M. Paderewski left Paris for Warsaw, there to win over the Cabinet.  But in Poland, where the authorities were face to face with the concrete elements of the problem, the Premier found no support.  Neither the Cabinet nor the Diet nor the head of the state found it possible to redeem the promise made in their name.  Circumstance was stronger than the human will.  M. Paderewski resigned.  The Ruthenians delivered a timely attack on the Poles, who counter-attacked, captured the towns of Styra, Tarnopol, Stanislau, and occupied the enemy country right up to Rumania, with which they desired to be in permanent contact.  Part of the Ruthenian army crossed the Czech frontier and was disarmed, the remainder melted away, and there remained no enemy with whom to conclude an armistice.

For the “Big Four” this turn of events was a humiliation.  The Ruthenian army, whose interests they had so taken to heart, had suddenly ceased to exist, and the future danger which it represented to Poland was seen to have been largely imaginary.  Their judgment was at fault and their power ineffectual.  Against M. Paderewski’s impotence they blazed with indignation.  He had given way to their decision and promptly gone to Warsaw to see it executed, yet the conditions were such that his words were treated as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.  The Polish Premier, it is true, had tendered his resignation in consequence, but it was refused—­and even had it been accepted, what was the retirement of a Minister as compared with the indignity put upon the world’s lawgivers who represented power and interests which were alike unlimited?  Angry telegrams were flashed over the wires from Paris to Warsaw and the Polish Premier was summoned to appear in Paris without delay.  He duly returned, but no new move was made.  The die was cast.

A noteworthy event in latter-day Polish history ensued upon that military victory over the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia.  The Ukrainian[183] Minister at Vienna was despatched to request the Poles to sign a unilateral treaty with them after the model of that which was arranged by the two Anglo-Saxon states in favor of France.  The proposal was that the Ukraine government would renounce all claims to eastern Galicia and place their troops under the supreme command of the Polish generalissimus, in return for which the Poles should undertake to protect the Ukrainians against all their enemies.  This draft agreement, while under consideration in Warsaw, was negatived by the Polish delegates in Paris, who saw no good reason why their people should bind themselves to fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine.  Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to Poland was Esthonia, but its advances were declined on similar grounds.  It is manifest, however, that in the new state system alliances are more in vogue than in the old, although they were to have been banished from it.