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 redeemed Little Russian land in East Galicia, in the Bukovina, and in north-eastern Hungary, though, again, its. autocracy managed to give to that claim a most unlovely form. To the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs Russia, the enemy of German rule in Austria, of Magyar dominion over Hungary and Croatia, and of Turkish empire in the Balkans, was the natural ally and protector. A free Russia is to them an infinitely dearer and truer friend than could be the old Russia, governed as it was by a German Court and by German feudal barons from the Baltic provinces. Yet, whatever German intrigue has managed to do against the Czechs and Jugoslavs in Petrograd (even during this war), Russia, under any form of government, remained to them the one Great Power with a Slav interest—their “big brother.” But the Poles had nothing to hope for from the pro-Germans at the old St. Petersburg, and even the just claims of nationality raised against Austria-Hungary for the Little Russian provinces ran counter to Polish Jingo-Imperialism in East Galicia. In recent years the position in East Galicia had become more complicated. The old Polish Uniate intrigue, taken up by the Austrian Government, had finally blossomed into an Ukrainian separatism of a most extreme type, which, when taken up by Berlin, led to an inextricable confusion of issues. East Galician politics became the happy hunting-ground of all the lowest intriguers, and their history during the last twenty years is almost equally discreditable to all parties concerned. There is good hope that the Russian Revolution will send fresh streams through these foul backwaters.

The Polish conflict with Berlin and St. Petersburg—both, until 1871, enemies of the Habsburgs; the feasibility of an arrangement between the Poles, the Germans and the Magyars within the Habsburg Monarchy; the fact that of the three partitioning Powers Austria alone was Roman Catholic: these three circumstances suggested at an early date to the Austrian Poles the idea of joining their interests to those of the Habsburgs, as against Prussia and Russia.

“In Your Majesty’s statement that he wishes to recognise and respect our nationality, we perceive the desire to put aside the treaties whereby Poland has been partitioned,” said Prince George Lubomirski, the spokesman of a Galician deputation to the Austrian Emperor in March, 1848. “Sire! If you care for the integrity of your throne and the well-being of your peoples, do not be too long in pronouncing