The White Eagle of Poland

Non-fiction ~ current affairs
First published in full in the second half of 1918
(First chapter previously published as Poland and Mittel-Europa, 1918)
Approx. 47,000 words

This book is available online here.

THE CRITICS

[...] E. F. Benson's The White Eagle of Poland [...] belongs with what may be termed the 'bulwarkist' school of international politics, the group whose most vociferous representative was the original unmasker of the Pan-German plot, M. Chéradame. Mr. Benson emphatically agrees that a 'strong' Poland is a most important link in the system encircling Germany. By criticizing some of the extreme imperialist demands of the National Democrats (today the Government party in Poland) he assumes a posture of fairness. The cloven hoof peeps out in his endorsement of the National Democrats' allegation that anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland is due to the Polish Jews' activities as agents of Germany.

~The Nation, 19/07/1919

Fred had not finished with the tangled affairs of Europe. After dealing with Germany and Turkey [in Deutschland über Allah / Crescent and Iron Cross] he turned to Poland and its nineteen political parties, all at loggerheads, and the involvement with them of Germany and Russia. He wandered miserably among the obstacles for weeks. Experts to whom he showed his first tentative drafts all disagreed, each turning the facts and arguments of the others upside down. Finally things began to be clear; facts were sorted out and confusions disentangled. He published Poland and Mittel-Europa in 1918, another brief tract. Then, as he had done with the Turkish book, he expanded his study and brought the story up to February 1918; his original tract became the first chapter of The White Eagle of Poland, which appeared later in the year.

~Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd in E. F. Benson As He Was, 1988