But neither these restrictions and prohibitions nor Bismarck’s declared policy directed against the destruction of Polish nationality have been able to render moribund the inherent vitality of this nation, or to extinguish the flame of its individual life. The Prussian Poles organized against the hostility of the Ostmarken Verein a system of defence for their land, their language, and their stability, and if we take for consideration a series of years, say from 1870 to 1900, we find that they developed national banking corporations in such perfection that they were declared by German economists to constitute an internal peril. Similarly in spite of legislation the land in Polish hands was larger at the end of that period than at the beginning, while, most significant of all, the population of Poles in Prussian Poland increased more rapidly than that of the nation that aimed at submerging them. The fact had already been disclosed by the German census of 1880, and by 1900 the percentage of Germans in Posen had decreased from being 45 per cent. of the whole population to 38 per cent. National consciousness and like force alike proved themselves superior to repressive legislation. Such in brief has been the hundred years’ history of that part of Poland which, with promises of liberty and autonomy, was assigned to Prussia. The policy of Mittel-Europa has striven (and has largely succeeded) in stripping it of its lands, its religion and its tongue, patching the rents with German fabric. It is not much to be wondered at that when in November 1916 the Central Empires proclaimed the independence of Russian Poland, which they still jointly occupy, its inhabitants put but little faith in the significance of the boon, for they were familiar with the interpretation placed by the Germans on the word independence. Their suspicions have been amply justified.