with the Polish frontier
problems, a second commission under M. Jules Cambon had to study the
report on the Polish Delimitation question, but although often
consulted, it was seldom listened to. Then there was a third commission,
which also did excellent work to very little purpose. Now all the
questions which formed the subjects of their inquiries might be
approached from various sides. There were historical frontiers,
ethnographical frontiers, political and strategical and linguistic
frontiers. And this does not exhaust the list. Among all these, then,
the commissioners had to choose their field of investigation as the
spirit moved them, without any guidance from the Supreme Council, which
presumably did not know what it wanted.

As an example of the Council's unmethodical procedure, and of its
slipshod way of tackling important work, the following brief sketch of a
discussion which was intended to be decisive and final, but ended in
mere waste of time, may be worth recording. The topic mooted was
disarmament. The Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries, feeling that they owed
it to their doctrines and their peoples to ease the military burdens of
the latter and lessen temptations to acts of violence, favored a measure
by which armaments should be reduced forthwith. The Italian delegates
had put forward the thesis, which was finally accepted, that if Austria,
for instance, was to be forbidden to keep more than a certain number of
troops under arms, the prohibition should be extended to all the states
of which Austria had been composed, and that in all these cases the
ratio between the population and the army should be identical.
Accordingly, the spokesmen of the various countries interested were
summoned to take cognizance of the decision and intimate their readiness
to conform to it.

M. Paderewski listened respectfully to the decree, and then remarked:
"According to the accounts received from the French military
authorities, Germany still has three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
in Silesia." "No," corrected M. Clemenceau, "only three hundred
thousand." "I accept the correction," replied the Polish Premier. "The
difference, however, is of no importance to my contention, which is that
according to the symptoms reported we Poles may have to fight the
Germans and to wage the conflict single-handed. As you know, we have
other military work on hand. I need only mention our strife with the
Bolsheviki. If we are deprived of ef