Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Riddle of Eastern Europe THE crumbling of German defense Unas in Eastern Europe tends te focus attention on the future fate ef over s hugdred...
...and the terrain is, of course, the same...
...After tha tide of war turned in favor of the Soviet Union in tha summer of 1920, Lenin ordered the drive on Warsaw, rejecting the idea of paaee with a boundary favorable te Russisn nationalist claims, in the hope that revelnatan ia Poland would touch off similar movements in Germany snd other European countries...
...The Polish srmlea occupied a much mere favorable line before the beginning of this war than the boundary established by the Treaty ef Riga, in March, 1921...
...This aspiration was also disappointed, because the Polish masses did not choose to play the role of guinea-pigs, te be sacrificed on the altar of world revolution...
...Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Riddle of Eastern Europe THE crumbling of German defense Unas in Eastern Europe tends te focus attention on the future fate ef over s hugdred million people, formerly organised in thirteen separate states, who livs between the two largest European population masses, the Germans snd the Russians...
...Then the fate of the Baltic and Bslksn regions, of the Poles, the Czechs, the Austrian* snd Hungarians will become s first-rat* political problem...
...But If there is, along with genuine Independent self-government...
...In some intances, ho doubt, Soviet troops are entering the same places an the same days aa In 1920...
...The Red Army and the Polish Army in 1920 were improvised scratch forces, slmost competely deficient in the powerful mechanised weapons which ths Russian snd the German forces possess at the present time...
...The war ef 1920 was a struggle between the Soviet Union sad Poland...
...The thirteen states were Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece ami Albania...
...The present war ia being fought by the Soviet Union and Germany over the prostrate body of a crushed and enslaved Poland...
...Poland waa territorially a loser, not a gainer, from the war ef 1920...
...Tha sector of the front south of the Pripet Marshes is apparently livening up with a drive aimed at Lvov.' For purposes of comparison it may be recalled that tha Bad Army in 1920 took Brest-Litovsk on August 1st and then forced tha Una of tha Bug River and drove on toward Warsaw...
...The statement ia often made, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes with propagandist Intentions, that Soviet annexationist claims ia relation te Poland are justified bow because Poland conquered the disputed territory from Russia ia 1920...
...Almost sil boundaries have been thrown into a state of fluidity by the war...
...Pilsudski took advantage of thia weakness, broke through the thin Soviet line and rolled back tha Bad Army as rapidly as it had advanced...
...One most hope that Stalin has not forgotten this piece of political insight snd that he may look te models ia tha sfctajjaaa nawt (new agate in favor ia tatt'Soviet Union), aaveh at tha seventeenth century Statosmsn Ordin Nsschokln, who favored an alliance on equal terras with Poland, or Tsar Alexander I, whose moderation after the Napoleonic Wars sets a goad example...
...This statement Is completely untrue...
...SoONER or lster, this year or next year, from the East, the West or the Seuth, or from all these directions simultaneously, Hitlerite Germany will go down...
...The military odds against it are too overwhelming to be fought off indefinitely...
...It may also be that the Germans have concentrated large reserves behind the natural river defense lines of the Bug, the Narev and the Vistula, where the front will be considerably shorter and communication and supply lines will be easier to maintain...
...Several of these states are marked for annexation by the Soviet Union and ths stability of some others, bees use of internal feuds, must be considered doubtful...
...Soviet political aad military predominance in Baetarn Europe seems inevitable...
...While the military and political features of the wars of 1920 and 1944 are quite different, there are curious similarities of dates...
...Minsk fell on July 11, Wilno on the 14th...
...Before considering the future political status of Eastern Europe, it is interesting to note the curious similarities, ss regards geography snd timing, of the present campaign on the Eastern Front and the Soviet-Polish War of 1920 Politically and militarily there is little resemblance between the two wars...
...A national upsurge of the Polish people, without distinc-of class, waa th* main factor in turning back the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw...
...full freedom of cultural and economic interchange between the Bast European countries and the West, these lands may be s bridge between the Soviet Union aad the West, not unwilling subjects of an alien politico-economic system...
...So threw most of Ida forces into aa enveloping movement around Warsaw from tha north, occupying a considerable stretch est the Warsaw-Danxig Railway, . At the high point of th* advance, Soviet troops were in Rsdimin, only fifteen mile* from the Polish capital...
...Salomon Schwarts performed a piece ef valuable historical research ia The New Leader a few weeks ago whan ha reprinted a mm from attain* to Lenta ' ef Jaae 12, 192*, saggeaafaaf tha neeea.ity far a tftottartte* between the "eeatrehstk- type ef federattoa eai table fee f ana at regit*** of th* Reattaa Empire aad tha freer type ef aaaeetartoa that weald ha aoeeaaary fat the event that ceautrie* with bob Senates tradittoa* ahouli be drawa iat* th* Soviet Union...
...f-.de an agreement with the Ukrainian nationalist, Simon Pet-hire, with a view to creating a federation of non-Russian state* from ths Baltic to the Black Sea...
...In 1944, as in 1920, the Soviet armies launched a major offensive in the sector north of the Pripet Marshes...
...But there waa a gaping hols in the concentration of the Soviet armies between Warsaw and Kovel, a town over a hundred mile* to the Southeast, which the Russian forces recently occupied...
...The Polish leader, Josef Pilsudski...
...At the moment of writing (July 15) Soviet armies are threatening Bialyatok and Grodno and are pressing on toward the key bastion oa the Bug River, Brest-Litovsk...
...Independent Polish participation is possible only in the form of guerrilla activity and through Polish military units of limited sise that have been organised in the Soviet Union...
...There was not enough popular support for this idea in the Ukraine, and its realisation was beyond the strength of the Polish armed forces...
...This waa on August ISth...
...Both the Polish aad Soviet governments pursued aims that were beyond their strength to achieve...
...It may be that Germany's military doom waa sounded when the Soviet troops overran the White Russisn salient, with its supposed strong points, Vitebsk, Moghilev, Minsk, with such rapidity...
...The direction and violence of social and economic upheaval cannot be foreseen with any certainty...
...The leader of thia drive waa the young General M. N. Tukhachevsky, later a Marshal of the Soviet Union, still later executed...
...If the line of the Vistula, in which Warsaw itself is a key point, is overrun, then the German position may be considered desperate...
Vol. 27 • July 1944 • No. 30
