Mr. Lloyd George then passed to the all-important subject of
Poland. An independent Poland, he declared, was "essential to the whole fabric of peace." The independence of Poland was fully guaranteed by Article 10 of the Covenant. Unfortunately, "the very elaborate machinery" of the League of Nations could not be brought into operation soon enough to help Poland, yet Poland must be saved, for "if the Bolsheviks overran Poland they will march right up to the German frontier, acting as a great aggressive Imperialistic Power and grabbing territories belonging to another race." In order to test the intentions of Russia, the British Government, with the consent of the Allies, had addressed a message to the Bolsheviks. In a leading article we have discussed the Russian reply to that message, and we need not deal with it further here, except to say that whereas M. Millerand described the reply as "impertinent," Mr. Lloyd George preferred to call it "incoherent."
