370 GRANICEFrench company. In the valley of Jabiunkow, in the south, the Austrian census'of
1910 had recorded the purest concentration of Polish inhabitants in the Empire.
In November 1918, when Austrian officialdom withdrew, local representatives of
the Polish and Czech communities reached an amicable agreement, and a demar-
cation line divided the Duchy along ethnographic lines. Regrettably, this agree-
ment proved unacceptable both in Prague and in Warsaw. The Czechoslovak
Government laid claim to the Duchy on economic grounds, and on 25 January
1919 ordered its army to occupy the whole of the industrial area by force. For 18
months, confusion reigned supreme. A project for the independence of Cieszyn,
supported by the local Germans, whom no one was considering, was rejected by
the Peace Conference. Preparations for a plebiscite had to be abandoned in face
of riots, strikes, terror, and counter-terror. The Interallied Plebiscite Commission
under Comte de Manneville of France bore the insults and recriminations of
Czechs and Poles alike, and, after surviving a siege in its headquarters in the
ancient 'Brown Stag Hotel', quickly retired. Impasse at the Spa Conference passed
the matter to the Council of Ambassadors whose verdict was given at 5.25 p.m.
on 28 July 1920. The larger, western part of the Duchy, including the whole of the
industrial area and far more Poles than Czechs, was awarded to Czechoslovakia.
The town of Cieszyn was cleft down the centre, in the middle of the River Olza.
The Market Square and the evangelical Jesus Church were to be in Poland: the
railway station was to be in Czechoslovakia. Polish opinion was outraged.
Paderewski signed the treaty only after three days' delay, and under protest. To
him, and to most of his compatriots, it seemed that the Czechoslovak coup de
force had paid off: that Benes had impressed his policy on the Allies by exploiting
Poland's weakness at the height of the Red Army's advance on Warsaw; and that
the Polish miners of Cieszyn had been sacrificed to the designs of Allied capita-
lists. The injury was nursed throughout the inter-war period, and, in the course
of the Munich Crisis, revenged. From 1935, Beck constantly pressed his demands
for the relief of Poles at the Zaolzie (Transolzia). On 2 October 1938, determined
to deny strategic control of the Moravian Gate to the Wehrmacht, and unable to
resist the temptation, he crossed his river at the head of the Polish Army. Part of
Spisz and Orawa was occupied at the same time. Eleven months later,
the Wehrmacht's magisterial advance through Cieszyn provided one of the two
claws of the pin cer whereby the fated Polish Republic was destroyed.
Polish-Czechoslovak recriminations were revived among the Governments-in-
Exile in London during the war, and were only settled by Stalin who treated the
pleas of his rival clients with impartial contempt. It is a sad comment on this most
symptomatic of East European disputes that the Soviet dictator could think of no
better solution than that devised on the orders of the Council of Ambassadors
twenty-five years earlier. In 1945, Cieszyn was again brutally divided down the
middle. The frontier line was repainted across the central arch of the town bridge,
and has remained in place to this day.^6
Poland's northern frontier might seem to coincide quite naturally with the
Baltic shore. In fact, in modern times, the sole stretch of the sea coast which