sion and argument. We have as yet insufficient perspective to judge of the fiction of the past decade which bears upon our subject. We suspect, however, that what the priest has gained as a responsible citizen of a democracy, he has lost in artistic presentation. Many recent clerical novels are nothing but polemics, in which the authors have contended for or against the ability of the Church to regenerate French society. The author with his panacea is haranguing in the foreground; the priest is relegated to the background. This from the standpoint of literary portrayal. Never has the priest been cast more upon his own resources than during the past few years since the termination of the Concordat. It is a life-anddeath struggle. Never was there more work to be done. A gigantic system is already in existence to minister to the spiritual needs of the nation. Is this system willing to attack its task in a new spirit, and join hands with lay agencies dedicated to the physical and moral needs of the people and to an amelioration of their material existence?

In criticizing a recent essay of Mr. Bodley, a French writer in The Athenæum speaks of the young idealists in France: "They fight against ignorance, pauperism, disease, drink, vice -against the forces that make for the stagnation or the degeneracy of the race. At no other time in France has so much good-will been engaged in this kind of work. At no other time have 'les œuvres' mustered so many private societies and organizations." What is to be the attitude of the clergy toward these new forces that are stirring the nation? Are they going to remain in their sacred enclosure, regretting the old days of favor, and inveighing against the republic, free-masonry, and modernism? Two thoughtful appreciations by devout laymen of the Church's opportunity will be found in Lettres d'un curé de campagne by Yves Le Querdec, and Le Curé de Ste. Agnès by the Marquise de Pontevès-Sabran. It is curious to find how analogous conditions provoke similar observations; compare: "le curé de Ste. Agnés pensa une fois de plus que la vie du clergé n'est pas assez mêlée à celle des Chrétiens dans la détresse morale et matérielle du temps" with this from the preface of Mr. Whitechurch's The Canon in Residence: "there is no doubt that, owing to their very posi

tion, the clergy of the Anglican church often fail to understand the ideas and impulses of the man in the street."

Another recent "curé de campagne" regrets "tout le temps perdu à écrire de beaux sermons à la Bourdaloue, qu'il eût éé mieux employer peutêtre à me pénétrer de la simplicité de l'Evangile pour la faire entendre aux simples parmi lesquels je suis envoyé Et combien je donnerais aussi pour avoir quelques connaissances de médecine, d'hygiène, d'art vétérinaire. Combien je serais heureux de me connaître en cultures, etc."

What a long road of evolution lies between such a programme and that of a Pére Aubry or of his belated successors! Here is plenty of work to do, and plenty to live for, in sooth. The situation is the same in France as it is elsewhere: marriage must be sanctified, the children educated in morality. and provided with healthful surroundings, temperance must be inculcated, the burdens of the unhappy and unfortunate must be lightened, justice established, class prejudices broken down, and all the time everywhere a response must be offered to the spiritual cravings of the human soul. Before such a programme, of whose pressing need all now are aware, Père Aubry and Abbé Birotteau would acknowledge they were incompetent; Julien Sorel, like some of his literary descendants, would renounce his sham and turn "défroqué". But some of the priests we have met would rejoice in this modern struggle with the sins of society, and would throw themselves into it with courage and aptitude.

In our search for the typical priest in French fiction we must be satisfied with a composite portrait. Starting the nineteenth century as a clearly detached figure, he starts the twentieth century almost lost among his multifarious duties and calls to service. Père Aubry, Julien Sorel, Fabre's Lucifer, Hugo's Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel, Abbé Daniel, Abbé Mouret, and these busy priests of our own day, offer the individual traits from which the reader must form his composite picture. Among the secular clergy the individuals we have seen differ greatly. But there can be no doubt of the prominence of the priest in the society and literature of France, and of the great opportunities that lie before him in the future.

1

The Question of Poland*

GEORGE MATTHEW DUTCHER

Professor of History in Wesleyan University

President Wilson in his address to the United States Senate on January 22, 1917, before Germany had proclaimed her unrestricted submarine warfare which forced the United States to enter the war, indicated what terms of peace would be regarded by the United States as justifying "its formal and solemn adherence to a League for Peace." In this address occurs the following: "I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own. . . . Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea."

