Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1919 — Size of Poland [ARTICLE]

Size of Poland

Ranks as Fifth European Nation

Notwithstanding the fact tharin the war nearly 3,000,000 Polish-speaking soldiers were forced into fratricidal combat, driven into battle by German and Austrian and Russian conscriptions, to fight their cousins and brothers, many persons seem to believe Poland a small tiatfon. writes Frederick Moore In World’s Work. They Torget the magnitude of its historic domain and the numbers of its people. The kingdom of Boleslaus the Great (992-1025) stretched from the Baltic sea to the Carpathians. It included part of Saxony. the whole of Silesia, and stretched awny almost to Berlin. In 1772, when came the first dismemberment, Poland covered'3oo.ooo square miles, almost 100.000'miles more than the German empire of today. Its population was 11.500,000. It ranks, indeed with Jtftly as the fifth European nation. Before the outbreak of the war 'here wits a compact mass of 3a--900,iW people in Europe speaking the Polish T nngungef and whatever ruler mightTlaini dominion over them, they were one; n<? mutilation of the national body.<>»' erut-roes. or oppressions, could dissever the Poles in They remain today one nation-in. language and in aspirations, despite a century and a half of political slavery, and through all these years the love of liberty has burned within them -as an inextinguishable flame.