During 1917 the Poles were in a position entirely different from that of the Yugoslavs and Czechoslovaks. The declaration of the Central powers on 5 November 1916, of the creation of an independent kingdom of Poland internationalized the Polish problem by altering the territorial settlement of the Congress of Vienna. This act escalated the competition among the belligerents for Polish support and focused that competition, hitherto restricted to the Polish community in America, on Poland itself. The Russian government might still refuse to recognize that Poland was an international problem, but it could not overlook the military significance of this declaration.

Before November 1916 the British government considered the Polish problem primarily as an aspect of Anglo-American relations. The foreign office had avoided involvement in Polish affairs in Europe, but had sought the support and the assistance of the Polish-American community. Anglo-Polish relations, insofar as they existed, developed within the context of the political warfare in the United States but divorced from the Polish problem in Europe. That problem remained frozen as long as the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian governments maintained the Polish settlement by treating it as an internal problem and avoiding any action which would constitute internationalization. The political warfare which made the Polish issue important in Anglo-American relations continued after 1916, but ceased to supply the context in which Anglo-Polish relations developed.