TILE LEAGUE AND UPPER SILESIA. T HE Council of the League
of Nations having had referred to it the puzzle of settling the Upper-Silesia frontier has issued a unanimous recommendation. That is a very important fact. It-is a milestone in the history of the League. It was complained that the League was per- sistently required to play second or even third fiddle to the Supreme Council and that if it were not soon given an opportunity of doing something imposing, the whole idea of the responsibility of the League for international relations would fade out of men's minds and become impossible. Yet, when the Council of the League makes this unanimous recommendation, a considerable number of the avowed friends of the League turn upon the decision and rend it in pieces. It is a strange spectacle. We confess that we should be startled if we did not happen to be familiar with the frame of mind in some Liberals and Socialists, which continually stultifies and defeats the objects that those Liberals and Socialists profess.
It was obvious that the Council of the League could not produce a perfect plan. The matter was referred to it because the disagreement between France and Britain had gone so far that there was no hope of a settlement except at the hands of independent arbitrators. One might have expected, therefore, that the friends of the League would be glad to receive any recommendation at all on the authority of the Council and especially a recommendation that was unanimous. We have never declared ourselves to be so confident about the wisdom of the constitution of the League as some people have done, though we earnestly believe in the principle of a League of some sort ; but we do say that it is madness if you believe in the League to .denounce its labours in such extraordinarily difficult conditions as those of to-day. All that the Council of the League could possibly be expected to do was to make out of a bad mess a less bad mess. In our opinion it has done this, and it has done it promptly. Of course, there will be difficulties in working its plan—very great difficulties— but the essential thing is to support the authority of the League and to produce the best results that may be fashioned out of the necessarily poor materials.
Although the scheme has not been published in detail, it is sufficiently well known that the Council has drawn a line through the disputed industrial triangle, about half- way between the point proposed by Mr. Lloyd George and the point proposed by M. Briand. There is, of course, no dispute about large portions of the plebiscite area. The western part of the area is predominantly German and the south-eastern predominantly Polish. The indus- trial triangle, however, is another matter altogether ; Germans and Poles are mingled inextricably. Although it might be conceded that the Poles have many claims there in the matter of population, there is no doubt that the triangle is really an industrial whole. It is a thing of arteries and veins which can hardly be severed without danger to the life of industry and social cohesion—the arteries and the veins being water supplies, railways, mechanically conveyed power and so on. The presiding genius of the district is unquestionably German. It was German brains and enterprise which developed this in- dustrialized region. If, therefore, there were no national passions to be appeased, the commonsense solution would be to say that Germany ought to possess the district as she did before the war.
Notoriously, however, that cannot be done. The feeling of the Poles and the feeling of the French, who back the Polish claim because a large and strong Poland is con- sidered essential to the safety of France, run too high. In these circumstances the Council of the League has done what was probably the only possible thing. Germany is given the two western districts of the basin, Gleiwitz and Zabrze or Hindenburg, as well as the town of Beuthen. To Poland are allotted the district of Konigshiitte, the country districts of Beuthen, and Kattowitz (town and country). The two districts of Tarnowitz and Lublinitz are divided, the eastern part going to Poland and the western to Germany. As regards the rest of the plebiscite area Poland, of course, receives the whole of Pleas and the greater part of Rybnik, while Germany receives all those western districts where the majority of the inhabitants are German.
With a view to settling the disputes which will probably arise owing to the perilous surgical operation in the indus- trial triangle, there is to be a probationary period of fifteen years, during which elaborate precautions will be taken to prevent any injury being done to German industry. It will be arranged, for example, that the railways, the great mines, the blast furnaces and the factories will remain in their existing ownership. Moreover, for fifteen years German money will remain the legal tender. Much good will and a high power of adaptation will be required among the rival populations, and the only way to encourage the almost impossible to happen is for Englishmen and Frenchmen to insist that the plan by hook or by crook shall be made a success. After all, there has been a very risky surgical operation of a similar kind in Teschen and the Poles and the Czecho-Slovaks there seem to be recovering from its effects. The thing can be done.
If, however, the plan should, after all, fail, it is not beyond the bounds of imagination that another solution might be adopted—a solution which would not divide the Poles and Germans into hostile racial camps at all. Why should not the plan which is now applied to Dantzig be reproduced? Why should there not be free cities in the industrial triangle of Upper Silesia governing themselves under the authority of the League of Nations ? History provides many examples of free cities not only in Italy, but in Northern Germany. Everybody knows that Hamburg even to this day retains the remnants of its old independence. The free cities of Upper Silesia, with opportunities of untram- melled trade and under satisfactory protection, might Lfford an extraordinarily interesting and fruitful experi- ment.
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