I

N spite of its vagueness, the Grand Duke Nicholas's proclamation justifies the most sanguine hopes. This has been recognized not only by all the Poles whom it has reached, those of Russian Poland, and the three million Polish refugees who live in America, but moreover, all the Allies have interpreted it as a genuine promise that Poland would be territorially and politically reconstructed.

What would it be right to include in a reconstructed Poland, if the great principle of nationality is to be respected?

First, such a Poland would naturally include all of the Russian Poland of today by that I mean all the districts where Poles are in a large majority. This forms a preliminary nucleus of 12,000,000 inhabitants, among whom are about 2,000,000 Jews. This great proportion of Jews is accounted for by the fact that Poland is in the zone where Jews are allowed to live in Russia.

Our new Poland would not comprise the ancient Lithuania-the districts of Wilno, Kovno, and Grodno-although Lithuania formerly was part of Poland and still has about one million Polish inhabitants who form the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Lithuania, which is really the region of the Niemen, is peopled by Letts, who have their own language, resembling neither Polish nor Russian, and they likewise hope to obtain some day a measure of autonomy in the Russian Empire, with the right to use their language in schools, churches, and civil proceedings. One thing is certain: they would

protest, and rightly, against actual incorporation into the new Poland.

The 125,000 square kilometers and 12,000,000 inhabitants of Russian Poland, lying around Warsaw, would constitute the nucleus of reconstructed Poland.

Must we add to this the 79,000 square kilometers and 8,000,000 inhabitants of Galicia, which was Austria's share in the spoils of old Poland? Certainly, so far as western Galicia around Cracow is concerned, for this is a wholly Polish region, the Poles there numbering 2,500,000.

As for eastern Galicia, of which the principal city is Lemberg, (Lvov in Polish,) the question is more delicate. Though Eastern Galicia has over 1,500,000 Poles and 600,000 Jews, most of the population is Ruthenian. Now these Ruthenians, who are natives, subjugated in former times by the conquering Poles, and who still own much of the big estates, are related to the "Little Russians," the southerners of Russia, and speak a dialect which is to Russian what Provençal is to French.

Besides, whereas the Poles are Catholics, the Ruthenians are Greek Orthodox Christians like the Russians, but differ from the latter in that they are connected with the Roman Church, and are thus schismatics in the eyes of the Russian priests.

Should these Ruthenians be annexed to Russia along with the 1,500,000 Poles and 500,000 Jews, among whom they have lived for centuries, they would scarcely look upon this as acceptable unless they were certain of having under Russian

rule at least equal political liberty and respect for their dialect and religion as they have under Austrian rule.

Should they be incorporated with the rest of Polish Galicia into the new Poland? It is hardly probable that they desire this, having enjoyed under Austria a considerable measure of autonomy as regards their language and schools. Would not the best solution be to make. of Eastern Galicia an autonomous province of the reconstructed Poland, guaranteeing to it its local privileges?

That leaves for consideration the portion of Poland now forming part of Prussia.

There can be no question as to what Ishould be done with the districts of Posen and Thorn. These are the parts of Poland stolen by Prussia, which the Prussians, a century and a quarter after the theft, have not succeeded in Germanizing.

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 Königsberg, 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 Königsberg remains Prussian and the Masurian Lakes region is added to Poland, why not leave to Ger many 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 Königsberg, 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 Czarliberator?

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?

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

There was a dense fog. At 6 A. M. fog usually covers the valleys of the Meurthe and Moselle. From the station I could see only a building across the road. A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the laisser-passer from the Quartier Général of the "First French Army," which controls all coming and going, all activity in that region. The gendarme demanded to know the hour when I proposed to leave. I told him. He said it would be necessary to have the permit "viséd for departure at the headquarters of the gendarmerie. He pointed to the hazy outlines of another building just distinguishable through the fog.

