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 CHAPTER XIV

THE RESURRECTION OF POLAND

I

HE English traveller on his way from London to Odessa, after crossing the dreary march of Brandenburg, reaches a vast and monotonous plain where three Empires meet, where Prussia ends, where Russia and Austria begin, a region inhabited by one of the most gifted races of Europe, whose sufferings are one of the tragedies of history, and whose future is one of the perplexing enigmas of international politics. That vast plain, of which no hill relieves the melancholy uniformity, is the once mighty Kingdom of Poland. It is true that neither the name of the country nor that of the people appears on any map of Europe, but then it is often the most important maps that are ignored by the cartographer. In this case it must be confessed in extenuation of the cartographer's omission that the boundaries of that Kingdom of Poland are arbitrary and indefinite. Few geographers will agree as to