spirit, and nowhere more intensely age of the lay apostolate that the three great- than in France, where two centuries before this time est movements in Catholicism during the nine- a seminary for foreign missions had been founded by teenth century owed their inception and initial de- two apostolic bishops from China as a real nursery velopment to the enlightened zeal and far-sightedness of apostles and a training school of martyrs, as well of laymen...
...the cry, "All is lost 1"-"All is lost-except Poland...
...most careful calculation of all the factors in the prob- Now the Russian menace, like the German menace, lem: the advantageous moment, the attitude of the peo- is ever present in Poland...
...They have not Roumania, south of Poland, is threatened through always listened to his warnings against the Russian Bessarabia...
...It is too soon whom he worked as a member of the American Red Cross yet, within the few years since Poland's restoration in Commission, enable Mr...
...My belief is that the cause goes far deeper than freeing of Poland, but would likewise develop ideas, dissatisfaction with the Witos cabinet which he has a scheme, a plan, by which Poland, once freed, would deposed...
...and that nature Throughout the first stages of Poland's post-war is in equal measure due to the political heritage of the reconstruction, when, under Paderewski's magic hand, country...
...But what- Pilsudski coup...
...and behind it, it is easy enough evidence that it is just exactly this that Pilsudski means to believe, are other facts of even more omnious porto change very radically...
...It was the first organized and systhe Society for the Propagation of the Faith, founded tematized attempt to enlist the Catholic of ordinary in 1822 at Lyons by an humble Dominican tertiary, means in the great crusade of spreading the Gospel...
...to be to leave nothing untried that promised to lead But none of these causes is given us to explain the toward a solution of the Polish problem...
...The very char- teer army and the help of France, she was saved...
...His father was hunted and robbed the president elected...
Vol. 4 • June 1926 • No. 4
