TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 297machinations were dropped. The Poles were offered as much territory in the
borderlands as they cared to take, on the one condition that a halt to the fight-
ing was called within ten days. In a compromise which Pitsudski was to
denounce as 'an act of cowardice', the Polish negotiator at the peace talks, Jan
Dabski (1880-1931), struck the historic bargain with his Soviet counterpart,
Adolf loffe. The Armistice was signed on 12 October, and took effect on the
18th. After much wrangling, final terms were agreed and confirmed by the
Treaty of Riga, 18 March 1921.^7 (See Map 13.)
The significance of Polish victory in 1920 was not lost on contemporaries. In
Western Europe, the feelings of many people who heaved a sigh of relief at that
time, were summed up by the British Ambassador in Berlin, Lord D'Abernon,
in Gibbonian tones:
If Charles Martel had not checked the Saracen conquest at the Battle of Tours, the inter-
pretation of the Koran would now be taught at the schools of Oxford, and her pupils
might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of
Mahomet. Had Pilsudski and Weygand failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the
Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a
dangerous reverse, but the very existence of western civilisation would have been imper-
illed. The Battle of Tours saved our ancestors from the Yoke of the Koran; it is probable
that the Battle of Warsaw saved Central, and parts of Western Europe from a more sub-
versive danger - the fanatical tyranny of the Soviet.^8
On the Soviet side, Lenin soon recognized the magnitude of the defeat; and in
conversation with the German communist, Clara Zetkin, openly admitted his
mistakes:
The early frost of the Red Army's retreat from Poland blighted the growth of the revo-
lutionary flower ... I described to Lenin how it had affected the revolutionary vanguard
of the German working class... when the comrades with the Soviet star on their caps,
in impossibly old scraps of uniform and civilian clothes, in bast shoes and torn boots,
spurred their small brisk horses right up to the German frontier... Lenin sat silently for
a few minutes, sunk in reflection. 'Yes,' he said at last, 'so it happened in Poland as per-
haps it had to happen ... In the Red Army, the Poles saw not brothers and liberators, but
enemies. The Poles thought and acted not as in a social, revolutionary way but as nation-
alists, as imperialists. The revolution which we counted on in Poland did not take place.
The workers and peasants defended their class enemy, and let our brave Red Army sol-
diers starve, ambushed them, and beat them to death... Radek predicted how it would
turn out. He warned us. I was very angry and accused him of defeatism... But he was
right in his main contention... No, the thought of the agonies of another winter war
were unbearable. We had to make peace.'^9
In none of these early conflicts did the Allied Powers exert the authority which
they claimed to be theirs. Their efforts to arbitrate by distant preaching were
despised by all the parties concerned. Their numerous Commissions and token
military contingents were powerless to impose their preferred solutions. Of the
three plebiscites which they tried to organize, in East Prussia, Silesia, and
Cieszyn, the first two were disputed, and the last one abandoned. During the