POLAND, a republic of considerable size in eastern Europe, bounded on the west by the Oder and Warthe rivers, in the east by the Dnieper river, on the south by the Carpathian mountain range and the Dniester River, and in the north by the Dwina River, and its tributaries, and the Baltic Sea. At this writing the exact frontiers of new Poland, and hence its precise size are still in doubt, but approxi mately the country will contain some 250,000 square miles, with a population of, roundly, 26,000,000. The chief navigable river of this newly created Poland is, as was that of old Poland, the Vistula, and its main outlet on the sea is the splendid harbor of Danzig, on the Baltic. Ethnologically considered the popula tion of Poland is made up of six chief ele ments, these being Poles proper, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, White Russians, Jews and Ger mans. The Poles are a branch of the ancient Lekhs who dwelt on the borders of the Vistula as early as the 6th century, having settled there during that long Slavic migration when Slays of every kind spread as far south as the Balk ans and north as far as the Urals. There are indications that the forebears of the Poles, forming part of this great movement, were driven out by the Romans during the 3d and 4th centuries from their abodes along the Danube in Pannonia (now Hungary). Ethnically the Poles belong to. the western Slav group, but they have undergone a thorough mingling and mixing process, both in historic and pre historic times, and bear unmistakable marks of their multiform descent. They are slightly below the medium height, mostly blond, and of lengthened skull, with fair skin. In actual numl•ers the Polish race is not easy to com pute, but the nearest available approach to accuracy puts their number at about 15,000,000, viz.: In former Russian territory (census of 1912, being the most recent extant) 5,832,000 in °Russian Poland," and 1,594,000 in the nine western provinces (or °governments))) of Rus sia, together, 7,426,000; in Austria-Hungary, more specifically in Galicia, 3,171,400; and in Germany, 3,305,749—a total of 13,903,149; to which 1,707,640 must be added in the United States, and other countries. The Ruthenians (Russniaks, Ukrainians) form a branch of the Little Russians,)) the purest Slavic type in existence, much less affected by Mongolian ad mixture than the Russians proper. This branch of the great Ukrainian groups of Slays which has been under Polish domination for many centuries numbers about 4,500,000 all told, nearly altogether settled in Eastern Galicia. They are of medium height, rather slender, swarthy, with dark hair and brown eyes. Their tongue is simpler in construction and more eu phonious than Russian proper. The bulk of
them belong to the Uniate Greek Catholic faith, acknowledging, within certain limits, Papal au thority. The alphabet in use with them, how ever, is the Cyrillian, as with the Russians, and their priests must be married men. The Poles themselves are, quite overwhelmingly, devout Roman Catholics. Owing to their essentially pacific character and to the state of poverty and subjection in which they have been held by their Polish overlords, culturally the Ru thenians are decidedly inferior to the Poles. The Lithuanians, who number some 2,000,000 on formerly Russian soil and about 100,000 in a certain part of East Prussia, are a branch of the Letto-Lithuanian group, standing ethnically about midway between the White Russians and the Baltic races. They dwelt mainly in the former Russian provinces of Kovno, Grodno, Vilna and Suwalki. Their idiom approximates old Sanskrit more closely than does any other European tongue, as in sukil, I turn; dvismi, I hate; rank& hand, etc., and there is absolutely no similarity with Polish. Bodily the Lithuan ians are well-made, blond, of blue eyes, oval face, fair skin, and of medium height. The Letts are their closest of kin. Intellectually they are of fair ability. Their folklore and fairy tales are derived from vast antiquity and are quite distinct. The White Russians are the descendants of the ancient Slav tribes, the Dre govitchi and Krivitchi, and for centuries they formed a part of Lithuania, where, in fact, White Russian speech was used as the official language for a long space. Strictly speaking, White Russian is not a dialect of Russian proper but rather a form of Slavic independ ently developed, though most closely related to Great Russian. Those territories of White Russia now devolving to Poland number about 1,000,000 of White Russians among the popu lation as a whole. The Jewish strain among the population of Poland is estimated at an other 2,000,000, or slightly more or less, and belongs to the Eastern division of the Hebrew race. A large proportion of them are derived from those Jewish fugitives from Germany dur ing the early Middle Ages who fled from reli gious persecution and took the German idiom of those days with them to their new home on Polish soil, whence the Yiddish of to-day. In all the German element forming part of the recreated Poland of to-day numbers between three and four millions, but not all of it is purely German in race, some intermingling of Poles and Germans having gone on in the districts in question, especially since Polish territory had been appropriated by Prussia.