Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/131

 being satisfied. She agreed to the Russian de- mands on the same condition.

On March 9, 1916, the Russian Foreign Minister instructed the Russian Ambassador at Paris to the following effect: "It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish Question should be ex- cluded from the subjects of international negotia- tion, and that all attempts to place Poland's fu- ture under the guarantee and control of the Powers should be prevented." Thus did the Rus- sian Government attempt secretly to lock the door against any chance of Poland regaining her lost national rights. The entry of Roumania in 1916 led to additional arrangements. These agree- ments were kept strictly secret and the millions who were laying down their lives in the war had no conception of this intricate web of bargains.

An effort to settle at a time when the Allies were united in their main aim in the furnace heat of the war, questions which might divide them when peace had come in sight, could be under- stood; and that such agreements should be kept secret during the war, might have been consid- ered a necessity. However, the necessity of war in this case was stretched to cover arrangements which in themselves went diametrically contrary to the publicly professed principles for which the