NOTE.--According to the latest news, it is reported that the Central Powers have come to an agreement about Poland, by which certain districts (Dombrova, Kalisch, and perhaps the Narev territory) will be retained by Germany, who will also have complete control over Lithuania, Courland and the Ukraine. Austria will obtain the rest of Poland, which she will incorporate with Galicia. Probably nothing definite has been arrived at, but there clearly is in the air a compromise which grants the Austrian solution with the counter-weight that part of Poland shall be German. This will mean that the “independence” promised to Poland by the Central Empires will merely end in a fresh partition. The Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia will, according to this arrangement, be under Polish rule, in order, as suggested above, to keep up a permanent estrangement and hostility between them and the Poles. Should such an arrangement be confirmed, it will probably imply the appointment of the Arch-Duke Charles Stephen as Regent of that part of Poland which falls to the Austrian Crown. [Illustration: _Map I_ ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF POLAND] [Illustration: _Map II_ SOUTHERN EUROPE] FOOTNOTES: [1] “The Case of Bohemia,” by L. B. Nanier, p. 3. [2] M. Ribot’s pronouncement, less well-known than that of other spokesmen, of the aims of the Entente, was in answer to a message from the Polish Congress in Moscow, in August, 1917. In it he greeted the re-construction of Polish independence, and the re-uniting up to the shores of the Baltic Sea, under the sovereignty of the Polish State, of all the Polish lands. [3] The town of Kieff itself was not Polish in 1772. [4] Bismarck’s policy with regard to this continues to this day, for as late as 1917 there was a strong protest made by Germans in Posen against religion even being taught to Polish children in their native tongue. [5] These were Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, Vitebsk, Mohileff, Minsk, Volhynia, Podolia, and Kieff. [6] A typical instance of this is the way in which she treated the cloth industry. Cloth made in the country for consumption in the country had to be taken to Vienna, paying an import duty on the way, to be stamped there and taken back, after paying another duty, to Galicia. Production was thus rendered impossible, and the factories were closed. [7] In Russia similarly they have played Germany’s game, both by aiding and abetting the Bolsheviks while they were Germany’s tools, and by persistently making bad blood between the Poles there and the Russians. [8] According to the Constitution there should have been 55 members elected, but I have not been able to ascertain who the remaining three are. [9] These figures, however, include the populations of _all_ Lithuania, Minsk and Volhynia, which are slightly greater than those in the programme.