Yet, unless her great neighbors are prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility with no industry but Jew-baiting.

And when Poland finds that the seductive policy of France is pure rhodomontade and that there is no money in it whatever, nor glory either, she will fall, as promptly as possible, into the arms of somebody else.
The calculations of "diplomacy" lead us, therefore, nowhere.

Crazy dreams and childish intrigue in Russia and Poland and thereabouts are the favorite indulgence at present of those Englishmen and Frenchmen who seek excitement in its least innocent form, and believe, or at least behave as if foreign policy was of the same _genre_ as a cheap melodrama.
Let us turn, therefore, to something more solid.

The German Government has announced (October 30, 1919) its continued adhesion to a policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of Russia, "not only on principle, but because it believes that this policy is also justified from a practical point of view." Let us assume that at last we also adopt the same standpoint, if not on principle, at least from a practical point of view.

What are then the fundamental economic factors in the future relations of Central to Eastern Europe?
Before the war Western and Central Europe drew from Russia a substantial part of their imported cereals.