THE REBIRTH OF THE POLISH STATE^285von BESSELER: Herr von Pilsudski, you know that in these stirring times Poland
needs a leader of vision, and you are the only one whom I have been
able to find. If you go along with us, we will give you everything—
power, fame, money...
PILSUDSKI: Your Excellency does not understand me, and does not wish to
understand. If I were to go along with you, Germany would gain one
man, whilst I would lose a nation.
Most of the legionnaries refused to swear the oath to the Kaiser. Pilsudski was
arrested and imprisoned in Germany. His men were interned in German camps.
Jozef Haller escaped into the Russian lines, and made his way via Murmansk to
France.
German control of the Polish lands destroyed Dmowski's chances of raising
the Polish Question effectively in Russia. At the end of 1915 he sailed from
Petrograd for the West. In London he missed no opportunity of besmirching
Pilsudski as 'pro-German' and 'anti-Ally', and added to the scare which equated
Yiddish-speaking Jews with German agents. He handed a list of Polish activists
and Jews including August Zaleski and Lewis Namier to Scotland Yard, and
persuaded the Home Office to transfer the work of the PKI to trusties of his
own. At the same time, he flattered the Foreign Office with exaggerated visions
of 'half-a-million or even a million Polish soldiers' who would lay down their
lives for the Allied Cause, if only the Allied governments would recognize the
brand of Polish Independence which he was now advocating. For his pains, he
was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University.^17 In Paris, he
made contact with sympathetic politicians, but was inhibited by the strong
French ties with the Tsarist authorities. In Lausanne, he joined forces with the
leaders of the CAP, and prepared for the re-establishment of the KNP. The
whole burden of Dmowski's campaign at this stage was to win official recogni-
tion for his own movement as the sole and exclusive representative of a future
Polish government. He nearly succeeded. But, for the moment, nothing could
change so long as the western governments continued to regard the Polish
Question as an internal matter for their great Russian ally.
The February Revolution in Russia changed the scene overnight. The emer-
gence in Petrograd of Russian liberals who had been associated with the Polish
Circle of the Duma for over a decade put a declaration on Poland high on the
Provisional Government's agenda. The Proclamation was made on 30 March- It proclaimed an 'independent Poland' but deferred the details to a future
Constituent Assembly.^18 It was followed on 9 April by a general Declaration of the
Principle of National Self-Determination. At the end of the month, it appointed a
Polish Liquidation Commission under Aleksander Lednicki, an associate of the
Cadets, and Chairman of the 'United Polish Associations'. Lednicki's task was to
prepare for the transfer of Russian state property to Polish control. This was quite
impossible owing to the continuing German occupation of all the Polish provinces.
It is true that the Provisional Government's Proclamation on Poland was pre-
ceded on zi March 1917 by a similar declaration made by the Petrograd Soviet