* * * * The leitmotif of The Re-Birth of
Poland, by Dr. W. K. Korostowetz (Geoffrey Bles, 10s. 6d.) is Aesop's fable of the frog and the ox, a cautionary tale that might be told of many another State of the new Europe. Did not General Weygand himself, who has done more than any one man to set the rocky Republic on her feet, give as his considered opinion that " la Pologne est un fruit mer pour le quatrieme et dernier partage " ? This book is the outcome of the author's experiences, first as a member of the Russian Diplomatic Mission to Warsaw in 1919, and then as correspondent of the New York World for Poland, and the Baltic States. We
• may allow that the hereditary foe " piles on the agony " overmuch, but there is ,every excuse, when no less a person than Ciamt Skrzynski perthits himself the extraordinary assertion that "-Russia is only an historical term " to which one of Pilsiidskra satellites adds " and historical nonsense at that " ! Even so, this analysis of Polish demoralization, corruptness, slovenliness, and overweening conceit, &c., &c., is damning in the extreme ; whether we take the official attitude to Gerinany;_to Bolshevik Russia or to the minorities and alien-peoples within her bothers, there is plenty of uninis- takable evictelace- for the author's conclusion that the same errors are being repeated which a hundred and fifty years ago destroyed Poland internally and externally. If, however, we are supplied. with considerably more than a pinch of salt and a saving sense of humour, we may enjoy a very enter- taining _ book of memories, particularly his picture of the feckless and pathetic Russian émigrés who make the fortunes of elairvoyantes in Paris and other capitals of refuge.
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