North of the Posen district is Western Prussia, whose principal city is Dantzic; that too is a Polish district, stolen in 1772.  Since then Dantzic has been Germanized and there are numerous German officials and employes in the other towns of the region.  All the rural districts and a part of the towns, however, have remained Polish in spite of attempts to Germanize them as brutal as those applied to Posnania.  But, if united Poland should include Western Prussia, as she has the right to do—­there being no rule against what is right—­Eastern Prussia, including Koenigsberg, will be cut off from the rest of Germany.

Now, Eastern Prussia, with the exception of the southern part about the Masurian Lakes, which has remained Polish, has been German from early mediaeval times.  It is the home of the most reactionary junkers of all Prussia, a cradle of Prussian royalty and of the Hohenzollerns.  Despite our hatred for these birds of prey, could we wish that the new Poland should absorb these 2,000,000 genuine Germans?

If the region of Koenigsberg remains Prussian and the Masurian Lakes region is added to Poland, why not leave to Germany the strip of land along the coast, including Dantzic, in order that Eastern Prussia may thus be joined to Germany at one end?

Another question:  There is in Prussian Upper Silesia a district, that of Oppeln, rich in iron ore, which was severed in the Middle Ages from Poland, but which has remained mostly Polish and which adjoins Poland.  If the majority of Polish residents there demand it, would it not be well to join it once more to Poland, which would become, by this addition, contiguous to the Czechs of Bohemia?

To sum up: 

Without laying hands on the German district of Koenigsberg, united Poland, by absorbing all the territory at present held by Prussia, in which the majority of the inhabitants are Poles, will take from the latter 70,000 square kilometers and 5,700,000 inhabitants.  With these, the new Poland would have 24,000,000 inhabitants, including Eastern Galicia.

If Russia gave to this Poland in lieu of actual independence the most liberal autonomy and reconstructed a Polish kingdom under the suzerainty of the Czar—­a Poland with its Diet, language, schools and army—­would not the present war seem to us a genuine war of liberation and Nicholas II. a sort of Czar-liberator?

And if resuscitated Poland, taught by misfortune, compassionate toward the persecuted and proscribed because she herself has been persecuted and proscribed, should try to cure herself of her anti-Semitism, which has saddened her best friends in France, would not you say that she indeed deserved to be resuscitated from among the dead?

“With the Honors of War”

By Wythe Williams

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

It was just at the dawn of a March morning when I got off a train at Gerbeviller, the little “Martyr City” that hides its desolation as it hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges.