368 GRANICE
to imagine that the Poles would simply do as they were told.^2 For twenty-five
years, the rights and wrongs of the subject were debated ad nauseam, and to lit-
tle avail. The injustices of the settlement following the First World War were
used to fan the flames of the Second. The unreadable reports of innumerable
Commissions, and the contentious arguments of Polish, Czech, German, and
Russian apologists filled the shelves of libraries and the pages of the press. The
names of obscure provincial localities, from Allenstein to the Zbrucz, became
household words. Relief arrived only occasionally, when a British Prime
Minister confessed to never having heard of Teschen, or to thinking that Silesia
was somewhere in Asia Minor.^3 In the very nature of the problem, no single
principle could be followed consistently. All decisions regarding the Polish
frontiers were taken ad hoc, in conditions of thinly disguised international
horse-trading. No attempt to trim the frontiers to the wishes of the population
ever succeeded, until, at Soviet instigation, it was decided in 1944—5 to trim the
population to the requirements of arbitrary frontiers.
In this quarter century of conflict, Polish territorial claims found little sym-
pathy in the West, least of all in Britain or the USA. Changes made at Germany's
expense in the Treaty of Versailles were soon regretted. The establishment of
the 'Polish Corridor', the exclusion of Danzig from the Reich, and the division
of Silesia, were widely regarded as the source of legitimate German grievances.
Changes demanded by Poland at Russia's expense were countered with equal
derision. Polish demands for the restoration of 'historic Poland' were
denounced as 'small power imperialism' (unlike those for the restoration of the
historic lands of St. Wenceslas, which were somehow judged acceptable). As
Gaythorne-Hardy remarked, in a tone most characteristic of his generation,
'The new Poland. .. seemed more distinguished by a reckless and almost fanat-
ical patriotism than by the diplomatic prudence which her precarious position
demanded.'^4 In hindsight, the explanation of this attitude is not hard to locate.'
Anglo-Saxon viewpoints in general, and British viewpoints in particular, were
dictated not only by the traditional concern for the Balance of Power, but even
more by the logic of traditional alliances. In two World Wars, Great Britain was
allied first with Russia, and then with the USSR, and counted on Russian man-
power and on Russian sacrifices for the defeat of the German armies. As a result,
the British saw nothing derisory about the establishment of Czechoslovakia
within its medieval limits. Czechoslovakia, after all, was only drawing on the
territory of the defeated Central Powers. The British had little objection in
1918-19 to the inclusion in Czechoslovakia of numerous German or Hungarian
minorities. At the same time, they could never afford to countenance similar
Polish pretensions which brought them into conflict with the great Russian ally
on whom, in the last resort, their own salvation was known to depend.
Poland's southern frontier is the only one to bear any resemblance to a nat-
ural barrier. For a thousand years the crest of the central Carpathians had
divided the Polish lands from the Danube Basin and from the Hungarian
domain. It had formed the frontier both of the Rzeczpospolita and of Austrian