Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/46

Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

No. 50

Sirs: I have the honor to report that since writing my Dispatch No. 4639 I have seen Major Schelling, who had come down from Warsaw, and Mr. Hugh Gibson who has come here from Prague (both of them attached to the Food Commission). Neither had much to add on the subject of the fighting between the Poles and Czechs in Eastern Silesia. At last accounts this fighting was still going on. The Polish troops have been aided by a considerable number of volunteers from the mining population, but they are still being driven back. There seems little doubt that the stiffness of the resistance put up by them was not expected. Indeed Colonel Gillain told Mr. Gibson that the [Page 323] foreign officers had thought that the Poles would leave when ordered out. In view of the fact that this matter had been hanging fire about three weeks, as stated by the French Minister, it is easy to understand why the Czechs have been unwilling to permit the importation of arms and munitions from both Austria and Hungary into Poland for use against the Bolshevists. The fact of this refusal has been confirmed to me from several sources.

I inclose herewith a number of annexes.40 Number 1 is of course incorrect in several particulars, but I put it in as showing how the news was given to the public in the best known Vienna newspaper. I think the English Commission referred to in it was really some Americans under the orders of Mr. Creel.41

I have [etc.]

Archibald Cary Coolidge
  1. Ante, p. 317.
  2. None printed.
  3. Chairman of the Committee on Public Information.