The Polish Experience

Abstract

In the spring of I918 a German soldier who remains nameless took an interesting picture. He photographed a procession of the Orthodox clergy in Tiflis. The German was temporarily resident in Tiflis not as a prisoner of war, but as a victor in arms, a member of the occupation force. At the same time his fellow soldiers amassed a collection of other photographs, representing numerous centres of human settlement, at various heights above sea-level, but always on the borders of central and eastern Europe: from Helsinki in Finland via Pskov, Orsha, Kiev, and Rostov on Don all the way to Livadia in the Crimea. An album bringing together these photographs would be topographically interesting, but incomparably more important as a historical document. Another book well worth publishing would contain declarations made in the highest quarters, in Europe and elsewhere, on the question of Polish independence. Illustrious names would figure in such a collection! Respect for diplomatic protocol bids us mention first of all the three Emperors: Franz Joseph and Wilhelm II, who announced on 5 November I916 that they were reviving the Kingdom of Poland, and Nicholas II, who said on 25 December of the same year in a message to his army that the resurrection of a united and independent Poland was his will. Further down the list would appear other personages of great dignity and power, though unfortunately unadorned by imperial crowns. To give the book a historiosophical value we might prefix a motto drawn from the Polish communist newspaper Nasza Trybuna, which on 29 November I918 opined that 'what matters is not programmatic phrases, but real actions and the forces which make action possible'. A true and impartial philosopher, however, would apply this saying to all without exception. Real actions and real forces are exactly what the photographic album would show and so it would properly be recognized as a more important document than the collection of declarations. The