This was proof that the town contained buildings-not just a building. The place was not entirely destroyed, as I had supposed. I went down the main street from the station, the fog enveloping me. I had letters to the town officials, but it was too early in the morning to present them. I would first get my own impressions of the wreck and the ruin. But I could see nothing on either hand as I stumbled along in the mud. So I commented to myself that this was not as bad as some places I had seen. I thought of the substantial station and the buildings across the road-untouched by war. I compared Gerbéviller with places where there is not even a station-where not one simple house remains as the result of "the day when the Germans came."

The road was winding and steep, dipping down to the swift little stream that twists a turbulent passage through the town. The day was coming fast but the

fog remained white and impenetrable. After a few minutes I began to see dark shapes on either side of the road. Tall, thin, irregular shapes, some high, some low, but with outlines all softened, toned down by the banks of white vapor.

I started across the road to investigate and fell into a pile of jagged masonry on the sidewalk. Through tne nearness of the fog I could see tumbled piles of bricks. The shapes still remained-spectres that seemed to move in the light wind from the valley. An odor that was not of the freshness of the morning assailed me. I climbed across the walk. No wall of buildings barred my path, but I mounted higher on the piles of brick and stones. A heavy black shape was now at my left hand. I looked up and in the shadow there was no fog. I could see a crumbled swaying side wall of a house that was. The odor I noticed was that caused by fire. Sticking from the wall I could see the charred wood joists that once supported the floor of the second story. Higher, the lifting fog permitted me to see the waving boughs of a tree that hung over the house that was, outlined against a clear sky. At my feet, sticking out of the pile of bricks and stones, was the twisted iron fragments that was once the frame of a child's bed. I climbed out into the sunshine.

I was standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was profound. There was nothing there that lived, except a few fire-blacked trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls. Now I understood the meaning of the spectral shapes. They were nothing but the broken walls of the other houses that were. They were all that remained of nine-tenths of Gerbéviller.

I wandered along to where the street

turned abruptly. There the ground pitched more sharply to the little river. There stood an entire half of a house unscathed by fire; it was one of those unexplainable freaks that often occur in great catastrophes. Even the window glass was intact. Smoke was coming from the chimney. I went to the opposite side and there stood an old woman looking out toward the river, brooding over the ruin stretching below her.

"You are lucky," I said. "You still have your home."

She threw out her hands and turned a toothless countenance toward me. I judged her to be well over seventy. It wasn't her home, she explained. Her home was "là-bas "-pointing vaguely in the distance. She had lived there fifty years now it was burned. Her son's house for which he had saved thirty years to be able to call it his own, was also gone; but then her son was dead, so what did it matter? Yes, he was shot on the day the Germans came. He was ill, but they killed him. Oh, yes, she saw him killed. When the Germans went away she came to this house and built a fire in the stove. It was very cold.

And why were the houses burned? No; it was not the result of bombardment. Gerbéviller was not bombarded until after the houses were burned. They were burned by the Germans systematically. They went from house to house with their torches and oil and pitch. They did not explain why they burned the houses, but it was because they were angry.

The old woman paused a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked her to continue her story.

“You said because they were angry," I prompted. The smile broadened. Oh, yes, they were very angry, she explained. They did not even make the excuse that the villagers fired upon them. They were just angry through and through. And it was all because of those seventy-five French chasseurs who held the bridge. Some one called to her from the house. She hobbled to the door. "Anyone can tell you about the seventy-five chasseurs," she said, disappearing within.

I went on down the road and stood upon

the bridge over the swift little river. It was a narrow little bridge only wide enough for one wagon to pass. Two roads from the town converged there, the one over which I had passed and another which formed a letter "V" at the juncture with the bridge. Across the river only one road led away from the bridge and it ran straight up a hill, when it turned suddenly into the broad national highway to Lunéville about five miles

away.

One house remained standing almost at the entrance to the bridge, at the end nearest the town. Its roof was gone, and its walls bore the marks of hundreds of bullets, but it was inhabited by a little old man of fifty, who came out to talk with me. He was the village carpenter. His house was burned, so he had taken refuge in the little house at the bridge. During the time the Germans were there he had been a prisoner, but they forgot him the morning the French army arrived. Everybody was in such a hurry, he explained.

