The northern and southern extremities of this frontier line are fairly straight. In the middle, from Raigrod to Litomerj, it runs due west, and bending round, continues for 390 miles to Myslowitz, along the southern and eastern frontiers of Germany, and thence for 213 miles along the northern frontiers of Austro-Hungary. It juts out into these States, forming our Warsaw Military District, important both by its position and its strategic significance. This area, formerly the kingdom of Poland, was joined to Russia by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. By holding this area we can envelop the southern frontier of Eastern Prussia and the northern frontier of Galicia. Operating from this theatre, we can cut off those provinces from their neighbours by advancing towards the Baltic Sea on the north, or the difficult Carpathian range on the south. On the other hand, the district is itself liable to be cut off by offensive movements from north and south, directed on the fortress of Brest-Litovsk. Its position, therefore, makes it of decided importance. Were we more ready for war than our neighbours, it might constitute a source of strength to us. If, on the other hand, Germany and Austria together are able to throw greater numbers into the field, and can concentrate more rapidly than we can, it will merely be a weak spot. The German frontier, 738 miles in length, follows no natural feature. Beyond it lies our nearest neighbour—a nation with whom we have been in close social and economic relationship ever since we got into touch with European life. At the present time (1900) five separate lines of railway connect different parts of Russia with Germany’s Baltic ports and with Berlin; our annual trade with her amounts to £32,200,000 (the average of the five years from 1893 to 1897), or, in other words, to 26·5 per cent. of all our foreign trade. The yearly exports (five-years average) amount to £16,400,000, or 25·1 per cent. of all our exports; the imports to £15,800,000 (28·6 per cent. of our imports). In 1897 alone our German exports totalled £17,520,000, and our imports £17,980,000. Thus the economic connection between the two countries is very close. Our interests are reciprocal, and, consequently, economic reasons alone necessitate a preservation on our part of the present friendly relations. But it is of no use disguising the fact that the part played by the German Government at the Berlin Congress gave us reason to change a policy which had always been favourable to Germany, and her entry into the Triple Alliance, which was directed against us, was the origin of our _rapprochement_ with France. The whole of the frontier is artificial, and quite exposed to invasion from either side. From the Baltic to Filippovo it acts as an ethnographical dividing-line between the Lithuanian races in the east and the Germans, German Lithuanians, and Poles on the west, and separates our Poles from the German Poles. Though there exists no