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FTER a long absence from the field of battle-an interval of fiftyfour years the Polish standard, the white eagle on the red field, again appears on the battle line in the fight "for our liberty and yours." In the west, the Government of France has given its consent to the organization of an autonomous Polish Army; and in the east the Provisional Government of free Russia has followed suit. At last Poland takes her place in this war beside the allied powers as a nation fighting for her rights, for her independence, and for the reunion of all her territories in one Polish State in accordance with the military program of the Allies. She fights against the Central Powers, which, being today at war with the whole civilized world, are at the same time the sole oppressors of the Polish Nation.

In France the Poles had long worked to rouse the Government to the justice of consenting to the organization of a Polish Army; and on June 4, 1917, the following report, signed by the President of the Council of Ministers, (now the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Ribot,) and the Minister of War, (Paul Painlevé,) was submitted to the President of the French Republic:

The number of Poles already taking part in the struggle for the rights and liberty of peoples or capable of enrolling in the service of the cause of the Allies is sufficiently high to justify their union into one distinct corps. On the other hand, the intentions of the allied Governments, and in particular of the Russian Provisional Government, on the subject of the restoration of the Polish State could not be affirmed better than by permitting the Poles to fight everywhere under their national colors. Finally, we consider that France must hold it an honor to concur in the formation and development of a future Polish Army. The affinities that unite our two races and the affection the Poles have never ceased to testify to our country impose on us a moral obligation to participate in that touching and glorious mission. If you share this point of

view, we have the honor to ask you to affix your signature to the annexed decree.

Decree Creating Polish Army

The decree, which was signed by Raymond Poincaré, President of the French Republic, at Paris, on June 4, reads as follows:

Article 1. There is created in France, for the duration of the war, an autonomous Polish Army, placed under the orders of the French High Command and fighting under the Polish colors.

Art. 2. The raising and maintenance of the Polish Army are assured by the French Government.

Art. 3. The arrangements in force in the French Army concerning the organization, grades, administration, and military justice are applicable to the Polish Army.

Art. 4. The Polish Army shall be recruited (1) from among the Poles now serving in the French Army; (2) from among the Poles of other origin admitted to pass into the ranks of the Polish Army in France or to contract a voluntary engagement for the duration of the under the standard of the Polish Army.

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Art. 5. Further Ministerial instructions will regulate the application of the present decree.

Art. 6. The President of the Council of Ministers, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of War are charged, each in what concerns him, to the execution of the present decree, which shall be published in the Official Journal of the French Republic and inserted in the Bulletin des lois, (Bulletin of Laws.)

For the formation of this Polish Army the Minister of War immediately created a Franco-Polish Military Mission, under the leadership of General Louis Archinard. The Government has authorized all Poles, even those who are French citizens and are serving in the French Army, to enlist in this new force, and it is seeking agreements with the other allies under which all Poles serving in their armies will be enabled to join the Polish Army.*

*Working in the United States in the interests of the Polish Army in France has been

Basis of the French Decree

In order to understand the political basis of the French decree calling to life the Polish Army, it is worth while to quote a few words from the appeal of the well-known Polish publicist and novelist, Waclaw Gasiorowski, addressed to the French in his Polonia of Paris on May 12:

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The Polish question in the last months radical solution. There has claimed the independence of Poland and the reunion in one State of all her territories. Poland, free and independent, will rise again in the plenitude of her former might and power. And yet dissatisfaction again has seized the Poles. But, before your lips open to condemn us, before you turn away from us and from our importunate reclamations, before you fetch a sigh with pious commisseration because of " the want of moderation of which the Poles give proof," listen to us.

Yes, Poland will be unified and indenew census pendent; but, meanwhile, a of aliens has been decreed here in France; and we shall again be carried on the lists as Germans, Austrians, and Russians— nothing but that!

What, in short, do we Poles in the camp of the Allies desire? We desire that Poland may figure among the peoples that are fighting for the rights of man. We desire that the standard of the White Eagle should float beside the colors of those who have guaranteed us the liberation of our fatherland. We desire that our independence should be realized, that the unification of our territories should become an accomplished fact. We do not want to be impassive witnesses of this great struggle; we want to take part in it, we claim the rights that by just title belong to us as members of the Polish Nation.

