It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable.  I think the probability lies in the other direction.  This war of exhaustion may be going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of the too extended German lines.  The longer and bloodier the job is, the grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a recompense.  If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part of Belgium, there will be dealings.  If they wait until the French are in the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again.  There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink....

It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes really animated.  Here is the region of great decisions.  The natural map shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly from the Baltic to the Adriatic.  There are Poland, Bohemia (with her kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs.  In a second line come the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians.  And here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two allies, Russia and Italy.  Neither of these countries has expressed inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable quality of the Western line.  Except for the Tsar’s promise of autonomy to Poland, nothing has been promised.  On the Western line there are only two possibilities that I can see:  the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness and death of France.  On the Eastern line nothing is fated.  There seems to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be found.

Let us first consider the case for Poland.  The way to a reunited Poland seems to me a particularly difficult one.  The perplexity arises out of the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland is to reappear.  A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar.  Neither project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them.  Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers.  The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles.  The Cracow district is the only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments.