Now Russia never had the opportunity of fully vindicating her good faith with regard to the proclamation, for while she was in a state of war, and must needs strain every nerve to the vigorous prosecution of that, it would have been unreasonable to expect her to devote energies to the accomplishment of her promise, and within a year her armies, as we have noticed, had retreated from the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia altogether, leaving the enemy in possession. But during that year the Russian Government, distrusting perhaps the effect of the Grand Duke’s proclamation, did not endorse it by any practical measure, but on the other hand preserved and pursued a policy which was distinctly anti-Polish. Notices on the railways and in other public places written in Polish were suppressed, and the Russian advance through Galicia was followed by the importation of civil servants from Russia to replace Poles. As a guarantee of good faith, the Government might at least have begun placing Poles in official positions hitherto held by Russians, but nothing of the sort was done. Up till August, 1915, when the Germans were at the gates of Warsaw, the Russian Government made no official announcement about Polish independence, nor did they take any practical steps to warrant sincerity. All that the Russian Government did with regard to the fulfilment of the Grand Duke’s proclamation during that period was to nominate a Russo-Polish Commission in May, 1915, with the object of elaborating a project of Polish autonomy. There were six Poles on this commission, including M. Dmowski and Count Wielopolski, and six Russian representatives under the Presidency of the Prime Minister Goremykin. They could not come to any agreement, and the Polish members thereupon drew up and presented to the Government their own proposals. These dealt with two points: (i) immediate changes in the administration of the Kingdom of Poland, (ii) a constitution for Poland which recognised her as a separate state, under the Russian sceptre. This project was never even considered by the Russian Government, and, as was only natural, the sincerity of the Grand Duke’s proclamation came to be seriously questioned. But it is most significant that at the moment of Germany’s advance into Poland, Goremykin, then Minister of the Interior in Russia, announced to the Duma the granting of autonomy to Poland. The object of this was perfectly clear: now, when the enemy was in possession, the Government at last confirmed the Grand Duke’s promises in order to prevent the Poles from embracing the cause of the Central Empires and furnishing recruits for their armies. The confirmation, in fact, of the original proclamation, unrealisable, since the German armies were in occupation, was made in the same spirit as the proclamation itself. We may then, I think, take it for granted that no independent Polish state, to include all the territories of ancient