1926-35 Marshal Pilsudskis Rule

Constitutional

year and a half after Marshal Pil sudski's coup d'etat, a new parliamentary election became due in Po land. He had left the outward structure of the parliamentary system intact. The practical impotence, however, to which his rule reduced the sometime all-powerful parliamentary parties, had a profound effect on them. The largest groups began to disintegrate, and when the elections approached, as many as 35 different factions appeared in the field with lists of candidates of their own. This "pulverization of the party system" was the result of splits in the larger groups on the one issue that remained dominant under the circumstances, viz., the question: for Pilsudski or against him. In the midst of this re-shuffling of all former groupings, the Government created a non-party bloc of its supporters of various shades of opinion. From the elections held on March 4 and II, 1928, only the Socialists emerged with a substan tial increase in the number of their seats (by about one-third) ; the other parties which had once been strong factors—the Peasant and the Nationalist Party—dwindled down to insignificant handfuls of deputies ; the national minorities, largely placated by Pilsudski's liberal policy, did not form a solid anti-Government bloc, as they had done in 1922, and therefore achieved no marked success, even in the eastern borderlands ; the Jews, in particular, torn by dissensions between the Zionist intelligentsia and the Orthodox masses, lost heavily ; and in the midst of all these considerably diminished factions, the Govern ment bloc entered parliament as the strongest of all groups.

(R. DY.) The opposition, however, remained so strong that a normal co-opera tion of the parliament with Pilsudski proved impossible. In the autumn of 1930, the growing tension resulted in the arrest of some of the party leaders, who were imprisoned at Brzek and treated there very badly. New elections held in November gave to the Government bloc an abso lute majority and after long discussion the draft of a revised consti tution was voted, not without encroachment upon the existing rules of procedure.

That new constitution, finally sanctioned on April 23, 1935, was based on the following principles: the State being considered as the "common good" of all the citizens, the executive becomes considerably strengthened at the expense of the legislature ; the president appoints and dismisses the prime minister and the commander of the army, can dissolve the parliament, and is responsible to none ; the six "organs of the State"—government, diet, senate, army, courts of justice, and court of supervision—are accordingly under the president's control ; the powers of the parliament are strictly limited, and the number of its members reduced to 208 in the lower and 96 in the upper house, one third of the latter being nominated by the president. As a whole, it may be regarded as intermediary between plain democracy and per sonal government.

Bilateral

the first six years of Pilsudski's regime, A. Zaleski being minister of foreign affairs, Poland's policy was chiefly based upon the League of Nations and the close alliance with France. Poland which had proposed to the League's Assembly of 1927 a resolution outlawing wars of aggression, not only signed the Kellogg Pact of the next year, but even anticipated its realization by a special agreement with Soviet Russia, in 1929. In 1932 that "proto

col" was developed into a pact of non-aggression, which clearly ex pressed an imminent change in the methods of Poland's foreign policy. At the Disarmament Conference of the same year, the Polish delegation had played an active part, submitting an elaborate plan of "moral disarmament"; but it became obvious that the idea of collective se curity had failed, and Poland sought better guarantees in bilateral agreements with her neighbours.

After 1932 this method was developed by the new minister of foreign affairs, Colonel Beck, and found its strongest expression in another so years' non-aggression pact, concluded on Jan. 26, with Germany. There was of course a reservation that the new treaty was not to affect Poland's previous engagements, particularly her alliance with France. Nevertheless it seemed to involve a change in Poland's general attitude, which might be explained by her opposition to the planned four-power pact and her tendency to greater independence in foreign policy, Seeing that nobody in Europe was prepared to fight the new Hitler regime, Pilsudski found it necessary to accept a direct understanding with Poland's western neighbour also, holding the balance between Russia and Germany.

1935-39 After Pilsudski's death on May 12, 1935, the form of government which he had established continued without much change. The voting regulations, as applied at the elections of 1935, without having been defined in the new constitution itself, again raised much discontent; but attempts were started to come to some co-operation with various groups of the opposition. The Government bloc was dissolved and replaced by a "Camp of National Unity," the work of Colonel Koc. Both President Moscicki, who had been re-elected in 1933 for another 7 years' period, and General Smigly-Rydz, Pilsudski's successor as commander of the army (who was appointed marshal and "the second person" in the republic), exercised their authority with moderation and in a conciliatory spirit. Such an appeal to internal unity was indeed indispensable in face of the increasing danger of the interna tional situation.

The Origin and Outbreak of the

danger re sulted from the policy adopted by Germany. After the annexation of Austria and the destruction of Czechoslovakia, it was clear that Hitler wanted to isolate each of Germany's eastern neighbours to be attacked one after the other. Soon after Munich, when Poland had seized the opportunity to claim the contested territories in the Cieszyn (Teschen) region, there began a new tension between her and Germany. Yet on Jan. 3o, 1939, Hitler reaffirmed the importance of the German-Polish non-aggression pact as a contribution to the peace of Europe; but he had already decided to annex the Free City of Danzig, and on March 27 he officially requested the Polish Government to accept that solu tion as well as the construction of an extraterritorial motor road through the Polish province of Pomorze, the so-called "Corridor." Touched in her vital interest and realizing that it was a first challenge against her independence, Poland refused, making counter-proposals which were never taken into serious consideration. And as soon as Poland had exchanged with Great Britain reciprocal guarantees of independence and integrity, Hitler took it as a pretext to denounce, in his speech of April 28, the non-aggression pact of 1934.