Meanwhile the internal situation grew steadily worse. When Paderewski fell, the party struggle grew fiercer again and the new President of the Council, Skulski, was not fitted to tackle either the political or administrative disorders, the claims of each faction or the plots which were being secretly hatched. At the end of March, at a meeting of the War Council in Warsaw, General Haller definitely opposed Pilsudski’s military plans. When the decision to capture Kiev had been taken, Haller withdrew to the country and held aloof in an attitude of reserve that hardly seemed justified in relation to the strategic importance of the decision.

On April 26, 1920, the Polish Army crossed the Ukrainian frontier and occupied Kiev on May 8th. Pilsudski’s easy victories roused immense amount of enthusiasm throughout Poland. On May 18th, the conquering hero was received by the inhabitants of Warsaw with a triumphal welcome which the most ingenuous of his fanatical followers were pleased to compare to the reception of the hero of Marengo. Meanwhile, early in June, the Bolshevik Army under Trotsky began the offensive. By June 10th, Budyonni’s cavalry had reoccupied Kiev. When the news suddenly reached Warsaw, the ensuing fear and disorganization roused all the parties to action and whetted the pretensions of everyone who had any ambitions. Skulski, President of the Council, handed over his office to Grabski, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patek, was replaced by Prince Sapieha, the ambassador in London, who came back peacefully imbued with English Liberalism. The entire people rose up in arms against the Red invasion: Haller himself, though at enmity with Pilsudski, rushed to the rescue of his humiliated rival and brought his volunteers with him. But the noise of party factions still seemed to predominate. So loud was it that the neighing of Budyonni’s horses could hardly be heard.

Early in August Trotsky’s army stood at the gates of Warsaw. Among the silent anxious crowds in the town seeking for news at every street corner there were bands of deserters, refugees, and fleeing peasants: the thundering noise of battle came nearer every day. The new President of the Council, Grabski, fell and Witos, his successor, who enjoyed no confidence from the Right, made a hopeless effort to bury party differences and organize civil resistance. In the working class districts and in the Nalevki quarter, Warsaw’s ghetto where 300,000 Jews were eagerly watching for every echo of the battle, there were already signs of revolt. The strangest rumours were to be heard in the lobby of the Diet, in the waiting-rooms of the Ministries, in banks and newspaper offices, in cafés and barracks. There was talk of German military intervention which Witos was said to have asked for in order to check the Bolshevik offensive. Later on we heard that the negotiations with Berlin had indeed been undertaken but by Witos in complete agreement with Pilsudski. General Weygand’s arrival seemed somehow to be connected with these conversations and his coming was surely a frustration of Witos’ plan and cast discredit on Pilsudski. The men of the Right who had always stood for co-operation with French policy accused Witos of inefficiency and double-dealing and clamoured for a strong Government. Witos involuntarily increased the general confusion by being utterly unable to quell the tumult of party factions and by attributing all the responsibility for the disaster first to the Right and then to the Left.

The enemy was at the gates of the town. Hunger and sedition had already taken hold of Warsaw. Processions marched up and down the streets of the suburbs, and on the pavements of the Krakowskie Przedmiescie, bands of hollow-faced weary-eyed deserters wandered about in front of the banks, the palaces, and the houses of the rich.

On August 6th, Monsignor Ratti, the Papal Nuncio (now Pope Pius XI), called on the President of the Council and as Doyen to the Diplomatic Corps he went with the Ministers of Great Britain, Italy and Roumania to ask Witos to name the town forthwith to which the Government would be transferred in case the capital had to be evacuated. The decision to take this step had been reached the day before, after a lengthy discussion among all the members of the Diplomatic Corps in the office of the Nuncio. Most of those present followed the example of the British and German ministers, Sir Horace Rumbold and Count Oberndorff, in advocating the immediate transfer of the Diplomatic Corps to a safer place such as Posen or Czenstochowa. Sir Horace Rumbold had even suggested that the Polish Government should be pressed to choose.

Posen as a provisional capital. The only two who were in favour of staying in Warsaw to the very last moment were the Nuncio, Monsignor Ratti, and the Italian Minister, Tommasini. Their attitude at the meeting had been keenly criticised and it was not favourably received by the Polish Government: if the Papal Nuncio and the Italian Minister were anxious to stay in Warsaw it was surely because they secretly hoped that an exit at the last moment would be impossible and that they would then stay on under a Bolshevik occupation. Thus the Papal Nuncio would have an opportunity for opening negotiations between the Vatican and the Soviet Government on religious questions of interest to the Church. The Church had long been an observer of Russian events and was only waiting for an opportunity to enlarge her sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. So much was clear not only from the appointment of Monsignor Genocchi as Apostolic Visitor in the Ukraine, but also from the frank protection extended by the Pope to the Uniate Metropolitan Archbishop of Heopolis, Monsignor André Szeptychi. The Holy See has always considered the Galician Uniate Church as a natural intermediary in the Catholic conquest of Russia.

As for the Italian Minister, Tommasini, he was thought to be carrying out the orders of his Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, who was also inclined to get into friendly relations with Russia for reasons of internal policy chiefly, dictated by the exacting demands of Italian Socialists. If Warsaw should be occupied by the Bolsheviks, the presence of the Italian Minister Tommasini would provide Count Sforza with a suitable opportunity in which to open up diplomatic relations with the Government in Moscow.

Witos, the President of the Council, greeted Monsignor Ratti’s move with great coolness. Yet it was agreed that the Polish Government would move to Posen and would see to the transference of the Diplomatic Corps in case of danger. Next day, on August 8th, very many Legation secretaries left Warsaw.

The vanguard of the Bolshevik army had already reached the gates of the town. In the workers’ suburbs the first shots were heard. Now was the moment for a coup d’Etat.

Warsaw these days looked like a town waiting to be pillaged. The great heat seemed to suffocate all voices and noises. The crowds in the streets were perfectly noiseless. Now and then an endless convoy of trams carrying the wounded would slowly steer through these crowds. The wounded sometimes looked out of the windows shook their fists and swore. A ceaseless hum spread from pavement to pavement, from street to street. A group of Bolshevik prisoners, battered, bent, and limping, with red stars on the front of their uniforms, marched between hedges of mounted Uhlans. The crowd opened in silence to let them pass and immediately closed again. Fights broke out here and there only to be squashed at once by the surging crowds. Sometimes a small procession of thin, feverish soldiers would march by, carrying black crosses high over the sea of heads: The populace moved forward slowly in waves and then a current would follow the crosses, eddy round them, flow back, and lose itself in the troubled sea of human beings. On the Vistula bridge another crowd was listening intently for the distant thunder of battle. Heavy clouds charged with heat and dust darkened the horizon which vibrated and thundered as though a battering ram had charged it.

The main railway stations were besieged day and night by bands of famished deserters, refugees of every race and condition. The Jews alone seemed to feel at home during these chaotic days. The Nalevski quarter, Warsaw’s ghetto, was rejoicing. Here the hatred for the Polish persecutors of the children of Israel was fierce and consequently there was pleasure in witnessing the wretched end of Catholic and intolerant Poland. The Jews of Nalevski, generally so silent and passive both from prudence and by tradition, betrayed their feelings by very exceptional acts of courage and violence. The Jews were becoming seditious: a bad omen for the Poles.

The news which was brought by refugees from the occupied areas rekindled the spirit of sedition: they said that in every village and town occupied by the Bolsheviks a Soviet mainly consisting of local Jews had been set up. Were the persecuted Jews really becoming persecutors? Liberty, vengeance, and power were fruits so luscious that the wretched inhabitants of Nalevski longed for a taste of them. The Red Army only a few miles out of Warsaw found a natural ally in the enormous Jewish population of the city which grew daily more numerous and more excited. At the beginning of August there were at least 500,000 of them in Warsaw. I often used to wonder what kept this great seditious mass of people from trying to revolt, filled as they were with a fanatical hatred and hungry for freedom.

What with a dismembered State, a government on its deathbed, a great part of the country invaded and the capital besieged and in disorder, only a thousand men who were determined and ready for anything, could have taken possession of the town without firing a single shot. But my experience of those days taught me that though a Catiline may be Jewish, the instruments of the coup d’Etat should not be recruited from among the children of Israel. In Petrograd in October 1917 the Catiline of the Bolshevik insurrection was the Jew Trotsky and not the Russian Lenin: but the executors, the Catilines, were practically all Russian sailors, workers, and soldiers. In his struggle with Stalin in 1927, Trotsky learnt to his cost how dangerous it was to rely on a chiefly Jewish following for carrying out his coup d’Etat.

The Diplomatic Corps met almost every day in the Nuncio’s office to discuss the situation. I frequently accompanied the Italian Minister Tommasini, who was none too pleased with the attitude of all his colleagues, who supported Sir Horace Rumbold and Count Oberndorff. Only the French Minister, M. de Panafieu, though he thought the situation most critical, did not conceal his fear that the departure of the Diplomatic Corps for Posen would give the impression of a flight and arouse public indignation. Together with Monsignor Ratti and the Italian Minister, he believed that Warsaw was not to be abandoned until the last moment and that the advice of Sir Horace Rumbold and Count Oberndorff to leave the capital at once, should not be followed, unless the internal situation collapsed and the military defence of the town was thereby jeopardized.

M. de Panafieu’s view was in reality closer to that of the British and German Ministers than to that of the Papal Nuncio and the Italian Minister. The latter, of course, wanted to stay in Warsaw even if the Bolsheviks came into the city, but they were frankly hopeful about the military and internal situation. They saw no danger for the Diplomatic Corps in delaying its departure for Posen to the very last minute.

But for M. de Panafieu it was only the military situation that seemed hopeful. He could not very well mistrust Weygand. Since a French general had now been entrusted with the defence of the town, the French Minister pretended to agree with Sir Horace Rumbold and Count Oberndorff not because he was doubtful about the military situation, but solely because of the dangers inherent in the internal situation. The French and German Ministers were especially afraid lest Warsaw should fall into the hands of the Bolshevik army. Only a Jewish or Communist revolt could officially concern M. de Panafieu. “What I fear,” said the French Minister, “is that Pilsudski and Weygand may be stabbed in the back.”

According to Monsignor Pellegrinetti, Secretary at the Nunciate, the Papal Nuncio did not believe in a coup d’Etat. “The Nuncio,” said General Carton de Wiart, head of the British Military Mission, “cannot envisage this miserable mob from the ghetto and the suburbs of Warsaw daring to try to seize hold of power.”But Poland is not like the Church in which only Popes and Cardinals make coups d’Etat.

Monsignor Ratti was convinced of the failure of rebellion, although he was not impressed by the precautions against new and more serious dangers taken by the Government, the military leaders, and the governing classes: that is to say, by those who were responsible for events. But M. de Panafieu’s arguments were of a nature too serious not to rouse some doubts in the mind of the Nuncio. Hence, Monsignor Pellegrinetti’s visit to the Minister Tommasini one morning did not come as a surprise to me. The prelate came to assure him that the Government had taken every precautionary measure to cope with any future attempt at rebellion. The Italian Minister immediately sent for me, and in Monsignor Pelegrinetti’s presence, explained the Nuncio’s doubts and told me to find out what precautions the Government had taken to prevent disorders and to suppress a revolt. General Romei, the head of the Italian Military Mission, had just brought news confirming the continual advance of the Bolshevik offensive, which left him not the slightest doubt about the fate of Warsaw. It was August 12th. That night Trotsky’s army was within some twenty miles of the town. “If the Polish troops can hold out for another day or two,” said the Minister, “General Weygand’s move may yet be successful.. But we must not expect too much.” He told me to go down to the working class districts and to the Nalevski quarter where they feared disorders; to discover on the spot the most critical centres in the city, and to find out whether Weygand and Pilsudski had been adequately protected and the Government sufficiently guaranteed against a possible coup de main. “It would be better,” he ended, “if you did not go alone.” And he advised me to go with Captain Rollin, an attaché at the French Legation.

