The publication of this did not have the effect of calming public feeling, it only enshrined Pilsudski in the hearts of patriots. Then, since it did not serve its purpose, Germany resorted to directer measures of repression, and immediately afterwards she announced that the Polish auxiliary corps, instead of preserving the slightest appearance of independence, as the nucleus for a national force, should be placed under Austrian command. The effect of this was that the National Council resigned in a body. (ii) FURTHER “INDEPENDENCE” OF POLAND Chaos was now complete, and probably Germany intended that, for she was intending to “scrap” the constitution which she has proclaimed nearly a year before, since it had not produced for her that for which she had granted it, namely an army to fight her battles. In this year she had but succeeded in fusing the whole Polish population of the occupied territory into enmity against her, and since they now declared foes, she proceeded to treat them as such. She had openly become a tyrant over a conquered people: she had imprisoned the man who voiced national sentiment, she had tried to raise troops of another nation to fight for her, and now she proceeded to any sort of petty tyranny that suited her convenience. She demanded that German schools in Poland, the management of which had in April been entrusted to Poles, should now be directly controlled from Berlin, in spite of her having given matters dealing with education and justice into the care of the Council of State, she closed Polish schools and opened new German ones. All matters connected with education and administration of justice were, for the future, to be dictated by German military control, and she ordained that the Governor-General might demand re-examination of the legitimacy of decisions in law-courts (so that if an anti-German verdict was returned, it could be revised); she reserved also to the Governor-General the right of approval or reversal of any measures passed by the country’s representatives, in so far as they affected “war-conditions,” and again banished or imprisoned Polish students. Finally she directly threatened to annex such part of Poland as she needed for rectification of her frontier, leaving Austria to annex the remainder. The immediate effect of this would be to render all Poles liable to military service either with her or with Austria. As a protest against this which was a frank and open repartition of the Poland she had declared independent, the Austrian Polish Socialists, the peasant party and the National Democrats in the Reichsrat formed a _bloc_ to demand an independent Poland with access to the sea. Austria remonstrated with her partner, and together they settled to drop the final adjustment of Poland, at any rate till the end of the war, scrapped the declaration of November 5th, 1916, and proceeded to announce a new system of government. This was not done