Part II deals with the internal conditions of the Russian Kingdom of

Poland from the outbreak of the war in August, 1914, down to (roughly) the end of February, 1918, and is mainly based on such information as has reached England from Polish, German, Austrian and Russian sources. Accounts of the happenings there since the country has been occupied by the enemy are sometimes conflicting, for information derived from Polish sources does not invariably tally with the German or Austrian view of a question, but, as a rule, subsequent news has disentangled the truth.

These sections and those dealing with the various proposed “solutions” of the Polish question as set forth by the occupying powers, will, it is feared, be found difficult to follow, and while craving indulgence for any failure to present the case lucidly, the writer ventures to remind his readers that, where a question is in itself complicated, no lucidity of treatment can make it easy of comprehension. All he has hoped to avoid is confusion.

Statistics with regard to the populations of Poland, Lithuania, etc., are, since the country has been in the enemy’s hands, difficult to verify, and in most cases the figures given are pre-war figures, which must be taken as being only approximately true.

Two maps will be found at the end of the book. By consulting the first of these the reader will realize the extent of the ancient republic of Poland before the partitions, and the nationalities of which it was composed: the second represents Poland as it was in 1914, when shared up between Germany, Austria and Russia.

Finally my best thanks are due to the officials of various Government departments and to the representatives of the Polish National Committee in London and Paris for the information with which they have so generously furnished me. Without that it would have been impossible to present, however faintly, the main lines of what is perhaps the most intricate problem that will arise when the Powers of the Entente are at length completely victorious over the Central Empires.

E. F. BENSON.

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