Captain Rollin, a Cavalry Officer, was in the “second bureau” of the staff. He was one of the most able and gifted collaborators of M. de Panafieu and of General Henrys, the head of the French Military Mission. He frequently called at the Italian Legation and was on excellent terms with the Italian Minister, indeed they were cordial friends. I met him again in Rome during the Fascist Revolution in 1921 and 1922, when he was attached to the French Embassy in the Farnese Palace. Mussolini’s revolutionary tactics had completely won his admiration.

After the Bolshevik army had laid siege to Warsaw, I used to go with him every day to the Polish outposts in order to follow more closely the vicissitudes of the battle. But the Bolshevik soldiers did not look very formidable except for those red Cossacks who were terrible cavalrymen and worthy of a nobler cause. The others went into battle slowly and pitifully. They looked like a famished and ragged crowd that is moved by fear and hunger alone. With all my experience of war on the French and Italian fronts I could not understand how the Poles could retreat in front of such soldiers.

Captain Rollin seemed to think that the Polish Government had no notion of the art of defending a modern State. The same criticism might be applied to Pilsudski in another sense. Polish soldiers are said to be fearless. But what is the use of fearless soldiers if their leaders do not know that the art of defence lies in a knowledge of their own weak spots? The precautionary measures which the Government took in order to meet any attempt at rebellion proved that it was unaware of the weakest spots in a modern State.

The technique of the coup d’Etat has advanced considerably since the days of Sulla: obviously then the means which Kerenski used to prevent Lenin from capturing power should be very different from those employed by Cicero in protecting the Republic against the Catiline conspiracy. Formerly it was a matter for the police to settle: today it has become a technical problem. When in Berlin, in March 1920, both police and technical measures were put to the test, the contrast was obvious.

The Polish Government followed Kerenski’s example: indeed it acted according to Cicero’s experience. But the art of capturing and defending the State has changed with the centuries, side by side with changes that have taken place in the nature of the State. If Catiline’s sedition could be successfully suppressed by certain police measures, similar measures were useless against Lenin. Kerenski’s mistake lay in his attempt to protect the vulnerable places in a modern town: its banks, railway stations, telephone and telegraph exchanges, by methods which Cicero used to defend the Forum and the Sub Urbs in the Rome of his day.

In March 1920, Von Kapp had forgotten that, besides the Reichstag and the Ministries in the Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin also had its electric and radio stations, factories and railways. The Communists took advantage of his mistake and paralysed the life of Berlin, causing the collapse of the provisional Government which had come into power by a coup de force of military police methods. In the night of December 2nd, Louis Napoleon began his coup d’Etat by taking possession of all the printing presses and clock towers. But the Polish people never remember their own experiences, much less those of other peoples. Polish history is full of events which the Poles consider as peculiar to themselves. They do not believe that a single event in their national life could be found in the history of another people: they experience it for the first time; it has never occurred elsewhere.

The precautions taken by the Witos Government were the usual police measures. Only four soldiers were stationed at each end of the bridges across the Vistula, the railway bridge and the Prague bridge. The main electric station was unguarded: we found no trace of a watchman or sentry anywhere. The Manager told us that the Military Governor of the City had just telephoned to say that if any of the machines were sabotaged or the current interrupted, the Manager himself would be held responsible. The Citadel beyond the Nalevski quarter on the outer edge of Warsaw was full of Uhlans and horses. We passed in and out freely: the sentries never asked for our passes. Incidentally, there was a store of arms and gunpowder in the Citadel. Utter confusion reigned at the railway station: whole parties of fugitives stormed the trains, an unruly crowd thronged the platforms and the line, and groups of drunken soldiers lay in a deep sleep, stretched on the ground. “Somno vinoque sepulti,” said Captain Rollin who knew Latin. It would have needed only ten men armed with hand grenades…

