First of all, it is essential that the three races which, by reason of their geographical situation and their ethnographical characteristics are indispensable in any reconstitution of Central Europe based on the principle of nationalities, and who consequently have a leading part to play in the centre of the Pan-Germany of to-day, should be, one and all, absolutely convinced that the victory of the Entente will make certain their complete independence. The Poles have received this assurance on divers occasions, notably from President Wilson, and very recently from M. Ribot, commemorating in a dispatch to the Polish Congress at Moscow ‘the reconstitution of the independence and unity of all the Polish territories to the shores of the Baltic.’ But the 11,000,000 Jugo-Slavs and the 8,500,000 Czechs have not yet received from the leaders of the Entente sufficiently explicit and repeated assurances. There are two reasons why this is so. In the first place, the absolutely chimerical hope of separating Austria-Hungary from Germany has obsessed, down to a very recent date, certain exalted personages of the Entente, who, having never had an opportunity to study on the spot the latest developments in Austria, still believe in the old classic formula, ‘If Austria did not exist, we should have to create it.’ In the second place, certain other personages of the Entente incline to the belief that, in order to obtain a swift victory, the problem of Central Europe is a problem to be avoided. Now, as to this point, the few men who unquestionably know Austria well—for example, the Frenchmen Louis Léger, Ernest Denis, M. Haumant, Auguste Gauvain, and others, and the Englishmen, Sir Arthur Evans, Seton-Watson, Wickham Steed, and others—are unanimous in being as completely convinced as I myself am that the breaking-up of the monarchy of the Hapsburgs is indispensable to the establishment of a lasting peace—and furthermore, such a breaking-up as a result of the revolt of the oppressed peoples is one of the most powerful instruments in the hands of the Entente to bring the war to a victorious close.