A REAL SLAVIC FREEDOM

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 137, 10 June 1918, Page 6

A REAL SLAVIC FREEDOM

Germany's treatment of the Polish question becomes understandable enough when it 'is remembered that a strong Poland is the greatest danger Prussiacan face, in some respects an even greater danger than Great Russia herself. A set of Slavic . States built on lines of mutual friction, mutual weakness, and dependence on Berlin and Vienna, would suit German policy well enough; but a really restored Poland would be a formidable competitor. Hence it can be taken for granted that Germany will not, save in the event of her own decisive defeat, tolerate the Ajlglo-French-Italian demand fov ''a united independent Polish State, with free access to tlio «a." Polish reunion, .to. bs complete,

means subtraction from Prussia and Austria, and it means the admittance to the Baltic littoral of "a people who would spoil Germany's plan to make the Baltic a Gorman lake. This is now so widely recognised that the Poles are under no illusion concerning Germany, and the American Poles have in fact already units of their own in France. If; among the Slavic peoples of Western Russia, there is one qualified to lead, it is the Poles; and the issue is whether they are to be fitted into a German-made framework ef Slavic impotence, or are to take up again their interrupted national career. Therefore the Anglo-French-Italian declaration concerning Poland is momentous. Not less important is the accompanying declaration endorsing the nationalist aims of the Austrian Slavs. What this means to the Dual Monarchy ■we have already pointed out.