For Bohemia (the territory chiefly in question) has an extraordinary physical unity--greater than is possessed by any other country in Central Europe. This appears in its unusual river system, with its radial convergence of all the water courses towards the centre of the country; and not less in the mountain walls which guard the four sides of this natural citadel, especially the sides turned towards Germany. Were the political boundary to be removed from these mountains and carried down into the plain where the ethnographic frontier lies, this would mean exchanging a boundary that is excellent alike from the geographic, the economic, and the strategic standpoint for one that is quite the reverse. Finally, it may be said that German-speaking Bohemia would suffer if cut off from the rest of the country. It is one of the most highly industrialized territories of Central Europe, the chief manufacturing centre of the old Austrian empire; and as such it has always been dependent upon the Czech agricultural region for its food supply and, in large part, its laborers. Moreover, it needs the markets which Czecho-Slovakia can furnish it at home or can open up to it in the southeast. The natural economic ties are so strong that not a few German Bohemians have, since the Armistice, publicly declared that their future can lie only in union with the Czecho-Slovak state, and that union with Germany would mean ruin for them. And from the Czech point of view, it is clear that the new state would have entered on its career with an almost fatal handicap, had it been deprived of its chief industrial districts and its main supplies of coal and other minerals. Such were the reasons that led the Conference to depart rather widely in this case from its usual principles of boundary-making. The settlement seems to have been accepted by the parties most concerned without serious trouble and with far less friction than might have been expected. While some mistakes may have been made at the start, the Czechs have in general facilitated the transition by treating their old enemies in that generous, tactful, and sensible spirit which they have shown in most other matters, and which enables one to form very favorable auguries as to the future of their young republic. Leaving the boundary questions of Slovakia to be considered in connection with Hungarian problems, we now pass on to German Austria. * * * * *