The Polish Idea
The Rise of Polish Democracy. By W. J. Rose. (Bell. WS.) THE title of Professor Rose's book does not truly describe its sub- ject. Since the political history of Poland was suspended for more than a century, there could be no normal growth of democracy ; and Professor Rose really has taFo separate themes. In the first part he shows how the national idea developed from an aristocratic into a popular conceptiop during the years of partition ; in the second he examines how far restored Poland was a democracy. The first part is the more successful. Not very penetrating, drably written, it yet impresses by the plain marshalling of the facts and describes a process of the first historic importance. Old Poland was the classic example of the " aristocratic nation," where " Pole " and " land- owner " were interchangeable terms. During the nineteenth century Poland of the gentry became first the Poland of the intelligentsia and then the Poland of the people. Failure to understand this evolu- tion brings to Poland both exaggerated praise and blame : contem- porary Poland is saddled with the defects of old Poland, and, to defend contemporary Poland, old Poland is endowed with contem- porary virtues. This book is almost the first in English to treat the
Polish idea as an expanding and progressive force. Mr. Rose is Professor of Polish Literature and History, and is clearly more at home in the first than the second. He is not to be blamed for omitting the political narrative—that is reasonable enough in a book dealing with the national idea. But a " straight " historian would have made more of the lack of a capitalist middle class (not that Mr. Rose ignores it); and would have dwelt in more detail on the process of industrialisation, which alone made the modern national idea possible. It is more serious that Mr. Rose is inclined to ignore the way in which a later Poland took over from. earlier epochs atti- tudes and ideas which l'ad become incongruous. Even the most democratic Pole has something of the aristocratic pride which was " Polish " in the eighteenth century ; and even the most moderate Pole hankers, at the back of his mind, for the territorial claims which were only sensible when associated with long-vanished estates.
The second part, on the extent of democracy in Poland after 1918, is less successful. For one thing, Professor Rose has to deal here
not with literary ideas but with practical politics, of which he has a less firm grasp. It is startling to find even a literary historian regarding a writ of Habeas Corpus as an instrument of arrest. Still more, he seems to have failed to decide what line to take. Real-life Poland did not come up to the ideal expectations of the years of partition. This Professor Rose regrets ; and when a historian begins to regret he ceases to be able to explain. The result is confusion, a tangled narrative, leaving the reader puzzled at the end to know what to think. It would have been wiser to accept the fact that no state in the world came Up to expectations in the inter-war period ; and then to treat Poland without either regret or enthusiasm, a sub- ject for detached history like any other. Certainly it is better to regret the defects of Poland than to ignore them ; but better still to take them as they come, for they, too, however unwelcome, are part of the Polish idea.
The book has one glaring omission: it says almost nothing of Russo-Polish relations, although these are an essential part of the Polish national idea. Mr. Rose believes, with truth, that Russian and Polish civilisations are irreconcilable ; and, being anxious to be fair to both, he claps the telescope to his blind eye whenever Russia, and still more the borderlands, are mentioned. But this great question, which haS done so much to shape Poland's destiny. cannot thus be ignored ; and an English writer who is worth any- thing should be able to treat it with positive detachment. The Polish struggle against Tsardom was a struggle for freedom and national independence ; but it was also a struggle for the Ukrainian and White Russian territories east of the Bug, where, in Mr. Rose's words, " most districts had a non-Polish majority." New Poland received the fateful christening-gift of the Treaty of Riga (nowhere mentioned by Mr. Rose) ; and this, even more than the memories of Tsarist oppression, made impossible a Russo-Polish alliance, and so condemned Poland to destruction. Much nonsense is talked in England about Poland's claims in the east. They are often written off as the ambitions of landed aristocrats, eager to recover their great estates. In reality, the aristocrats—so far as they still exist— are, and have long been, " conciliators," advocates of a modest and pro-Russian policy. It is the democratic elements which have taken over the heritage of aristocratic Poland ; and the more extreme the democrat, the more extreme the territorial claim. Of this Pil- stfdski, the revolutionary Socialist, is the outstanding example. It would be easy, as it has been possible in the past, for Russia to settle with a conservative Poland ; it is far more difficult to reach agreement with a democratic Poland, which feels itself the trustee of all Poland's past greatness. If Mr. Rose had shown not only the development of the Polish democratic idea, but also how this idea is rooted and entangled in Poland's past, he would have written a book of epoch-making importance. Even as it is, the idea of Poland has never before been treated in English with such under-
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