Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-16

!
drives up to the White House
NV as he is expected to do
shortly after his return from
the flying visit he is now
making to Mexico-and presents to the
President his credentials as the first
Polish Ambassador at Washington, a
number of things will be happening
which nobody could have foretold few
weeks before that Notwithstanding shot
was fired at Sarajevo on June %, 1914.
Who could have guessed then, or even
In 1915, when the Russian frontier fort
reSSes were going down before the Ger
mans and Austrians, that there would
be any Polish Minister at all in Wash
ington in 1890! And who could have
been sure, even as late as 1920, when
the Bolsheviks had advanced to the very
gates of Warsaw, not only that there
would be an independent Poland 10
| years later but that the new power
would have reached a weight and sta
bility where it would be deemed appro-
pirate to raise the rank of it's diplo-
matte representative from that of min
lister to ambassador?
Had Adventurous Career.
When the great war broke. his excel
lency, the Polish Ambassador to- be,
was, legally speaking. a Russian subject,
an emigre, like lots of other restless and
| dissatisfied subjects of the Car, making
propaganda in London, as a member of
the Polish Socialist party, for united
and independent Poland. He already
had been in prison, had been sent to
Siberia, had helped publish and SNUG
| gle a contraband newspaper into Po-
land, had done all sorts of things and
had all sorts of adventures which would
| hut ALL
matte persona grata in Washington had
the eastern European dynastieS not all
| gone down In smoke and fame. And
yet here he Is, in spite of all that a
Suave and charming gentleman, who
| speaks languages, rides or tramps cross
country, dances eXpertly and does all
the things expected of diplomats, in
Guiding the more serious tasks not men
toned here. Nothing but the great
war and the revolutions that followed it
could have turned things about like
that!
It is a transformation characteristic
of postwar Europe, and especially of
the new nations formed out of terri
tories and peoples which used to be part
of imperial Russia. In Finland, Esto-
MIA, Latvia, Lithuania, many, If not
most, of the present-day leaders were,
in the nature of things, in the pre-war
/ days more or less active revolutionists.
When Finland was a Russian grand
duchy, the Films, of whom foreigners
were likely to have heard--such fem
mist and active politician as Miss Annie
Furuhelm, for instance-were oftener
than not Swedish Firms; members, that
Is to say, of the conservative Swedish
minority, who owned the landed estates
and comprised what are generally
spoken of as people of consequence
They spoke Swedish. and were inclined
to think of Sweden as their cultural
homeland. The "Finn" Firms, although
they had produced writer's and musi-
clans and artists and largely outnum-
bered the Swedish Firms, were generally
people of modest means and modest
social station, just struggling up, both
against Russia itself and their own
Swedish upper class, to nationalistic
self-expression.
Free But Short Time.
The same was even more true of the
Baltic states. just across the gulf. The
Esthonians and Let's, who now control
affairs in the new republics Of Esthonia
and Latvia. were peasants or the sons
or grandsons of peasants. The German
nobility, the Bait baronS, who owned