Let our fatherland, invaded by the enemy, at length learn that without waiting for any international pacts, accords, and

a mission composed of Waclaw Gasiorowski, Prince Stanislaus Poniatowski, and others, and Henry Franklin Bouillon, who was recently called back to France to enter the new Cabinet of his friend Prime Minister Painlevé. The campaign to recruit Poles in this country for the Polish Army training in France has been indorsed by the United States War Department, according to a dispatch from Washington of Oct. 6. PolishAmericans subject to draft and those with dependents will not be accepted. Recruits will be trained at a camp already established by Polish interests near Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

treaties, the Polish colors are already flying under the protective wing of the Entente. Let it know that the work of the restoration of Poland has already been initiated; that we Poles have at length been recognized as well here, in France, as in America, in England, in Russia, and in Italy, as free citizens of free and unified Poland.

Upon the publication of the decree by President Poincaré for the formation of the Polish Army in France, the same writer said in the Polonia:

The days of our impotence have ended! The holiest longings of those who would fight for the independence, for the reunion of the fatherland torn to pieces, have been realized. The idea of a selfactive, national Polish Army in France has turned to fact. We greet this fact with tears of joy; we greet it as the recompense for our unwavering faith in the indissolubility of the ties of fraternity uniting Poland and France for ages; we greet it as the dawn of our resurrection to liberty, to power, to rebirth.

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The Polish Army in France will be an "autonomous army, or a national Polish Army. This army will stand under the Polish standard, will have the Polish command, Polish uniforms, Polish officers, and will take the oath to unified and independent Poland. This army will be created on democratic principles worthy of the traditions of our chief, the immortal Kosciusko, worthy of the republican land in which it has been conceived. The emblem of the White Eagle will shed its rays on all alike; it will respect the citizen in the soldier, and measure privileges by personal merit.

The Polish Army in France will be the symbol of our fatherland, one and inseparable forever. Like the sun, which dries up the puddles after the heavy shower of the night, so the Polish Army will absorb all that over which till now there has weighed the curse of vassalage, the subjection to different States, the wandering over the world, the misery of our people. The Polish Army in France will reunite in its ranks, in the first place, all those who here, in the west, are scattered in different regiments, divisions, and armies. These hosts will form a base; and about this kernel there will group itself an energetic, numerically large, morally powerful, nationally incorruptible force called to play a part of great reach in the history of our country. Such will be the Polish Army in France!

Polish Army in Russia

In Russia the principle of the independence of Poland necessitated the constitution of a Polish Army completely autonomous, commanded by Polish offi

cers, and fighting under the Polish national standard. In view of the proclamation by the Russian Provisional Government of an independent and unified Poland and of the appointment of the Liquidation Commission, which is to liquidate all the interests of Poland with Russia, the cause of a separate Polish Army in Russia and the exclusion of the Polish troops from the general Russian Army had to come by the very force of events. Almost immediately upon the proclamation to the Poles by the Provisional Government of free Russia a meeting of Polish soldiers in the Russian Army was held in Minsk, at which resolutions were adopted calling for the creation of an autonomous Polish Army. The idea of creating a Polish Army out of the Poles "dispersed in the sea of Russian troops" took root very quickly in the Polish community in Russia. Letters began to pour in numerously to the Polish papers in Russia from Polish officers and soldiers, and expression was given to this by all organizations of military Poles called to life in various parts of Russia by the example of the Polish Military Union, which arose in Moscow on April 11 and declared for the creation of a Polish Army. On June 13 a Congress of Delegates of Military Poles in session in Petrograd resolved, by an overwhelming majority, that the Government of free Russia should without delay proceed to the reunion of the military Poles scattered over the vast territories of the Russian State in a distinct military unit under Polish leaders and a Russian commander in chief.

The Russians themselves early accounted for the necessity of realizing this urgent problem; and the Congress of Delegates of Russian Workmen and Soldiers, held at Minsk, decided upon the formation of a Polish Army. At length, on July 17, the Russian Chief General Staff ordered that the Polish soldiers desiring to enter the Polish Army should be grouped in separate divisions and sent where the Polish Army is forming-the Government had permitted the Poles to create a distinct Polish Army with its own staff and under the supreme command of a Russian commander. Up to

the middle of July there had enlisted in this Polish Army 320,000 soldiers, and the number increased after the promulgation of the order of the General Staff of July 17.

Motives of the Movement

What motives governed the organizers of the Polish Army in Russia is shown by the organ of the Division of Polish Officers and Soldiers, the Polish Wiadomosci Wojskowe (Military Intelligence) of Kiov, when it says:

A united Poland the Central Powers will not give us voluntarily, because the restoration of the Grand Duchy of Posen, Silesia, and West Prussia is the overthrow of the Prussian State. It is a matter here of a struggle for life or death. The breed of Teutonic knights lording it over our land will not cede our liberty voluntarily. Therefore, we bind our hopes to the victory of the Entente, in whose triumph we believe sacredly. The Entente sets forth the standard of liberty and self-determination of nations, under which we stand as a people; and displaying the standard of an independent and unified Poland, it unites the whole Polish Nation, without regard to the cordons that at present separate us. For these two standards, the common and the Polish, raised by the Entente, we want to fight and will fight faithfully to our last drop of blood. Therefore, we recognize the Polish Army as the symbol of Polish Statehood and as an indispensable factor in the ranks of the Entente coalition in the conquest of the independence and unification of Poland, which is possible only after the abolition of Prussian militarism.

To Raise 500,000 Men

The cadres of the Polish Army in Russia are already complete, and all that remains is to exclude the Poles from the Russian Army. Of lack of trained material for the Polish Army there can be no complaint, for the Poles in the Russian Army have always been reckoned as numbering between 800,000 and 1,000,000. Competent persons affirm that the distinct Polish Army in Russia can reach 500,000 men. In the Russian Army there are a great many very capable Polish officers, but very few superior officers. The reason for this, says the Paris Polonia, is that twenty-five years ago there was promulgated a secret order that interdicted, save in excep

"Still the most reliable fortress for a country is a good and well-commanded army and a well-educated, brave, and intelligent population."-Viollet le Duc.

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NE great proved fact in the present war has been the uselessness of the formal fortress in the military result. Formal fortresses had been made important factors in the pre-war military calculations, because of the imaginary strength that had been assigned to them. In reality they were an empty threat. Yet this threat so influenced the plans of the German Great General Staff that the invasion of France was deliberately planned through neutral Belgium rather than through the French fortresses.*

The result was that the initial German superiority was frittered away in Belgium, and the surprise of the all-conquering Teutonic howitzer artillery was wasted on outlying fortresses. To this extent the French fortresses had an important tactical effect upon the military results of the war without firing a shot, but this was the end of their value in warfare. In the few short weeks before the battle of the Marne the uselessness of formal fortresses had become so selfevident that they were replaced by Petersburg intrenchments, and the lesson learned in four years of our civil war was at last grasped by European military experts.

The progress of the art of formal fortification is as interesting as the end of such fortresses has been dramatic and astounding. The formal fortress had its beginning in the primitive need to protect families and goods. From the first herding together in places easy of defense to the elaborated systems of European military science, the different phases of the formal fortress reflect the

"The Moltke of 1870," &c. CURRENT HISTORY, February, 1917.

conditions of the times as well as any landmarks in history.

Viollet le Duc's Great Work

A great master of the art of fortification has left a record of this progress of a formal fortress from its first primitive form to the typical fortress of his day. Viollet le Duc was a great architect of the Second Empire, and to this talent ho "added the highest qualifications of the military engineer.”** His book is now little known except to military students, but in his "Histoire d'une Forteresse " he has described with great vividness the growth of a French fortress from the first occupation of a stronghold in the tribal migrations.

For obvious military reasons Viollet le Duc did not select any definite fortress, but he described a typical site, and traced the development of a typical fortress of his day. This will be followed to his conclusion, (1875,) but his final proposed system of fortification is so like Verdun, the fortress most in the public mind in this war, that, in continuing the story of the fortress to its final stage the actual conditions at Verdun will be described.

In Figure 1 is shown the first refuge chosen by the tribal migration of a fairhaired Northern race in France, an elevated promontory on a river among wooded hills. The occupation of this place by the strangers was peaceful, and many of the inhabitants of the surrounding country joined them in their settlement; but, as these Gauls prospered, forays were made upon them and they were much harried and plundered. length the elders of the tribe ordered the Oppidum" built, as shown on the plan. This was a rampart of logs and earth with a parapet of stakes fixed by osier bands and pierced with loopholes. The

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**Bucknall.

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