Thus the difficulties and dangers with which new Poland will have to contend are redoubtable.  But she stands a good chance of overcoming them and reaching the goal where lies her one hope of playing a noteworthy part in reorganized Europe.  The indispensable condition of success is that the current of opinion and sentiment in the country shall buoy up reforming statesmen.  These must not only understand the requirements of the new epoch and be alive to the necessity of penetrating public opinion, but also possess the courage to place high social aims at the head of their life and career.  Statesmen of this temper are rare to-day, but Poland possesses at least one of them.  Her resources warrant the conviction which her chiefs firmly entertain that she may in a relatively near future acquire the economic leadership of eastern Europe, and in population, military strength, and area equal France.

Parenthetically it may be observed that the enthusiasm of the Poles for British institutions and for intimate relations with Great Britain has perceptibly cooled.

In the limitations to which she is now subjected, her more optimistic leaders discern the temporarily unavoidable condition of a beneficent process of working forward toward indefinite amelioration.  Their people’s faith, that may one day raise the country above the highest summit of its past historical development, if it does not reconcile them to the present, may nerve them to the effort which shall realize that high consummation in the future.

FOOTNOTES: 

[190] Most of my articles written during the last half of the war, and some during the armistice, were held back on grounds which were presumably patriotic.  I share with those who were instrumental in keeping them from the public the moral portion of the reward which consists in the assumption that some high purpose was served by the suppression.

[191] On April 26, 1917.

[192] Mainly White Russians.

[193] The Poles have universities in Cracow, Warsaw, Lvoff (Lemberg), Liublin, and will shortly open one in Posen.  One Polish statesman entertains a novel and useful idea which will probably be tested in the University of Posen.  Noticing that the greater the progress of technical knowledge the less is the advance made in the knowledge of men, which is perhaps the most pressing need of the new age, this statesman proposes to create a new type of university, where there would be two principal sections, one for the study of natural sciences and mathematics, and the other for the study of men, which would include biology, psychology, ethnography, sociology, philology, history, etc.

VIII

ITALY

Of all the problems submitted to the Conference, those raised by Italy’s demands may truly be said to have been among the easiest.  Whether placed in the light of the Fourteen Points or of the old system of the rights of the victors, they would fall into their places almost automatically.  But the peace criteria were identical with neither of those principles.  They consisted of several heterogeneous maxims which were invoked alternately, Mr. Wilson deciding which was applicable to the particular case under discussion.  And from his judgment there was no appeal.