THE THREAT TO THE LEAGUE
;THE aim of Locarno . was to close the centuries of bitter frontier conflicts- between France and Germany. The possession of the long disputed provinces was to be secured to France, now by far the less numerous nation ; in return Germany was to be readmitted to -comity of nations, by being received into the League and given a permanent seat on its Council. The -security of France and the rehabilitation of Germany alike require that the passions of the War and the hatreds of the post-War period be eliminated. But now a new proposal has come up ; to give a permanent seat gm the Council to Poland also, for no better reason than that she is hostile to Germany.
The Council of the League is its Government. It now consists of four permanent and six elected members. The permanent members correspond to the pre-War concert of the Great Powers and to the Principal Powers in the War and at the Peace Conferences. It was merely common sense that every Great Power in . the League should be given a permanent seat on its Council ; but it is . the elected members who represent the, new, -distinctive ideas of the League, the principle of inter- national comity, of the rights of small nations and the appeal to world opinion. The balance between the two elements cannot be seriously disturbed without changing ,the very character of the League.
• The admission of Poland to a permanent seat would necessitate the admission of Spain and Brazil, which have at least as good a elaini, and moreover, being now on the Council, can enforce' their demand or stop all proceedings ; and once the principle of Great Powers .only is abandoned, it is hard to see where a line can be drawn against further claimants. The Council will either change into a syndicate of 'privileged Powers to the destruction of the League, or it will reach unmanageable dimensions. And as unanimity is required for its decisions it would indeed change into a Polish Diet of the old type, a mob working under the impossible rule of the liberum veto. This is what may be described as the technical aspect of the proposal ; and this by itself is sufficiently grave.
But there are other, even more serious sides to the question. Poland, with her excessive conquests achieved at the expense of both Germany and Russia, has been the disturbing element in Europe ever since 1918. It was her fate to re-arise in a void and through no particular effort of her own, when to the victorious Powers the Germans were enemies and the Bolshevists outcasts. Even so the Principal Allied and Associated Powers tried to set some reasonable limits to Polish expansion ; but the Poles have managed to override them all and for the time being to force the fait accompli on to the world. According to Article 87 of the Versailles Treaty, the Principal Powers were to have drawn Poland's eastern frontier, and at Spa, July, 1920, Poland once more promised to respect their verdict which by then was embodied in the so-called " Curzon Line." The Poles have gone hundreds of miles beyond it.
They had given their word that Halter's army, when brought back to Poland, would not be used against East Galicia ; it was detrained on the East Galician front. A provisional agreement was concluded between Poland and Lithuania under the auspices of the League of Nations in October, 1920 ; a few days later the Chief of the Polish State instructed General Zeligowski to declare himself a rebel, to cross the line of demarcation and to occupy Vilna. The " rebel " Zeligowski is now Polish Minister for War, and on May 3rd, 1923, was decorated with the highest Polish order for diplomats. Perhaps he hopes to appear next at Geneva as the Polish delegate for the permanent seat on the Council of the League ; or would this .be better filled by Korfanty of Upper Silesian fame and achievements ? As the result of such acts of high international morality, Poland is now a State of 27,000,000 inhabitants, of which certainly not more, and probably less, than 17,000,000 are genuine Poles. Even the 27,000,000 would not justify her claim to a permanent seat on the Council, but their ethnic composition goes far to explain her demanding it. Her expansion was achieved whilst Germany and Russia were in abeyance ; what will be her future when these two have once more regained their natural weight in the world's councils ? And, after all, just for the - sake of some 17,000,000 Poles, 220,000,000 white men—about one-third of white humanity—cannot be permanently' put beyond the bounds of international comity.
It has been' alleged that France entered into her Polish adventures because America, and subsequently Great Britain, had withdrawn from the Treaty of Guarantees originally held out to her ; therefore, it is said, she had to try to create an artificial counterweight to Germany in the East. Whether this was so, or whether in reality France had plunged into the Polish adventure before the Anglo-Saxon Powers had withdrawn their guarantee, it seemed that by .now she understood what a white elephant she had acquired in Poland. Anyhow, at Locarno, France agreed to a Western Pact leaving Polish affairs for future discussion on terms defined by the Covenant of the League and the Arbitration -Agreements.
What, then, is the meaning of the proposal to give Poland a permanent seat on the Council of the League ?
If it was merely a question of stopping unreasonable German dethands in the future, the vote of France would be sufficient to stop them. But what the present proposal means is that even now Germany should expect nothing from a friendly understanding with France, because her future condition is not to be determined by what France may see her way to accept, but by the will, claims and wishes of the Poles ; and this after Germany had declared herself unable to consider her present settlement with Poland as final, and the Western Powers had accepted this declaration.
A clear distinction between Germany's Western and her Eastern frontiers was the very basis of the LOcarno agreements. Putting Poland permanently on to the Council is meant to obliterate that distinction. This practically amounts to a breach of faith towards Germany.
Germany has applied for admission to the League. If her application is maintained she will be accepted and will have to remain a member for the next two years, whatever happens on the following day, when the composition of the Council comes to be discussed. The Franco-Polish scheme is exceedingly clever. Still, whilst one can manoeuvre a Government into a false position, one cannot force a nation into a false recon- ciliation. The present German Government has no safe majority in the Reichstag, and it was an achievement that it succeeded in getting the Gerinan nation to enter on to the path agreed upon at Locarno. But how long will this Government survive if those who refused to place their trust in the " Locarno spirit " prove to have been right ? On the day when .Poland is given a permanent seat on the Council, millions of Germans, who are not extremists either of the Right or of the Left, will remember the warnings of Tchitcherin. Indeed, it will be the day of his triumph, of the reconstitution of a German-Russian alliance over Poland, and the real, if not the formal, end of Locarno.
We trust that Sir Austen Chamberlain has not in any way committed himself to the Franco-Polish pro- posal, for if he accepted it he would destroy his greatest achievement and the strongest claim he has to the world's respect as a statesman. In fact, though with great injustice, his personal sincerity would then come to be questioned. Clearly this proposal, hatched in the dark by the interested parties, no Foreign Secretary, conscious of his responsibility, could accept without a preliminary public examination and discussion. The issues involved are of such a far-reaching nature that nothing in the matter should be done in haste.
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