the German Empire, in which already there were incorporated 4,000,000 Poles. They therefore worked for a small weak Polish state, under the military and political control of Germany, the weakness of which would be accentuated by the large number of Jews, to whom they would give a separate national existence, and use as Germanizing agents. Thus the danger of a strengthened Polish influence within the empire would be avoided, and Polish nationality would be gradually crippled. As a counterblast, as mild as the remote bleating of a sheep, against any arrangement of the sort being made, the Duma, with unconscious humour, proposed a complete dismemberment of Germany, and reiterated the meaningless phrase about the re-union of Poland, over which Russia had no longer the smallest control. Poland, in fact, was being wooed by both the Central Empires, not so much, perhaps, as a desirable maiden, but as a fly that hovered between the webs of two spiders, and Austria, as a measure of enticement, ceded the district of Cholm back to Poland. But this scheme of uniting Galicia with Russian Poland, under a Habsburg regent was not, as we have seen, acceptable to Germany, particularly when Austria suggested that the Duchy of Posen should also become part of the new independent kingdom. There was a certain equity about the suggestion, for if Austria contributed Galicia, it was but reasonable that Germany should make some corresponding cession. But Germany was not on the look-out for equitable arrangements: she foresaw that it would be necessary to grant some sort of constitution to the occupied territory, and very likely to throw in the adjective ‘independent,’ but the independence that she designed connoted a dependence on herself, and as largely as possible a measure of independence with respect to Austria. She did not, either, look with any favour on Austria’s selection of a regent, for Austria had tentatively selected the Archduke Charles, who had married his two daughters to Polish nobles, namely, Prince Dominic Radziwill and Prince Czartoryski, and himself lived in Galicia, spoke Polish and was of strong Polish sympathies. So from time to time she threw out the name of a German candidate, suggesting, for instance, Prince Leopold of Bavaria and Prince Eitel Friedrich, the Kaiser’s second son. Once during the summer of 1916, Germany apparently made up her mind on a compromise, and settled to proclaim Prince Leopold as regent and to accept the rest of the Austrian solution with him as counter-weight, and the Chancellor went to Vienna to conclude matters, in the hope that Germany would be able to raise at least half a million men for her armies on the enthusiasm aroused by this proclamation. But the Emperor Franz Joseph roundly told him that such an arrangement would cause an insurrection in Poland, and Germany had to yield. In fact a German prince on the throne of Poland was as unacceptable to Austria as an Austrian prince to