These claims and others like them on Russian provinces called forth a protest from the Government at Petrograd and the most violent counterblast from the Lithuanian Nationalists, who declared that the Poles were their worst enemies. It is probable that Germany instigated those Imperialist demands, with the object not only of fomenting ill-feeling between Russia and Poland, in which it perfectly succeeded, but of giving the National Council something to occupy it, so as to distract it from its real business of drafting the Constitution. This succeeded also, and up till March, 1917, the Council, apart from starting schools for officers, seems to have accomplished nothing except to settle what the official seal of the new state was to be, and to approve of the establishment of a Committee of National Contribution, the first aim of which was to raise money for the Polish army. The parties for complete Polish independence, with the union of territories now belonging to Russia, Austria and Germany, though they were quite incapable of getting independence, grew in numbers and weight during this period. The cynical farce of Polish government, the recruiting of Poles for industrial work in Germany, and their forcible detention there, the measures introduced by Germany for compulsory work for Poles in Posen, the census ordered by Germany for all men in the occupied territories between the ages of 17 and 50, which the Poles construed into a foreshadowing of conscription, the continued refused of Germany to appoint a Regent, were rapidly bringing resentment to a head, and Germany, who had been so successful in inspiring Polish distrust of Russia, was diverting the main flow of suspicion against herself.