During the first two years of the World War Russian and Austrian Poland was a battle-ground for the German and Russian armies. The Socialist and Radical elements among the Poles, whose headquarters were in Galicia, did all they could to get Russian Poles to desert and fight for the Central Empires. After the Austro-German conquest of Russian Poland, the Poles were willing to throw in their lot with the Central Empires, provided Germany equally with Austria would consent to make the sacrifices necessary for the resurrection of the old Kingdom of Poland. But the Germans were unwilling to make any promises. After much parleying the independence of Russian Poland only was decreed on November 5, 1916. The Russian Poles were grateful to Germany for having freed them from the yoke of Russia, but they resisted the attempt of Germany to raise an army for use against the Entente Powers. During 1917 and 1918 resentment against Germany increased to the breaking-point, especially since the power of Russia was no longer to be feared. Germany became what Russia had been at the beginning of the war, and the victory of the Entente Powers, now that the alliance with Russia was terminated, became for all the Poles the hope of salvation. In November, 1918, General Pilsudski, a Lithuanian Pole, who had been a prominent Socialist leader, an officer in the Austrian army in the early part of the war, and the creator of the Polish Legion, was released from a German prison, where he had been placed in 1917. He returned to Warsaw and resumed the command of the Legion, which had secretly retained and developed its organization after Pilsudski’s arrest. Holding the military force, it was in Pilsudski’s power to constitute a government. He became the head of the state at the end of 1918, and had the good sense to consent to the appointment of Paderewski as premier, with the idea that the celebrated pianist, best known of all Poles in Europe and America, would be the ideal man to head the delegation to the Peace Conference. But at home Pilsudski was very frank in expressing his belief that after the peace negotiations were over only a Socialist Government, with a program of constructive democratic reform, could retain authority in the state. The country was facing a Bolshevist invasion, however, and the Paris negotiators needed united support. So internal politics was kept in the background until after the Treaty of Versailles and its supplementary treaty, resurrecting Poland, were signed.