Poland also has its natural place in the European political system. The majority of Poles live in Russian Poland. Out of a total of over 20,000,000 Poles about 12,000,000 are found in the “governments” or administrative districts created by Russia in the sections of Poland within Russia’s boundaries. These districts are ten in number and adjoin each other. Geographically they form a unit--the westernmost appendage of the vast united Russian territory which aggregates between one-sixth or one-seventh of the total land surface of the world. Detachment of this Polish section from Russia and its creation into part of an autonomous Poland is practicable without serious loss to Russian unity. Slavic solidarity would in fact be consolidated if Poland were constituted a sovereign state. To Germany, however, an autonomous Poland which would encompass the million Poles living in the Kaiser’s empire implies abandonment of a territory which reaches far into the heart of the country. The Polish strip ends less than a hundred miles east of Berlin. The province of Posen, a considerable portion of Silesia, a narrow strip of West Prussia reaching the Baltic west of Danzig and the Masurian Lakes district are peopled by Poles. Furthermore, and this is of capital importance in German eyes, East Prussia which is German by language and tradition, as well as Prussian to the core, would become isolated from the main mass of the German-speaking people. It is improbable that such a cession of territory will take place as long as Germany has the power to prevent it. It need only be remembered that the first partition of Poland was engineered by Frederick the Great merely to join East Prussia to the rest of his kingdom. Against this last fact, however, the imperative necessity for an independent Poland to obtain an outlet on the Baltic will always prevail in anti-German circles. Nature therefore points to the existence of a real German menace to Polish autonomy. It is needless to minimize the significance of the points at issue. Prussia, the dominant state in the German nation, will never consent to the impairment of her territorial unity by the surrender of her Polish sections. On the other hand the reconstruction of Poland must be complete if the creation of a Balkanic state of affairs west of the Gulf of Danzig is to be avoided. A partial reunion of Polish-speaking groups under an autonomous government would be the prelude to irredentist questions. This however is precisely what an enlightened world is seeking to prevent.