THE REBIRTH OF THE POLISH STATE 287Jassy in Romania where Allied negotiators were trying to persuade Poles from
the mutinous 9th Russian Army in Bessarabia, together with fugitive elements
of Haller's 2nd Legionary Brigade, that they should continue the fight against
Germany. It was not repeated in public form until the joint British—French-
Italian—American Note of 3 June 1918. In themselves, the Allied Declarations
achieved little. Few of Dmowski's half-million recruits materialized. The five
divisions of the Polish Army in France never exceeded 100,000 men, and only
one division was ready to join the fighting on the Western Front. Their
Command was entrusted to French generals and, after his arrival from
Murmansk, to Jozef Haller. In Russia, the nominally pro-Allied Polish Corps of
General Dowbor-Musnicki spent more time fighting the Red Guards than the
Germans. Based on Minsk in Byelorussia, it drew its strength from Polish units
of the disintegrating Russian Army, and used them for the protection of local
landowning interests. Its efforts were more than balanced by thousands of Poles
who joined the Reds, and fraternized with the German garrisons of the Ober-
Ost.^21 In such a situation, it was difficult to see how the Allied governments
could ever turn their declarations on Poland into effect.
In Warsaw, the fluctuating fortunes of the Eastern Front provoked alternat-
ing moods of despondency and of high expectation. At the outset, the citizenry
was strongly Loyalist, and supported the Russian mobilization with exemplary
vigour. The socialist and nationalist opposition, crushed in the wake of 1905-6,
was hardly in evidence. News of the German bombardment of Kalisz aroused
general indignation, reinforcing the contention of the dominant National
Democrats that Poland's future lay with Russia. But events soon passed beyond
the Loyalists' control. Unrest amongst the working class was aroused by rising
food prices, by forced conscriptions for fortress repair, and by unemployment
resulting from the evacuation of industrial plant to Russia. ACitizens'
Committee, headed by Prince Lubomirski, was originally intended to supervise
welfare work; but it soon formed a core round which local, and then national
politics, could crystallize. In March 1915, when the Tsar granted the city its
municipal autonomy, denied since 1863, Warsaw was already turning its back
on the old order. In the summer, when the retreating Russians wilfully destroyed
all the city's bridges, stations, and metalworks, sympathy for the Tsarist con-
nection evaporated overnight. The German Occupation, which lasted from 6
August 1915 to 13 November 1918, was established in an extremely volatile sit-
uation. The spontaneous celebration of the Polish National Day on 3 May 1916,
for the first time in fifty years, betrayed the nationalist feelings which were now
about to surface. In that same year, the repolonization of the University of
Warsaw, the formal declaration of the restored Kingdom of Poland with its
advisory Council of State in the Royal Castle, and the ceremonial entry of the
Polish Legions, underlined the readiness of the Germans to make far-reaching
concessions. Yet 1917 saw the limit of those concessions. Repeated strikes
revealed the persistence of economic distress; whilst the arrest of Pilsudski gave
a glimpse of the iron fist beneath the German glove. The grip of the German