In sanctioning the idea for which the rather new name of Czecho-Slovakia was adopted, the Peace Conference assuredly believed that it was satisfying the wishes of both peoples, and confirming the only arrangement capable of insuring peace in this peculiarly important danger zone. The main territorial problem that presented itself with respect to Czecho-Slovakia was whether the new state should, in its western, Cisleithan half, receive boundaries drawn to fit the ethnographic frontier, or whether it should obtain its historic boundaries--the boundaries of the old Czech kingdom, which included the whole of the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia. The problem was a grave one. The Germans formed 37% of the population of Bohemia; 28% in Moravia; 44% in Silesia. The three provinces contained a total of three and one half million Germans according to the last census. What was worse, these Germans are very largely gathered in compact masses, in a zone which wellnigh encircles the Czech-speaking territory, and which, on its outer side, was everywhere contiguous with Germany or German Austria. It would have been difficult to form this rather narrow ring of territory into an independent republic of German Bohemia, as some of its leading politicians demanded. Such a state would have been a politico-geographical monstrosity. But the peripheral territories might have been lopped off and handed over, in part to Germany, in part to German Austria, as the principle of nationality might seem to require. Moreover, it could not be forgotten that the Czechs and Germans of Bohemia were separated by centuries of struggles and animosities. Nowhere else in Austria had there been so bitter a conflict of nationalities in recent decades. In the mixed districts every village, one might almost say every house and every yard of ground, had been fought over. It had come to the point where Czechs and Germans could scarcely be brought to work in the same factory; where a small town might have to have two railroad stations--one for each race; where the propagandists of the rival nationalities competed in proselytizing even the inmates of the insane asylums. For the past ten years the Provincial Diet of Bohemia had been practically closed because of the violence of the race feud. Under such circumstances, could one think of including three and one half million Germans in the new Czech state? Not without hesitation, the Peace Conference decided to preserve the historic frontiers of the old kingdom of Bohemia. That decision has occasioned much criticism; and indeed, among the decisions of the Conference, there is scarcely any other instance where so large a number of people have been placed under the sovereignty of another race. Nevertheless, I think that there is much justification for this settlement.