298 NIEPODLEGLOSC
Polish-Soviet War, their offices were rejected by both sides, despite continuous
negotiating. General Weygand, when he arrived in Warsaw in the crisis of
August 1920 without invitation, was pointedly ignored, and played no
significant part in the victory.^10
The fundamental problem facing the Republic was the problem of integra-
tion. The population, institutions, and traditions of the three Partitions had to
be welded into one new entity. At first, six currencies were in circulation; five
regions - Posnania, Silesia, Cieszyn, East Galicia, and Central Lithuania
(Wilno) - maintained separate administrations; there were four languages of
command in the army; three legal codes; and two different railway gauges; eigh-
teen registered political parties competed for power. In the nature of things,
political life could not have closely resembled that of the established states of
Western Europe. (See Map 14.)
In the formal sense, the Republic was designed as a liberal democracy. The
Constitution of 17 March 1921 was modelled, at the instigation of conservative
elements, on that of France's Third Republic, but at the insistence of the Peasant
and Socialist parties, paid special attention to social welfare. It began with a his-
torical invocation:
In the Name of Almighty God!
We, the people of Poland, thanking Providence for freeing us from one and a half cen-
turies of servitude, remembering with gratitude the bravery, endurance, and selfless
struggles of past generations, which unceasingly devoted all their best energies to the
cause of Independence, adhering to the glorious tradition of the immortal Constitution
of 3 May, striving for the welfare of the whole, united, and independent mother-country,
and for her sovereign existence, might, security, and social order, and desiring to ensure
the development of all moral and material powers for the good of the whole of regener-
ated mankind and to ensure the equality of all citizens, respect for labour, all due rights,
and particularly the security of State protection, we hereby proclaim and vote this
Constitutional Statute in the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Poland.^11
Later clauses, after subordinating the executive government to a bicameral Sejm
elected by universal suffrage, guaranteed the legal equality and protection by the
State of all citizens irrespective of 'origin, nationality, language, race, or reli-
gion'; the abolition of hereditary and class privileges and titles; the rights of
property, whether private or collective; the regulation of land-owning with a
view to creating 'private farming units capable of adequate productivity'; the
rights of free expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of
conscience, and religious practice; the right to unemployment and sickness
benefit, to protection against the abuses of child, female, and injurious employ-
ment, to education at the expense of the state; and the retention by Minorities
of their specific nationality, language, and character.
The political stance of the leading circles was unashamedly nationalist.
'Polishness' became the touchstone of respectability. The dominant parties of
the constitutional period - the PPS (Polish Socialist Party), the PSL (Polish
Peasant Movement), and the National Democrats all shared the concern for