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Working under the chief of the general staff, there is a higher military college, a higher intendance college (military administration) and institutes of military geography and of military publications. Central institutions and military schools are under the area commanders except for use of material and technical training. One of the line companies of every infan try battalion forms a regimental non-commissioned officers school and there is also a central cadet school used for the training of non-commissioned officers. Besides the above-mentioned cadet schools to provide officers for all arms of the service, there is a central musketry school and training centres for cavalry, artillery, engineers, railway engineers, and signallers, to provide for ad vanced training and specialization. There is also a tank and motor school and a gendarmerie school. For higher training of senior officers there is the "centre of higher military studies," the "higher school of military science," and the "higher intendance school" mentioned above. Under French influence, the system of military education in Poland is thorough. A French military mis sion is maintained.
The existence of a tank battalion should be noted, also the proportion of heavy machine-gun units in the infantry and cavalry, and of automatic rifle squadrons with cavalry divisions, anti-aircraft regiments of artillery also have heavy machine-gun companies. Training doctrine follows the French lines. The air service uses lighter than air, as well as heavier than air ma chines (see below).
The army air force is administered by the air department of one of the under secretaries of State in the war ministry, and the necessary material is provided by the central establishments. There is a cadet school to supply officers for the air force, which is organized in 6 air regiments, a naval aviation group, a balloon battalion, a meteorological company, and an air service group. An air regiment contains a signal platoon, a photography platoon, an air-park, training squadron, and either 2 or 3 groups, each of 2 squadrons of aeroplanes. A balloon battalion contains a signal platoon, photographic section, balloon park, 4 balloon companies, and a specialists company. The air service group is organized in 3 companies and a school com pany. The cost of military aviation which stood at 22,441,000 zlotys in 1926, was reduced to 13,633,000 in the estimates for 1927-28.
also League of Nations Armaments Year-hook (Geneva 1928). (G. G. A.) Navy.—Poland has no navy proper but maintains 12 small gunboats on the Vistula. There are two sea-going gunboats, four minesweepers and six torpedo-boats for police service. Two destroyers and three submarines are under construction. (X.) We possess no certain historical data relating to Poland till the end of the loth century. The earliest Polish chroniclers are of little help to us. The only facts of importance to be gleaned from them are that Prince Ziemovit, the great-grandfather of Mieszko (Mieczyslaw) I. (962-992), wrested from the vast but tottering Moravian empire the province of Chrobacyja (extending from the Carpathians to the Bug), and that Christianity was first preached on the Vistula by Greek Orthodox missionary monks. Mieszko himself was converted by Jordan, the chaplain of his Bohemian consort, Dobrawa or Bona, who became the first bishop of Posen. The Slavonic peoples, whose territories then extended to the Elbe, and embraced the whole southern shore of the Baltic, were begin ning to recoil before the vigorous impetus of the Germans in the West and the acceptance of Christianity might give them a respite from further attack. This was thoroughly understood by
Mieszko's son Boleslaus I. (992-1025), who aimed at securing the independence of the Polish Church as an additional guarantee of the independence of the Polish nation, and elevated the church at Gnesen in Great Poland into a metropolitan see, with juris diction over the new bishoprics of Cracow, Breslau and Kolberg, created in territory which he had recently conquered. Boleslaus was the first Polish prince to bear the royal title, and his reign resulted in the formation of a vast kingdom extending from the Baltic to the Carpathians, and from the Elbe to the Bug. In the next generation much of the territory which he had won was lost, and Poland itself was ravaged by neighbouring enemies, but under Boleslaus II. (1058-79) and Boleslaus III. (1102-39) some of the lost provinces, notably Silesia and Pomerania, were recovered and Poland was at least able to maintain her independence against the Germans. Boleslaus III., moreover, with the aid of St. Otto, bishop of Bamberg, succeeded in converting the heathen Pome ranians (1124-28), and making head against paganism generally.
The last act of Boleslaus III. was to divide his territories among his sons, whereby Poland was partitioned into no fewer than four, and ultimately into as many as eight, principalities, many of which (Silesia and Great Poland, for instance) in process of time split up into still smaller fractions all of them more or less bitterly hostile to each other. This partitional period, as Polish historians generally call it, lasted from 1138 to 1305, during which Poland lost all political sig nificance, and became an easy prey to her neighbours. The duke of Little Poland, who generally styled himself duke of Poland, or dux totius Poloniae, claimed a sort of supremacy among these little States, a claim materially strengthened by the wealth and growing importance of his capital, Cracow, especially after Little Poland had annexed the central principality of Sieradia (Sieradz). But Masovia to the north, and Great Poland to the north-west, refused to recognize the supremacy of Little Poland, while Silesia soon became completely germanized and Pomerania broke away from the Polish suzerainty. Towards the middle of the 13th cen tury a horde of Tatars under their prince Batu invaded Poland, burned Sandomir and Cracow, defeated the Silesian princes at Leignitz, and finally entered Hungary, where they routed King Bela IV. on the banks of the Sajo. This invasion had an important influence upon the social and political development of Poland. The only way of filling up the gaps in the population of the ravaged land was to invite foreign immigrants of a superior class, chapmen and handicraftsmen, not only given to peaceful pursuits and accustomed to law and order, but capable of building and defending strong cities. Such immigrants could naturally be ob tained only from the civilized west, and on their own terms. Thus it came about that a new Germanic middle class element was introduced into Polish society. Immediately dependent upon the prince, from whom they obtained their privileges, the most important of which were self-government and freedom from taxa tion, these traders soon became an important factor in the State, counterpoising, to some extent, the influence of the nobility and developing the resources of the country.