Poland, was ever for a moment contemplated by Russia, nor demanded by Polish Nationalists, and that, as far as practical steps can supply a criterion of motive, the proclamation of the Grand Duke was little more than a defensive measure against Polish disloyalty in the face of the enemy. Had there been any seriousness of purpose in the Russian Government of granting Poland the national rights so long promised her and so long withheld, some earnest of that purpose would have been given during the year when Russia was in a position to do so. Nothing of the sort was done, and it was not till Germany was in occupation that the independence of Poland was announced to the Duma, and then again no hint of any reality behind this can be ever so faintly detected, for when the Tsar summoned a conference in February, 1917, to discuss the constitution of Poland, it got no further than to debate whether the Polish National prayer might in special circumstances be recited in church! This weighty question was left, as far as I can ascertain, undecided. * * * * * In their retreat the Russian armies did their utmost, in obedience to the necessity of the military situation, to render the country a desert in front of the advance of the Central Powers. According to the report of a Dutch Relief Committee, 5,000 villages were destroyed, two million head of cattle and a million horses were requisitioned or died from want of fodder, and 400,000 workmen were out of work. The Russians cut down trees and dragged them across the fields where the crops stood high, thus helping to create the famine from which Poland still suffers; they dismantled industrial establishments, smashing up the machinery and carrying away such as they could transport into Russia, and in the midst of the desert they had made there were left more than a million Polish peasants homeless and absolutely destitute. Others, the more able-bodied, fled in front of the retreating army, and the country was stricken with the sufferings and the horrors that resulted from the _débâcle_ of the Russian armies. These acts of devastation were, no doubt, dictated by the military necessity, but it was no wonder that they produced the greatest bitterness in the minds of an indigent and starving population, to whom, less than a year before, independence had been promised and the dawn of the fulfilment of their national aspirations proclaimed. Those weeks of the retreat from Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland did more to embitter Polish feeling against Russia than decades of neglect and misrule. Instead of freedom, this military disaster gave them famine, and made a desert of the territory that had been promised liberty.