give the
Poles because they recognize that Russians would have done the same in
like case. The people of the other neighbouring States are distrustful
or aloof. In a friendship with France, however, Poland would make up
for all other enmities. Marshal Pilsudsky, with the glory of having
defeated the Russians and won a victorious peace, is now pictured with
Napoleon. He is even represented on picture post-cards pinning an
order of merit on the breast of Napoleon--the occasion being the
centenary of Napoleon's death. Pilsudsky is a man of sentiment, and
when he made his important diplomatic journey to Paris last February,
he bore with him a picture of Joan of Arc by Jan Mateiks, in order to
express the gratitude of the Polish people to France. In Pilsudsky's
honour a lesson in Polish geography and history was ordered to be given
in all the schools of France on the 5th of February, 1921.

Prince Sapieha and Marshal Pilsudsky negotiated a secret treaty with
France on that occasion--not with the Allies as a whole, but with
France. As a seasonal fruit of that treaty came the Silesian adventure
supported by France. The disarming of the population in Upper Silesia,
conducted under French auspices, had taken the arms away from the
Germans but left arms with the Poles. Added to that, guns,
machine-guns, rifles, and ammunition, were run over into the plebiscite
area, and a mercenary "insurrectionary" army was raised, partly from
the local Polish population and partly from Poland proper. An army
which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the
League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus
improvised. The supposition is that interested parties connived at its
improvisation. It could not otherwise have sprung spontaneously into
being. After the first week of the rising, many of the insurgents
began to desert the leader Korfanty on the ground that their wages were
not high enough. Much money had to be spent in the affair. It might
be asked what interest has France to support Poland--is it sentiment?
Many will attribute it to a French quixoticism, which in truth does not
exist. France will be ready to drop Pilsudsky, as she has dropped
Wrangel, when it suits her. But the French programme for Europe
includes the complete dismantling of the German Empire, and by taking
away Upper Silesia from Germany another great victory would be won in
the war after the war. Therefore it has