The station platform of Frankfurt, strewn pellmell with Polish refugees and their disheveled possessions, recalled the halcyon days of Ellis Island. A “mixed” train of leisurely temperament wandered away at last toward the trunk line to the east which I had fortunately not taken that morning. Evidently one must get off the principal arteries of travel to hear one’s fellow-passengers express themselves frankly and freely. At any rate, there was far more open discussion of the question of the hour during that jolting thirty miles than I had ever heard in a day on sophisticated express trains. “The idea,” began an old man of sixty or more, apropos of nothing but the thought that had evidently been running through his head at sight of the fertile acres about us, “of expecting us to surrender this, one of the richest sections of the Fatherland, and to those improvident Poles of all people! They are an intelligent race—I have never been one of those who denied them intelligence. But they can never govern themselves; history has proved that over and over again. In my twenty-three years’ residence in Upper Silesia I have seen how the laborers’ houses have improved, how they have thrived and reached a far higher plane of culture under German rule. A Polish government would only bring them down to their natural depths again. They will never treat the working-man as fairly, as generously as we have. “But,” he continued, suddenly, with increased heat, “we will _not_ see the Fatherland torn to pieces by a band of wolfish, envious enemies. We will fight for our rights! We _cannot_ abandon our faithful fellow-countrymen, our genuine German brethren, to be driven from their homes or misruled by these wretched Poles. It would be unworthy of our German blood! There will be a _Bürgerkrieg_—a peasants’ war, with every man fighting for his own sacred possessions, before we will allow German territory to be taken from us. I will sacrifice my entire family rather than allow the Fatherland to be dismembered.” Our fellow-passengers listened to this tirade of testy old age with the curious apathy of hunger or indifference which seemed to have settled upon the nation. Now and then one or two of them nodded approval of the sentiments expressed; occasionally they threw in a few words of like tenor. But on the whole there was little evidence of an enthusiasm for rescuing their “genuine German brethren” that promised to go the length of serious personal sacrifice.