January 10, 1919

If bitter experience had not taught me the danger of sweeping statements, I would say that the Ukrainian problem is the most complicated of the many with which the Conference is confronted. Happily for them, at least, few of the delegates know it. There are probably forty-five million of these vigorous and interesting people, all hitherto held in leash (indeed often under the lash) by half a dozen alien rulers, and today unhappily they are divided in their allegiance to about the same number of ideologies. The Great Russians, who also claim to be Herrenvolk, are inclined to despise them as an inferior category of the Slav family and also maintain that the Ukrainian language, they call it a patois, is simply a degenerate Russian gone to seed.

Nothing so infuriates the Ukrainians as this slur upon their speech; they answer it by bursting into song, generally the ballads of Shevchenko, with which my office has often resounded during the past weeks. “We are the free men of the border,” they sing. “Our home is on the rolling steppes. We preferred liberty and struggle to tyranny in relative comfort. We are the men who stem from those who fled the slave-driving practices of the Polish and the Lithuanian landowners. Bringing with us only our democratic ideals we founded the state of the Free Cossacks, and soon our rich lands extended from the Vistula to the Black Sea. We are here to demand their return and our right to live as free men.”

As to the authenticity of their language I maintain an attitude of strict neutrality, but there can be no question as to the richness of the lands they have acquired. In these starving, freezing days in southeastern Europe, indeed in all Europe, their grain fields, their oil wells, and perhaps above all their coal mines in the Donetz Basin have become very important factors in a desperate situation. In 1917, when the blockade was bringing the Germans to their knees, the fertility of the Ukraine “and the fatness thereof” seemed a plank of salvation to Berlin. Today, when all Europe is cold and hungry, unfortunately for the Ukrainians their possessions have assumed even greater importance.

Whether they are Ukrainians or Ruthenians or Carpatho-Russians, they all have broad flat faces, high cheekbones, and snub noses which probably reveal their Mongolian origin. Physically alike they are widely separated by their political experiences. Yet all of them dream of a greater Ukrainia with the fragments and the segments of their race joined together in one happy family—those who have been held down by Austria, or oppressed by the Magyars, by Russia, and even by little Rumania, brought happily together in one independent glorious state. But, and what a but it is, as to how this noble ideal is to be achieved and under what auspices, the good Ukrainians are as wide apart as the poles. The members of the American-Ukrainian committee who through political experiences in our country have learnt the wisdom of compromise often intervene with words of conciliation, but it is far from certain that these common-sense views will prevail. I confess I shall be surprised if they do. The Free Cossacks of the steppes place a higher value on the money contributions of the Ukrainians from Pennsylvania than they do upon their advice.

Here is the baffling situation, as it appears to me: All the neighbors covet the Ukrainian lands, and I fear that is not surprising. What is surprising is the fact that even after the terrible experiences which all the Ukrainians have experienced nothing even approaching unity of purpose has evolved. When you talk to them about self-determination and the right of all peoples to govern themselves, they are in perfect agreement. But when you suggest putting into practice these wise precepts, they rear and break away in a dozen different directions like Mazeppa’s wild horses of the plains.

This want of harmony opens the way for the specious promises of covetous neighbors. The Russians say blood is thicker than water; the Poles say, “Come with us and we will confer upon you our world culture.” Even the Germans have the audacity to say, “Without us you will not have law and order, there will be no peace, and no man or woman either can hope to live in peace and tranquility.”

Of course, there are also conflicts of ideologies and of contrasting experiences at the hands of more powerful neighbors. At moments my visitors admit, “Russia must have our Black Sea ports of Odessa and Kherson, or cease to be a great power. Germany will have to have the oil fields, and all Mittel-Europa will starve without our grain.” Sometimes I conclude that these people would be happier, much happier, if the land of their hard-riding forefathers was what my Virginia soldier in Vienna called Austria—“A porefolksy land.”