As usual, four sentries guarded the Army Headquarters in the chief square of Warsaw under the shadow of a Russian church that has since been demolished. The door and the hall were blocked by the continual coming and going of officers and orderlies covered in dust from head to foot. We took advantage of the confusion to climb the stairs and go down a corridor through a room hung with topographical maps where an officer, sitting at a table in the corner raised his head and greeted us with a bored look on his face. We went down another corridor and came to a kind of waiting-room where a few officers, grey with dust, stood waiting by a half-open door, and then we went down again to the hall. As we once more passed the two sentries in the square, Captain Rollin turned to me and smiled. The Hotel des Postes was guarded by a lieutenant with a picket of soldiers. This officer told us that he had orders to keep the crowd out of the Hotel, in case it broke loose. I suggested that such a picket of orderly soldiers would doubtless succeed in pushing back a rebellious crowd, but could hardly cope with a sudden attack made by ten determined men. The lieutenant smiled-and pointing to the crowd going quietly in and out of the building, he answered that those ten men had perhaps gone in separately or were in the process of doing so under our very eyes: “My job is to suppress a rising, not to prevent a coup de main.”

Soldiers collected here and there in front of the Ministries and closely watched the general public and the clerks as they passed back and forth. The Diet was surrounded by mounted police and Uhlans: deputies arrived and left, talking to each other in muffled voices. In the Lobby we came across Trompczinski, the Marshal of the Diet, who greeted us absent-mindedly. He was surrounded by a few Posnanian deputies, alert and cool. Trompczinski was a Posnanian of the Right, and frankly hostile to Pilsudski’s policy. His secret manoeuvring to overthrow the Witos Government was being much discussed at the time.

That night at the Hunt Club, the Marshal of the Diet said to Cavendish Bentinck of the British Legation, “Pilsudski does not know how to defend Poland, and Witos does not know how to defend the Republic.” For Trompczinski, the Republic meant the Diet. Like all fat men Trompczinski never really felt safe.

All that day we tramped the town in every direction, going out to the farthest suburbs. At ten in the evening, as we passed in front of the Savoy Hotel, Captain Rollin heard his name called. It was General Bulach Balachowitch, standing in the doorway, who beckoned us to come in. He was a “partisan” of Pilsudski, but in the Russian and Polish sense of that word: the Russian General Balachowitch led the famous Black Cossack troops who fought for Poland against Budyonni’s Red Cossacks.

Bold and unscrupulous, skilled in banditry, schooled in all the tricks of partisan guerilla warfare, Balach Balachowitch was Pilsudski’s trump card. Pilsudski used him and the Hetman Petlura to foster risings against the Bolsheviks and Denikin in White Russia and the Ukraine. Balachowitch’s Headquarters were at the Savoy Hotel where he sometimes put in a hurried appearance, between two skirmishes, in order to watch political developments. A crisis in the Government would have seriously affected him, whether favourably or unfavourably. Internal affairs focused his attention more closely than the movements of Budyonni’s Cossacks. The Poles mistrusted him and Pilsudski himself only used him with extreme caution, as though he were a dangerous ally.

Balachowitch at once began to discuss the situation. He did not conceal his belief in the need for a coup d’Etat from the Right if Warsaw were to be saved from the enemy and Poland kept from devastation. “Witos is not fit to deal with the situation,” he concluded, “nor can he protect the rearguard of Pilsudski’s army. If no one decides to seize power and put an end to the disorder, to organize civilian resistance and defend the Republic against the dangers which threaten it, we shall have a Communist coup d’Etat in a day or two.” Captain Rollin thought it was too late to prevent a Communist rising and that there were no men fit for such a great responsibility among the parties of the Right.

