e three States enjoyed a monopoly of
racial intolerance; for the ideas on nationality which dominated official
Russia under the old absolutist regime and which so rapidly regained the
upper hand under Stolypin and the triumphant bureaucracy, struck at the
very root of tolerance and political liberty. But recent years have
revealed a subtle change of attitude. The policy of Russification had not
been abandoned; indeed in Finland and the Ukraine it survived in its most
odious form. But it was none the less possible to detect a growing note
of interrogation even among the bureaucracy, and still more an increasing
movement of impatient protest on the part of thinking Russians. Without in
any way ignoring what has happened in Persia, we have every right to point
to the essential fact that Russia has of her own accord raised the question
of nationality and thus set in motion vast forces which are already shaking
Europe to its foundations. In proclaiming as one of her foremost aims the
restoration of Polish Unity, Russia did not, it is true, commit herself to
any concrete project of autonomy. But whether her action represents genuine
feeling on the part of the Tsar and his advisers, as M. Gabriel Hanotaux
so positively asserts, or whether it was originally a mere manoeuvre to
prevent the Polish question being raised against her, it is at least
certain that Russia has entered upon a new path from which it will be
very difficult if not impossible to recede. The Russian Poles, under the
leadership of M. Dmowski, have rallied loyally round the Tsar; and there
are many signs that the long-deferred Russo-Polish _rapprochement_ is at
length on the point of fulfillment. Here economic interests play their
part, for in recent years the district between Warsaw and Lodz has become
one of the chief industrial centres of the Russian Empire, and its
annexation to Austria or to Prussia would place a tariff wall between it
and the South Russian markets upon which it chiefly depends. The Poles
of Galicia, having enjoyed the utmost liberty under Austrian rule, have
naturally been almost immune from the discontent so noticeable among their
kinsmen in Russia and Prussia, and have indeed for a generation past formed
the backbone of all parliamentary majorities in the Austrian Reichsrat.
But even among them the first faint signs of Russophil feeling have
been noticeable in the last two years. This is partially due to the
encouragement given by the Aust