To all these painful questions there is only one possible answer: Would not the Russian Political Conference admit that at the bottom of its proposition there shows itself all too clearly a point of view habitual to the old Tzarist régime, according to which the borderland peoples have no other right than to be the object of the dominant nation’s rights? But with such opinions, borrowed from the old Tzarist régime’s domestic habits or home-policy, it would simply not be safe to appear before the Peace Conference, which has proclaimed a just and happy future for all peoples, inaugurating a new era of international justice. Undoubtedly, the Russian Political Conference is cruelly deceived, both in regarding their proposition as “a practical way out of the present situation,” and even in thinking they have given “a real proof of the new spirit of Russia.” In point of fact, there is neither a new spirit nor a practical solution of the question. A DEFINITE AND IMMEDIATE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION OF LATVIA IS NECESSARY The question of the formation of a State for the Lettish people must be settled definitely and as soon as possible. The Lettish people can claim it as a right, for it finds itself in the first rank of the peoples who have suffered from the war. The interests of the other nations also require it, for they will feel the greater security the fewer undecided questions there are, the fewer centres of trouble and disorder. The definite solution can be arrived at in two ways: either by the reconstitution of Russia in her former boundaries, excluding perhaps Poland, which would find its ethnographic frontiers again, and that is the proposal of the Russian Political Conference, of M. A. Mandelstam, and other people and institutions pretending to represent the Russian people; or by the absolute recognition of the independence of the peoples which have separated themselves from Russia, and that is what their representatives are working for. THE RECONSTITUTION OF RUSSIA However, M. A. Mandelstam, the literary idealist of the Russian Political Conference, declares, in his _Memorandum on the Delimitation of the Rights of States and Nations_ (Paris, 1919), that the interests of the countries detached from Russia, their right to free development of their economic and intellectual culture, will be guaranteed and can only be guaranteed by their reunion with Russia. This reunion, he adds, is necessary not only in the interests of Russia, but also in the interests of these same countries. PROJECT OF AN ALL-RUSSIAN FEDERATION