obvious natural boundary between us and Germany, the racial one has the same effect as a natural boundary. By a systematic policy Germany has succeeded in so Teutonizing the one Slav country of Eastern Prussia that it now constitutes one of the most loyal provinces of the House of Hohenzollern. The same policy, with less successful results, however, is being applied to Posen. On our side we are making great efforts to colonize the Warsaw Military District and the north-western countries bordering on Germany, so as to bind them closer to us. If we have not been so successful in our efforts as our neighbours, it is mainly due to the backward state of our civilization. Our vacillations, also, as to the best policy whereby to attain the desired result are responsible for the slow progress made. By the expenditure of vast sums of money, Germany has made ready in the most comprehensive sense to march rapidly across our borders with an army of 1,000,000 men. She has seventeen lines of railway (twenty-three tracks) leading to our frontiers, which would enable her to send to the front more than 500 troop-trains daily. She can concentrate the greater part of her armed forces (fourteen to sixteen army corps) on our frontier within a few days of the declaration of war; while, apart from this question of speedy mobilization, she has at her command far greater technical resources, such as light railways, artillery, ordnance, and engineering stores, particularly for telegraphs, mobile siege-parks, etc., than we have. She has also made most careful preparation for a determined defence of her own border provinces, especially those of Eastern Prussia. The first-class fortresses of Thorn, Königsberg, and Posen are improved yearly, entrenched camps are built at the most important junctions, and material lies ready stacked for the rapid semi-permanent fortification of field positions.