But it is, I think, the general desire of the Poles to save as much of their ancient heritage as can legitimately be done. Most of them seem to feel that those eastern territories of the old republic in which Polish culture is still predominant, and in which there is no indigenous nationalist movement, ought to return to Poland. Many Poles hope that the Lithuanians and possibly even the Ukrainians can be won over to voluntarily accepting a federal union with Poland. Doubtless this federal idea lies behind the demand recently presented to the Bolsheviki by the Polish government: the demand that Soviet Russia should renounce its claim to all territories west of the old Polish frontiers of 1772. Ever since 1863, at least, it has been a favorite thesis of Polish democrats and even Socialists that the only way to effect a solution of the problem of the debatable eastern territories, in accordance both with outraged legality and with the principle of national self-determination, is to force Russia to renounce what she usurped at the time of the Partitions, and then to leave the liberated populations free either to renew their historic federal union with Poland or to make any other political arrangements that they choose. There is no need to pass judgment here upon the justice or expediency of such ideas. But they cannot be ignored; and it certainly does not advance us toward a solution of these questions, nor is it a sign of insight or fair-mindedness, to brand these ideas as due simply to ‘Polish imperialism’ or ‘chauvinism’ or ‘megalomania,’ as our Liberal journals are fond of doing; or to castigate the Poles for claiming a single mile of territory outside the area where--according to the statistics prepared by governments hostile to them--there is demonstrably a Polish-speaking majority. No nation with a thousand years of history behind it could be expected to rise to such heights of self-abnegation. The wide dispersion of the Polish race, the divergence between what is ethnically Polish today and what was historically, and still is in part culturally, Polish; the lack of adequate data as to the ethnic makeup and political gravitation of so many of the border populations; the lack of clear-cut, natural frontiers--such are some of the difficulties in the way of defining Poland’s proper boundaries. * * * * *