More recently, in his address to Congress on January 8 of the present year, President Wilson included in his "program of the world's peace, the only possible program, as we see it," a demand that "an independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territory inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant."

Thus both as a neutral and as a belligerent, President Wilson officially and publicly committed the United States to the

The Political History of Poland. By E. H. Lewinski-Corwin. New York: Polish Book Importing Company, 1917, pp. xv, 628. $3.00. This work affords a more detailed account of Polish history than the volume by Miss Orvis reviewed It also contains a wealth of well selected illusin the QUARTERLY for April, 1917. trations and useful maps.

cause of "free Poland." In the press and on the platform, American opinion, with scarcely a hint of dissent, has approved both President Wilson's principles and their specific application to Poland. Yet many an American-many an American soldier in France, indeed-could not locate with tolerable accuracy this country which it is so important to set free. What is more, there is no American citizen sufficiently intelligent to formulate the president's principles into practical clauses of a peace treaty which would receive acquiescence-not to say hearty acceptance-by the peoples concerned, so difficult and conflicting are the interests involved. The problem, however, exists, and it must be solved. Obviously the first step is to discover the factors involved.

What test shall be applied to determine what constitutes Poland, linguistic, religio-cultural, economic-geographic, or historic? Each of these is a recognized test of nationality, and the more complete the combination of them, the more perfect the test. In the case of Italy, there is reasonably accurate coincidence of boundaries as determined by each of the four tests; in the case of Poland the application of any one of the tests is confronted with puzzling difficulties, and the attempt to cumulate the tests presents a seemingly insoluble problem. President Wilson recognized a difficulty which has been fundamental throughout Polish history and is notorious in the present situation, when he demanded a free outlet to the sea for the revived Polish state.

It might seem an obviously simple answer, to restore Poland as it existed prior to the first partition in 1772. That would truly restore an historic Poland and afford the required outlet to the sea, but it would trample upon the rights of two compact national groups, the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians or Ruthenians, both of which insist upon their national individuality, not to mention the noisier but thinly diffused German element. Then, law recognizes rights by prescription; many such have been established with such thoroughness since 1772 that the restoration of the ancient national limits would in many cases work new wrongs worse than the ancient ones it would right. Furthermore the bounds of 1772 were narrower than those of Poland's golden age; they did not afford satis

factory strategic, economic, geographic frontiers and they failed to include some groups of Polish speaking peoples.

If one turns to a fairly detailed physical map, he will find that the headwaters of three streams which flow into the Baltic, the Vistula, the Niemen, and the Düna, and of three rivers which flow into the Black sea, the Dneister, the Bug, and the Dneiper, form a closely intertwined network which indicates a close commuuity of interests for the people living in the bowl from which these six rivers flow, but which also marks a divergence of interests for the peoples living further down the courses of these efferent or centrifugal streams. This region is separated from central Europe by a line following the western watersheds of the Vistula and the Dneister, which through an important part of its course follows the great natural barrier of the Carpathians. In similar manner the region is marked off from Great Russia and eastern Europe by a line following the watersheds on the eastern banks of the Düna and the Dneiper. Within these bounds between the Baltic on the North and the Black Sea on the South, within the basins of these six rivers, is comprised a territory of geographic, economic, and strategic unity which is at the same time differentiated with reasonable clearness in the same respects from the regions to east or to west of it. Physically, then, this region, about the size of Texas, is a fit home for a nation, but the historic limits of Poland have never coincided with it, nor have they ever at some time included every part of the region.

Now, superimpose on the physical map a racial-linguistic map. It appears that near the western border of the region runs the line of eastward extension of German settlement; that near the eastern border runs the line of westward settlement of the Great Russian branch of the Slavs. Within the area will be found, however, not one race speaking one language, but a number of peoples of different racial antecedents speaking somewhat widely different tongues. The common factor is that they are small racial, linguistic groups lying between two great rival racial, linguistic groups marked by widely different cultures and histories. They must either bow in common submission to the strong hand of a single centralized autocracy, or they must join in a union of mutual respect and coöpera