THE MODERN POLISH FRONTIERS 381The problem is not unique to Eastern Europe, of course. Anglo-Saxons tend
to take fright, simply because they are usually unaware of similar manifestations
on their own doorstep and because they normally insist on all information from
foreign parts being translated into English. Very few Englishmen, for example,
know that London is known to certain inhabitants of the British Isles as
'Llundain': or that Oxford is 'Rhydychen', and that Cambridge is 'Caergrawnt'.
Very few bother to ask themselves why Ulster Protestants talk of 'Londonderry'
and Ulster Catholics of 'Deny', or why 'Kingstown' was changed to 'Dun
Laoghaire'. Not all Americans would know that their largest metropolis started
life as 'Nieue Amsterdam', or that the capital of Texas is known to half the
inhabitants of the Lone-star State as 'Agostino'. Given these examples, how-
ever, it does not need any profound grasp of foreign languages to realize that
variations in usage depend partly on the viewpoint of the people who use them,
and partly on the passage of time. Thus, the capital of Great Britain which once
was 'Londinium' is now 'London'; to the Welsh, it is 'Llundain', to the French
and Spanish 'Londres', to the Italians, 'Londra', to the Poles, 'Londyn'. By the
same token, the capital of Silesia, which once was 'Vratislav', under Bohemian
control became 'Vraclav'; under Habsburg and Hohenzollern rule 'Breslau';
and under Polish rule since the War, 'Wroclaw'. To Latin scholars, it is still
'Vratislavia'. In German eyes, it is always 'Breslau', and for the Poles, forever
'Wroclaw'.
Much of the trouble with respect to Polish names has arisen from the fact that
many of the changes have taken place quite recently, and also because rival
national movements have insisted on their own nomenclature as a point of hon-
our. When the lid of the subject was lifted at the Peace Conference in 1919, a
Pandora's treasure of towns and provinces flew out, never to be properly recov-
ered. The Polish Delegation, as others like it, mesmerized its audience with lists
of names of which no one else had ever heard. Not content with denouncing the
rule of the partitioning powers, they objected to the use of established and famil-
iar place-names, believing that their claims to former German or Russian territ-
ories would somehow be discredited by the use of German or Russian
terminology. In several instances, the Allied arbitrators were constrained to coin
neutral versions such as 'Teshen', or to revive archaic anglicisms such as
'Dantsick', in order to calm the distressed petitioners. At the end of the Second
World War, however, the subject was hardly discussed. The Soviets were
allowed to impose whatever terminology suited themselves and their proteges
best. In Poland's Recovered Territories, every opportunity was taken to consign
German names to oblivion, not merely as a symbol of victory over the Nazis, but
in a spurious attempt to prove 'the Germans' falsification of history. In the for-
mer Polish territories annexed by the USSR, all existing Polish names were
officially suppressed.
In this situation, the historian's duty undoubtedly lies in drawing his readers'
attention to the ways in which the present differs from the past. The most cur-
sory perusal of a nineteenth-century text will show how very different many