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At this point it may bc as well to set out briefly the facts about the “ Curzon Linc.” Aciually Lord Curzon had practically nothing to do with it. This point is not without importance, for great play has been m3de of the fact that Lord Curzon was notoriously anti-Soviet, and it might be supposed that any frontier hc proposed could hardly be unduly favourable to the Soviet Union. But hc never proposed the “ Curzon Linę ” as a frontier. In an effort to find out the truth about this linc, I naturally had recourse in the first instance to the official bio-graphy of Curzon by Lord Ronaldshay, but in all the three yolumes of work therc is no mention of the linc. It is mentioned in Curzon : the Last Phase, by Mr. Harold Nicolson, and this is what he says:—

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On July 10 (1920) Mr. Lloyd Gcorge intcrviewed M. }rabski alonc. He abused the Poles for having advanced into ussian and Ukrainian territory and hc ordered them to withdraw some 125 miles bchind the linę which they at that moment occupied. This would bring them to their ‘ lcgiti-mate frontier.’ M. Grabski cnąuired whcrc that frontier lay. Mr. Lloyd Gcorge then indicatcd what has sińce becn known as * the Curzon linc ’—(although Curzon himsclf had littlc to do with it.” ('Curzon : the Last Phase, p. 204.)

Mr. Lloyd Gcorge’s methods of conducting diplomacy at this time arc shown by a story told by his friend, Lord Riddell, in his Jntimate Diary, p. 225. The Russians at the end of July offered Poland a frontier far morc favourablc than the “ Curzon Linę,” but with conditions which would have reduccd Poland to “ a Huropean Azerbaijan ” (Harold Nicolson, Curzon, p. 206). News of this rcached Mr. Lloyd Georgc as he was playing golf at Cobham in a telegram from M. Krassin; he pronouneed it generous in the cxtreme and acted at once without any consulta-tion with the Forcign Office, urging compliance on Poland. Latcr it appeared that M. Krassin had put an unduly favourable complexion on the offer and Mr. Lloyd Gcorge hastily mad an announcemcnt that the offer was not generous at all but¹ incompatiblc with Polish indcpendence.

Mr. Harold Nicolson sums up the failurc of British policy towards Poland in thesc ycars, as comparcd with French, in words which deservc to be ąuoted bccause t hcy go to the heart of the present debatc.

*' The succcss of French Policy is no real critcrion of our own failure. That failurc is to be judged rather by the standards of traditional diplomacy. Those traditions cnjoin that Great Britain should ncithcr threaten nor promise in circumstances in which her threats or her promises cannot, with complcte certainty, bc fulfilled. In the Polish crisis of 1920, there was no

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