In short, Poland, which obtained her unity by a miracle, is working in the most feverish manner to create her own ruin.  She has no finance, she has no administration, she has no credit.  She does not work, and yet consumes; she occupies new territories, and ruins the old ones.  Of the 31,000,000 inhabitants, as we have seen, 7 millions are Ukranians, 2.2 Russians, 2.1 Germans, and nearly half a million of other nationalities.  But among the eighteen or nineteen million Poles there are at least four million Jews—­Polish Jews, without doubt, but the greater portion do not love Poland, which has not known how to assimilate them.  The Treaty of Versailles has created the absurd position that to go from one part to the other of Germany it is necessary to traverse the Danzig corridor.  In other terms, Germany is cut in two parts, and to move in Prussia herself from Berlin to one of the oldest German cities, the home of Emanuel Kant, Konigsberg, it is necessary to traverse Polish territory.

So Poland separates the two most numerous people of Europe:  Russia and Germany.  The Biblical legend lets us suppose that the waters of the Red Sea opened to let the Chosen People pass:  but immediately afterwards the waters closed up again.  Is it possible to suppose that such an arbitrary arrangement as this will last for long?

If it has lasted as long as it has, it is because it was, at least from the part of one section of the Entente, not the road to peace, but because it was a method of crushing down Germany.

If a people had conditions for developing rapidly it was Czeko-Slovakia.  But also with the intention of hurting Germany and the German peoples, a Czeko-Slovak State was created which has also its own tremendous crisis of nationality.  A Czeko-Slovakia with a population of eight to nine million people represented a compact ethnical unity.  Instead, they have added five and a half million people of different nationalities, amongst whom about 4,000,000 Germans, with cities which are the most German in the world, as Pilsen, Karlsbad, Reichenberg, etc.  What is even more serious is that the 4,000,000 Germans are attached to Germany, and, having a superior culture and civilization, will never resign themselves to being placed under the Czeks.

Czeko-Slovakia had mineral riches, industrial concerns and solid agriculture, and a culture spread among the people—­all the conditions for rising rapidly.  All these advantages risk being annulled by the grave and useless insult to the Germans and Magyars.

Not only is the situation of Europe in every way uncertain, but there is a tendency in the groups of the victors on the Continent of Europe to increase the military budgets.  The relationships of trade are being restored only slowly; commerce is spoken of as an aim.  In Italy the dangers and perils of reopening trade with Germany have been seriously discussed; customs duties are raised every day; the industrial groups find easy propaganda for protection.  Any limitation of competition is a duty, whether it be the enemy of yesterday or the enemy of to-day, and so the greatest evils of protection are camouflaged under patriotism.