God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

THE PRUSSIAN PARTITION 101

were obviously exposed. In the Reichstag, the Polish circle remained socially
conservative, and tactically cautious. In the administration of Caprivi, in return
for the most nominal concessions, its members voted with the Government with
such predictable monotony that its leader Jozef Teodor Koscielski (1845—1911)
was dubbed The German Admiral'. In 1914, it voted for the War Credits with-
out a murmur. Its support for the war effort of the Central Powers received the
blessing of Archbishop Likowski. During the War, there were occasional
instances of Polish conscripts in the German Army writing home in fervent
expectation of an independent Poland emerging from the bloodshed.
Considerable excitement was caused by the German army's occupation of
Warsaw in August 1915; and on 18 December that year a complacent Reichstag
acceded to demands for the re-creation of the Congress Kingdom of Poland
under German auspices. Yet there was no move to associate Prussia's other
Polish provinces with the Kingdom, and no possibility of detaching them from
Prussia. Throughout the Great War, hundreds of thousands of Poles marched to
the strains of Preussens Gloria with never a thought but to keep in step.
Pomeranian, Silesian, Prussian, and Posnanian regiments served on all fronts
with distinction. There was never a hint of a mutiny, of a conspiracy, of an
'Easter Rising', until that marvellous German music suddenly stopped of its
own accord.

In 1918, the vacuum left by the Revolution in Berlin and the abdication of the

Kaiser was all the more painful for the sacrifices which had preceded them. On

26 December, Ignacy Paderewski passed through Posen on his way to Warsaw,

having landed at Stettin in a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Concord. He was wel-

comed by an outburst of popular feeling. The crowds took to the streets. The

German garrison was expelled. After a brief skirmish, the province was freed.

Two months of unpremeditated rebellion were sufficient to redeem 125 years of

'foreign occupation'. Posen became Poznafi again, and joined the Polish

Republic.^19

Elsewhere, the Polish-German settlement was more protracted. The Treaty

of Versailles awarded part of Pomerania, the so-called Corridor, to Poland, but

left Danzig as a Free City, and subjected Upper Silesia, Allenstein, and

Marienwerder to popular plebiscites. Three Silesian Risings failed to resolve the

issue. The final suppression of the Prussian Partition was not complete until

1945. It was accompanied by the wholesale expulsion of millions of Germans.
      The old Prussian motto read Suum Cuique — 'To each, his own'; and so it came
      to pass. Law No. 46 of the Allied Control Council, of 25 February 1947,
      declared, 'The Prussian state with its central government and its agencies is
      hereby abolished.' It was rough justice, and strangely reminiscent of the
      Partition centuries before. The final partition of Prussia was even more final
      than the partitions of Poland.