But unanimous as was the opinion of the public regarding the justice of the Polish cause, among statesmen and politicians the idea was scarcely less general that from a practical standpoint that cause was hopeless. Lord Salisbury in a famous essay attempted to prove that the restoration of an independent Poland was “a mere chimera.” Guizot in his Memoirs demonstrated in his most magistral fashion that the difficulties in the way of the Polish patriots were incomparably greater than those that beset any other national movement: for here it was a question of liberating a people, not from one foreign oppressor, but from three, and those three the strongest military monarchies in Europe, permanently united by their common interest in keeping their victim enchained. No other power in Europe was strong enough to liberate Poland, and it was doubtful whether all the other powers together were strong enough to do so. At all events, the thing could not be done without a general war, involving the entire continent and upsetting the whole existing political system. And as time wore on, as one insurrection after another failed and one hope of foreign intervention after another proved delusive, the Poles themselves came to pin their faith chiefly to some such catastrophic solution. Sixty or seventy years before it came about, their poets began to prophesy a day of conflict such as the world had never yet seen, and in that day should Poland rise again and triumph. Mickiewicz, in that “Litany of the Polish Pilgrim” which is the most poignant expression both of the sufferings and of the undying hopes of his people, inserts the prayer: “For a universal war for the freedom of the nations, We beseech Thee, O Lord.” “The great far-off divine event,” thus dimly forecast, has been realized before our eyes. And however obdurate fate might hitherto have been to the Poles, it must be admitted that during the World War all things have worked together marvellously to serve the cause of Poland. By an irony of fortune, the Partitioning Powers themselves were the first to proclaim the principle of the restoration of Poland, although in half-hearted and ambiguous fashion. The Russian Revolution removed the great obstacle to an honest treatment of the Polish question by the Entente. Through President Wilson’s efforts, the principle of the restoration of a united and independent Poland was definitively and unequivocally inscribed among the war aims of the Allies; and the collapse of the Central Powers afforded the possibility of carrying out this principle with a completeness which two years ago few friends of Poland could have believed possible.