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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2024
The fact that Nazi Germany’s assault on Poland’s independence was the occasion of our declaring war, the bestial treatment of Polish citizens by the occupying'power, and a realization of the outrageous partitions of that country in the farther past have stirred the people of Great Britain to a determination that Poland shall be again restored and justice done in her regard. And In particular the enthusiasm (not unmixed with romanticism and a rather highly-coloured rhetoric) with which over years numerous Catholics have been foremost in upholding the Polish cause has brought to that cause an atmosphere of sacredness and mystique.
It is the more regrettable, therefore, that the people of Great Britain in general should have in certain respects an inadequate conception of the Polish situation : that they should (as so many of them do) imagine that the inhabitants of Poland are an almost entirely homogeneous people, one in culture, religion and history; that they should believe the difficulty about Eastern PoTand to be a straight issue between a united Poland on the one hand and the U.S.S.R. on the other.
1 Figures are taken from the ‘Concise Statistical Year‐Book of Poland’ for 1937, published by the Chief Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Poland, courteously put at my disposal by the Polish Embassy in London.
2 I use this russified term in preference to the more usual ‘White Russians’ to distinguish them from the other ‘White’ Russians, so‐called because they opposed the ‘Red’ revolution; I do not mean to beg the question by using it.
3 This name means ‘people of the border,’ and is associated with the modern growth of national feeling among them, in spite of the fact that it is a territorial rather than an ‘ethnic’ name: formerly (and still ecclesiastically) they were known as Ruthenians and their territory as ‘Rus.’ There are other groups of them in Slovakia (Podkarpatska Rus, where they are often still called Ruthenians or Rusins), the Bukovina and the Americas.
4 Lwow (Lviv, Lemberg, Leopol), the metropolis of eastern Galicia, has long had a majority of Poles and is regarded as a great Polish city: but it is a Ukrainian ‘holy place’ too, the seat of the revered Archbishop Szepticky and all the great work he has done for his people over forty‐three years.
5 There is a small minority of Byelorussians who, for historically explainable reasons, are now Catholics of the Latin rite.
6 In fact, the Orthodox in Poland do not greatly exceed Byzantine Catholics in number: they are about three and three‐quarter million. The Orthodox Church of Poland was organised and recognised as autokephalous in 1924. Its principal elements numerically are Ukrainian and Byelorussian, but the Russian minority is important. The Moscow patriarchate always refused to recognise the ecclesiastical independence of the Orthodox in Poland.
7 The Ukrainians in Russia are of course Orthodox, and Count George Bennigsen has pointed out to me that the big emigrations of Ukrainians to America
2 I use this russified term in preference to the more usual ‘White Russians’ to distinguish them from the other ‘White’ Russians, so‐called because they opposed the ‘Red’ revolution; I do not mean to beg the question by using it.
3 This name means ‘people of the border,’ and is associated with the modern Growth of national feeling among them, in spite of the fact that it is a territorial rather than an ‘ethnic’ name: formerly (and still ecclesiastically) they were known as Ruthenians and their territory as ‘Rus.’ There are other groups of them in Slovakia (Podkarpatska Rus, where they are often still called Ruthenians or Rusins), the Bukovina and the Americas.
9 Since this article was written in April, certain happenings and alleged happenings among Polish citizens in Great Britain has done something to inform the public of some of these difficulties, but not in a satisfactory and objective way.
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