If clear thinking and straightforward action has counted for anything, the matter would have been settled satisfactorily then and there.  But the Great Powers operated less with argument than with more forcible stimuli.  Holding the economic and financial resources of the world in their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with reasoning and proceeded to coerce where they were unable to convince or persuade.  One day the chief delegate of one of the states “with limited interests” said to me:  “The unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced.  There is no milder term to signify this procedure.  Thus we are told that unless we indorse the decrees of the Powers, whose interests are unlimited like their assurance, they will withhold from us the supplies of food, raw materials, and money without which our national existence is inconceivable.  Necessarily we must give way, at any rate for the time being.”  Those words sum up the relations of the lesser to the greater Powers.

In the case of Poland the conversation ended thus—­General Botha, addressing the delegate, said:  “If you disregard the injunctions of the Big Four, who cannot always lay before you the grounds of their policy, you run the risk of being left to your own devices.  And you know what that means.  Think well before you decide!” Just then, as it chanced, only a part of General Haller’s soldiers in France had been transported to their own country,[182] and the Poles were in mortal terror lest the work of conveying the remainder should be interrupted.  This, then, was an implicit appeal to which they could not turn a wholly deaf ear.  “Well, what is it that the Big Four ask of us?” inquired the delegate.  “The conclusion of an armistice with the Ruthenians, also that Poland—­as one of the newly created states—­should allow the free transit of all the Allied goods through her territory.”  The delegate expressed a wish to be told why this measure should be restricted to the newly made states.  The answer was because it was in the nature of an experiment and should, therefore, not be tried over too large an area.  “There is also another little undertaking which you are requested to give—­namely, that you will accept and act upon the future decisions of the commission whatever they may be.”  “Without an inkling of their character?” “If you have confidence in us you need have no misgivings as to that.”  In spite of the deterrents the Polish delegation at that interview met all these demands with a firm non possumus.  It upheld the three conditions of the armistice, rejected the free transit proposal, and demurred to the demand for a promise to bow to all future decisions of a fallible commission.  “When the Polish dispute with the Czechoslovaks was submitted to a commission we were not asked in advance to abide by its decision.  Why should a new rule be introduced now?” argued the Polish delegates.  And there the matter rested for a brief while.