It is true, of course, that after making all such deductions, there will still remain in the provinces that have been or may be transferred to Poland, a much larger number of Germans than one would like to find there. But this is unavoidable. For centuries these territories have had a very mixed population. Old Poland opened her frontiers freely to German settlers, refraining from any effort to denationalize them, extending to them a tolerance, a liberality, a wide measure of local self-government which presents the most striking contrast to the treatment the Poles have received since the Germans have become the masters. As result of these earlier centuries, as well as of the work which the Prussian government has since carried on, the two races are everywhere intermingled. There are many German enclaves, towns and small districts of German majority embedded in the predominantly Polish areas. But how these ubiquitous German minorities and these isolated islands of German majority can be left to Germany without leaving a much larger number of Poles out of Poland, it is not easy to see. No large compact blocks of German population have been annexed to Poland. No territories have been awarded to Poland simply on the basis of historic rights. What the Peace Conference attempted to do was to disentangle two inextricably interlocked races, as far as that could be done; to define what might be considered--in spite of numerous German enclaves--the area of Polish majorities; and then to make the political boundary coincide with this ethnographic one, as far as was practicable. Since this ethnographic frontier presents an extraordinarily jagged and tortuous contour, some deviations from it had to be made in order to obtain a relatively straight and simple boundary; and naturally the effort was also made to avoid cutting railway lines too frequently. In spite of much that has been said, in the final delimitation of the frontier strategic interests were practically left out of consideration. But what was most characteristic of the desire to be completely fair to the Germans is the fact that two large areas of incontestably Polish majority were not transferred to Poland, as they might well have been according to the Fourteen Points. Since there was a possibility of doubt as to the wishes of their populations, their fate has been left to popular vote. The settlement is, on the whole, a pretty complicated one, too complicated perhaps. It deals in varying ways with six territories, each of which has its peculiarities and special problems, and each of which, for the sake of clearness, must be discussed separately.