The early years of the twentieth century saw many changes in Ukraine both in Russia and Galicia. In Russia there were the high hopes at the time of the Revolution of 1905, when it seemed again as if with the abolition of the strict rules of the censorship there would be presented favorable conditions for work. Almost over night there sprang into existence new journals, new writers, new hopes. Then again the clouds descended and the reactionary regimes that followed tried to go back to the old days when Ukraine seemed non-existent. Between 1905 and 1910 many of the new journals again passed out of existence and the despairing may have thought that all hope was again lost. Yet much had been gained. The Ukrainians had learned to group themselves into political parties and other organizations. They had secured a larger nucleus of a reading public and that public could not be easily disintegrated again. The time was past when an imperial fiat abolishing the very name of Ukraine and wiping out the Sich could discourage and almost destroy the entire movement. So too in Galicia. The Ukrainian population there was becoming more self-conscious. The students were demanding more and more vigorously the introduction of Ukrainian courses in the University of Lviv. The contacts with the Russian Ukraine were growing stronger and that exchange of writers and published books which had been going on for nearly a half century was no longer a tender plant which could be shattered by the slightest blow. Then came the stirrings of the First World War and the final collapse of the two empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary. For a few months Ukraine was again free. The two republics of Great Ukraine and Western Ukraine came together with Professor Hrushevsky as the President of the Rada and there came a rapid flowering of the national culture. The work of the preceding century had borne fruit. Alas! It was only for a short time and then with the renewed division of the country, between the Soviet Union, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia, it seemed as if the hopes of all had died again. During all this period Oles continued his work, grouping together words of encouragement and lamentation, personal lyrics and poems with a definite social content which had a real meaning for his countrymen. His moods varied with the political conditions. They were strong and cheerful when the outlook was hopeful. They were sad and depressed in moments of adversity but he never lost hope and he never felt that his work in the service of social ideals bound the wings of his talent or interfered with the artistic value of his poems. When misfortune finally came to Ukraine, he withdrew to Galicia and then became one of that group which moved to Prague and from there he poured out his poems of despair, of the sadness of the emigré but always with the superb confidence that Ukraine would rise again and that her sons would some day be happy and free in their own land.