I asked him about the seventy-five chasseurs at the bridge. Ah, yes, we were then standing on the site of their barricade. He would tell me about it, for he had seen it all from his house half way up the hill.

The chasseurs were first posted across the river on the road to Lunéville, and when the Germans approached, early in the morning, they fell back to the bridge, which they had barricaded the night before. It was the only way into Gerbéviller, so the chasseurs determined to fight. They had torn up the street and thrown great earthworks across one end of the bridge. Additional barricades were thrown up on the two converging streets, part way up the hill, behind which they had mitrailleuses which could sweep the road at the other end of the bridge.

About a half mile to the south a narrow footbridge crossed the river, only wide enough for one man. It was a little rustic affair that ran through the grounds of the Château de Gerbéviller that faced the river only a few hundred yards below the main bridge. It was a very ancient château, built in the twelfth century and restored in the seventeenth

century. It was a royal château of the Bourbons. In it once lived the great François de Montmorency, Duc de Luxembourg and Marshal of France. Now it belonged to the Marquise de Lamberty, a cousin of the King of Spain.

I interrupted, for I wanted to hear about the chasseurs. I gave the little old man a cigarette. He seized it eagerly so eagerly that I also handed him a cigar. He just sort of fondled that cigar for a moment and then placed it in an inside pocket. It was a very cheap and very bad French cigar, for I was in a part of the country that has never heard of Havanas, but to the little old man it was something precious. "I will keep it for Sunday," he said.

I then got him back to the seventy-five chasseurs. It was just eight o'clock in the morning-a beautiful sunshiny morning-when the German column appeared around the bend in the road which we could see across the bridge, and which joined the highway from Lunéville. There were twelve thousand in that first column. One hundred and fifty thousand more came later. A band was playing "Deutschland über alles" and the men were singing. The closely packed front ranks of infantry broke into the goose step as they came in sight of the town. It was a wonderful sight; the sun glistened on their helmets; they marched as though on parade right down almost to the opposite end of the bridge.

Then came the command to halt. For a moment there was a complete silence. The Germans, only a couple of hundred yards from the barricade, seemed slowly to consider the situation. The Captain of the chasseurs, from a shelter behind the very little house that is still standing— and where his men up the two roads could see him-softly waved his hand.

Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack

crack-crack-crack-crack!

66

The bullets

from the mitrailleuses whistled across the bridge into the front ranks of the Deutchland über alles" singers, while the men behind the bridge barricade began a deadly rifle fire.

Have you ever heard a mitrailleuse? It is just like a telegraph instrument, with

its insistant clickety click-click-click, only it is a hundred times as loud. Indeed I have been told by French officers that it has sometimes been used as a telegraph instrument, so accurately can its operator reel out its hundred and sixty shots a minute.

On that morning at the Gerbéviller barricade, however, it went faster than the telegraph. These men on the converging roads just shifted their range slightly and poured bullets into the next ranks of infantry and so on back along the line, until Germans were dropping by the dozen at the sides of the little straight road. Then the column broke ranks wildly and fled back into the shelter of the road from Lunéville.

A half hour later a detachment of cavalry suddenly rounded the corner and charged straight for the barricade. The seventy-five were ready for them. Some of them got half way across the bridge and then tumbled into the river. Not one got back around the corner of the road to Lunéville.

There was another half hour of quiet, and then from the Lunéville road a battery of artillery got into action. Their range was bad, so far as any achievement against the seventy-five was concerned, so they turned their attention to the château, which they could easily see from their position across the river. The first shell struck the majestic tower of the building and shattered it. The next smashed the roof, the third hit the chapel -and so continued the bombardment until flames broke out to complete the destruction.

Of course the Germans could not know that the château was empty, that its owner was in Paris and both her sons fighting in the French Army. But they had secured the military advantage of demolishing one of the finest country houses in France, with its priceless tapestries, ancient marbles and heirlooms of the Bourbons. A howl of German glee was heard by the seventy-five chasseurs crouching behind their barricades. So pleased were the invaders with their achievement, that next they bravely swung out a battery into the road lead