Given the condition of Poland, Balachowitch, unlike Rollin, did not consider the responsibility of a coup d’Etat as being so very serious, since the safety of the Republic was at stake. As for the difficulties of the venture, any fool might seize power. “But,” he added, “Haller is at the front, Sapieha has no trustworthy friends, and Trompczinski is afraid.” Here I suggested that the Parties of the Left were also lacking in men fit to deal with the situation: what was keeping the Communists from trying their coup d’Etat? “You are right,” said Balachowitch, “I would not have waited so long if I had been in their shoes. If I were not a Russian, a foreigner, and a guest in this country which I defend, I would have made the coup by now.” Rollin smiled: “If you were a Pole, you would have done nothing as yet. In Poland, when it is not too late it is always too early.”

Balachowitch was the very man to overthrow the Witos Government in a few hours. A thousand of his Cossacks could have stormed the vital centres of the town and kept order for some time. And after that? Balachowitch was a Russian and his men, moreover, were Cossacks. Such a sudden attack would not have encountered any serious difficulties then, but insuperable difficulties would have arisen later. Having once seized power, Balachowitch would quickly have handed it over to men of the Right, but not one Polish patriot would have accepted the gift from a Cossack. Communists alone would have taken advantage of the situation. “It would, in fact, have taught the Right a good lesson,” concluded Balachowitch.

Among the noblemen and great landowners in the Hunt club that night, besides Sapieha and Trompczinski, we found some of the most representative members of the Opposition to Pilsudski and Witos. The only foreign Diplomats were Count Oberndorff, the German Minister, the British General Carton de Wiart and the Secretary of the French Legation. Everybody seemed at ease except Sapieha and Oberndorff. Sapieha pretended not to hear the proposals that were being made beside him and occasionally leaned across to say a few words to General Carton de Wiart who was discussing the military position with Count Potocki. That day the Bolshevik troops had advanced considerably in the Radzymin sector, a village about twenty kilometres from Warsaw.

“We will fight to the end,” General Potocki was saying.

“You mean, till tomorrow,” said the British General, smiling.

Count Potocki had left Paris only a few days before but he was already planning to go back as soon as possible, as soon as fortune smiled on Poland again.

“You are all like your famous Dombrovski who led the Polish legion in Italy in Napoleon’s day,” said Carton de Wiart, Dombrovski used to say “I shall always be ready to die for my country but not to live in it.”

Such were the men and such their ideas. You could hear the rumble of guns in the distance. Before leaving us that morning, the Italian Minister had told us to wait for him at the Hunt Club. It was getting very late: I was about to go when Tommasini came in. Our notes on the unpreparedness of the Witos Government impressed him as being serious enough, but they did not take him unawares. Only a few hours earlier Witos had confessed to him that he no longer felt himself to be master of the situation. Tommasini was none the less convinced that among the enemies of Pilsudski and Witos there was no one fit to attempt a coup d’Etat. The Communists alone could cause some uneasiness. But they were afraid of compromising the situation by some unwary move and so they held aloof from an adventure which might have proved perilous, if not useless. Obviously, the game was won and they were only waiting for Trotsky’s arrival. “Even Monsignor Ratti,” added the Minister, “has decided not to abandon the view we have so far held by common consent. The Papal Nuncio and I will stay in Warsaw to the end: whatever happens.”

“What a pity,” commented Captain Rollin a few minutes later and not without irony, “what a pity if nothing happens.”

When the news came on the following evening that the Bolshevik Army had occupied the village of Radzymin and was attacking the other end of the Warsaw bridge, the Diplomatic Corps hurried away from the capital and took shelter in Posen. Only the Papal Nuncio, the Italian Minister, and the Chargés d’Affaires of the U. S. A. and Denmark stayed in Warsaw.

All that night the town was in a panic. The next day, which was August 15th and St. Mary’s day, the entire populace marched in procession behind the statue of the Virgin, beseeching her to save Poland from invasion.

Everything seemed to be lost. The huge procession, chanting its litanies, expected to see a party of Red Cossacks appear around the next corner. Then came the news of General Weygand’s first victories. It spread like wild fire. Trotsky’s army was beating a retreat at every point along the line.

Trotsky’s indispensable ally, Catiline, had failed him.