Suchergebnisse

The well known series which under the editorship of Mr. Sumner Welles studies the relations between America and other nations does not yet include a volume on the United States and Poland. It is no secret that the book about Poland by Samuel L. Sharp which Harvard University Press has recently published, was originally supposed to fill that gap. Why this proved unadvisable is easy to discover for any reader. Nevertheless, half of the introduction deals with "the limits of our (that is, the American) Polish problem" and two of the six chapters including the author's conclusions remained dedicated to American-Polish relations in the past, the present, and the future.

On some later occasion, I hope to discuss in detail the various problems of German-Polish relations which Professor Hans Rothfels raised in his article "Frontiers and Mass Migrations in Eastern Central Europe" (The Review of Politics, January 1946).Immediately, however, I should like to clear up the misunderstandings which might arise in connection with two quotations which Professor Rothfels took out of the context of my own publications.1. Recalling that in 1226 the duke of Mazovia called upon the help of the Teutonic Order, and stressing that he did it "apparently in despair," Professor Rothfels adds the following footnote (p. 43, n . 43) :"En désespoir de cause," as Professor O. Halecki puts it correctly (La Pologne de 963 à 1914, Paris, 1933, p. 47). Other Polish historians have tried to minimize this fact.

In 1798, three years after the third partition of Poland, George Washington wrote to a friend of Thaddeus Kosciuszko: "That your country is not as happy as her efforts were patriotic and noble, is a misfortune which all the lovers of sensible liberty and rights of men deeply deplore; and were my prayers during that hard struggle of any good, you would be now under your own vine and fig tree, to quote the Bible, as happy in the enjoyments of these desirable blessings as the people of these United States enjoy theirs." These words of the first President of the United States are the best possible introduction to this article written in 1945, on Washington's birthday.