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provincialism, for international difficulties, and for meagre culture. One has but to imagine the Principality of Wales adopting the Welsh national tongue and discouraging the English tongue, to realise a part of the language difficulty. People think in terms of books and poems as much as in words and phrases. The loss to Esthonia and Latvia of Russian culture is as great as if Wales turned her back on English culture and lived for the Bards alone.

But in a smaller way, what a loss even from the pockets of shopkeepers when the commercial travellers from the next-door State cannot explain themselves!

The University of Dorpat is now a great factory of the Esthonian language, and is not of great use to Letts. But the latter, to remedy the defect, have started a factory of the Lettish language at the new University of Riga. To these universities one may add the new Lithuanian University at Kovno (Kaunas). Each new nation is proud of these national institutions. But in so far as they subordinate the great languages of Europe to local and obscure languages they represent a reactionary tendency in Europe. They also make for less local strength. Common language is the greatest bond of union: it ought

not to be overlooked in this part of the world where frontier lines are so faint.

The failure of the League of Nations to realise the Geneva Protocol is a warning of danger ahead in Eastern Europe. Law is to be handed to the strongest. The isolation of Germany grows more formal, less real from day to day. She is recouping her lost strength, and her technical development is remarkable. She inevitably reappears as arbiter of national destiny in the "mixed" regions. Germany at least has not in heart accepted the present map of Europe as the final scheme of things.

Germany has not accepted either the Dantzig situation or the Memel Putsch. She will soon be in a position to appear to forget the latter insult and use Lithuania as a pawn. To be a German pawn means to take a share in German commercial prosperity and then to be used for German political purposes.

On the other side of the line, we know that Russia is as little reconciled to the map. Why, then, in the face of such menace, such quarrels as that between Lithuania and Poland, why such incautious nationalism and petty flagwaving?

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LITHUANIA

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RUSSIA

Ukraine

So

Berditchev

XII

IN THE POLISH "KRESI "

(The Border Region of Soviet Russia)

ONE of the most remarkable phenomena in Poland during the time of my journey through the Kresi was the guerrilla warfare on her eastern frontier. A series of attacks upon towns, villages, country houses, passenger trains, police posts, have been made by armed bands of Bolshevists. Scarcely a week passes without an affray of some kind. At first it was thought to be merely banditry, but as

the whole border region, from the ex-Lithuanian territory in the north to Galicia in the south, is involved, it becomes evident that the raids are organised from internal points such as Minsk and Berditchef. Cartridges are distributed to the raiders at the frontier.

There have been a number of incidents capable of kindling war. Add to that, Poland has suffered intolerable diplomatic insults. Several of her representatives have been expelled from Moscow as spies; two members of the Re-evacuation Commission in Petrograd, Dr. Sochananewic and Engineer Stanislawski, have been publicly arrested by the G.P.U. and thrown, without reason, into a hideous prison, robbed, and eventually released without apology. Only humiliating answers have been given to Polish notes and expostulations. The Soviet Ambassador, Obolensky, having been withdrawn, the man who signed the warrant for the execution of the Tsar's family, Voikof, takes his place. The Polish police have discovered widespread Communistic organisations dependent on Moscow. Provisional Soviets have been found in the principal towns of the border regions. I asked many observers : How is it that Poland is taking this lying down?" I obtained the same answer from each. Poland begins to

feel that reliance upon France is not enough, especially in the changing atmosphere of Western European politics. Poland will now look more and more to the League of Nations as alone capable of guaranteeing her territory against her hostile neighbours.

Poland, therefore, for the time being, makes no counter-raids upon Soviet territory. By the terms of the Treaty of Riga she is not allowed to have troops within sixty kilometres of the frontier. The task of repelling the invaders has fallen to the armed police, of whom, horse and foot, there are a goodly number. It cannot be said, however, that the latter have much success; nearly all the Bolshevists get away. This is due to the fact that they have the advantage of attack, and possess machine-guns, hand-grenades, and abundance of ammunition.

The border region of Russia is called the Kresi, and is some hundreds of miles long. Ethnographically it belongs to Russia, historically possibly to Poland. The greater landowners are Polish, the lesser Russian. The Jews, of whom there are a large number, divide their sympathies. The administration of the country is entirely in Polish hands and is admittedly defective. The Poles themselves are beginning to realise that their

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