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208 Bulgarians are engirt by the other five peoples, and neither of them will be powerful for harm without Prussian support.

Let us count over these seven peoples. First we have the Poles, some 20 million of them, with the river Vistula for their arterial water-way, and the historic cities of Cracow and Warsaw. The Poles are a more generally civilised people than the Russians, even in that part of Poland which has been tied to Russia; in the Prussian province of Posen they have enjoyed the advantages of Kultur, without some of the debasement which Kultur brought to the master German. Undoubtedly there are strong currents of party among the Poles, but now that the Polish aristocracy of Galicia is no longer bribed to the support of the Hapsburg throne by leave to oppress the Ruthenia of East Galicia, at least one motive of party, one vested interest, should have disappeared.

By some means the new Poland must be given access to the Baltic Sea, not only because that is essential to her economic independence, but also because it is desirable to have Polish ships on the Baltic, which strategically is a closed sea of the Heartland, and, further, there must be a complete territorial buffer between Germany and Russia.