Poland and France were bound by a political and military alliance, and a few days after Hitler’s demands were turned down, on 31 March 1939, Great Britain announced that it would provide military assistance to Poland in the event of armed conflict with Germany. A few days later, France also officially reaffirmed its obligations to Poland. Hitler reacted by breaking off the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact during a speech in the Reichstag on 28 April 1939. In response, the Polish minister of foreign affairs, Józef Beck, delivered a speech in the Sejm. Beck’s emotional statement was broadcast on the radio and made a staggering impression. Its final paragraph is considered one of the most important passages in the political speeches of twentieth-century Poland.

Germany’s demands and guarantees of Poland’s borders had no significance whatsoever. Plans of the attack on Poland were already advanced when these were put forward. Germany proceeded to invade Poland on 1 September 1939.

Work on a new constitution continued. Its authors modelled it in part on the French constitutional laws of 1875. Efforts were made to ensure that the Basic Law provided a broad spectrum of civic liberties. It was also supposed to provide wide-ranging rights to the national and ethnic minorities living in the Republic of Poland.

The constitution was adopted on 17 March 1921, three days before the decisive Upper Silesia plebiscite whose outcome was to determine whether this important industrial region would go to Poland or Germany.

The adoption the March Constitution set in motion the process of electing the state authorities. In the autumn of 1922, elections to the Sejm and Senate (the upper chamber of parliament, established in line with the new constitution) took place. In December 1922, the National Assembly (both of the parliamentary chambers together) elected the first president of the Republic of Poland.

The 1921 constitution was amended in 1926. After Józef Piłsudski’s May Coup, the Sejm devalued the position of the legislative power in favour of the executive. The amended constitution remained in force until 1935, when it was substituted with a new Basic Law. In 1944, the Stalinist-imposed communist government rescinded the constitution of April 1935 and nominally recognised the March Constitution as binding, even though its democratic principles were not respected. This state of affairs was maintained until 1947.

A special day for the Polish delegates turned out to be 29 January 1919, when Dmowski was summoned before the Council of Ten, the most important body at the conference, to present the concept of the Polish state borders. Dmowski, not satisfied with the way his words were translated by an official interpreter, improvised for several hours in English and French, which was welcomed with appreciation by the audience, including the Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Lloyd George. Dmowski referred to historical arguments, indicating the line from before the partitions as the Eastern Polish border and talking about the weakness of the state potential of Ukrainians and Lithuanians. In the case of the Western border, he referred to ethnic and statistical argumentation, showing where the Polish element dominated. His aim was to have large Poland that could compete with Germany.

Finally, the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, with the signatures of both Paderewski and Dmowski under it. The provisions of the conference did not fully correspond to the vision presented by the latter on 29 January that year, yet they are generally considered to be beneficial for Poland. The borders of the Republic of Poland established in Versailles included Greater Poland and Pomerelia. The national affiliation of Upper Silesia and the southern part of East Prussia, over which Poles and Germans argued, was to be decided in plebiscites. Gdańsk was declared a free city.

The meeting of the Council of Ten was not on record and Dmowski did not leave any notes from his speech, so we do not have the exact wording of his presentation. The most important source allowing to grasp the sense of words of the diplomat are the notes taken by the Secretary General of the conference Paul-Eugene Dutast, the most important fragments of which are presented below.

The election took place on January 26, 1919.

Although the Provisional People’s Government of the Polish Republic was formed by political colleagues of Józef Piłsudski, it did not win his support because of its party-character. Ignacy Daszyński therefore submitted his resignation to Józef Piłsudski on November 12, the day after Piłsudski had returned to Poland from Magdeburg.

On 11 November 1918, an armistice was signed on the Western Front, which virtually ended the war. Józef Piłsudski returned to Warsaw from a German prison a day earlier. Thanks to his unquestionable authority, most of the Polish pro-independence centres submitted to his will. Piłsudski took command of the emerging Polish Army on 11 November and seized civilian control on 14 November. The process of developing the structures of independent Poland began.

It was already on 16 November that Józef Piłsudski notified the most important authorities about the creation of an independent Polish State. It was an urgent matter because preparations for the peace conference ending the war had already begun. The presence of Polish State representatives at the conference was needed to ensure geographical solutions that would be beneficial for Poland.