give the Ukrainian people the possibility of disposing of themselves—that is, the possibility of becoming a part of the Ukrainian Republic.

Any other solution of the question, and, in particular, dependence upon Poland under any form whatsoever, would force the Ukrainian people to fight to the last drop of blood for the integrity and the independence of the Ukrainian Republic.

The Ukrainian Republic, which at the beginning of its existence framed a law furnishing guaranties for national minorities, will be able to assure conditions for national development to the minorities of East Galicia.

But the Ukrainian nation can never consent to the subjugation of East Galicia by Poland merely to safeguard the interests of the Polish national minority.

Mr. J. G. BAILEY,

COPY.

AUGUST 7, 1919.

Russian Division, State Department, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR SIR: I wish to call to your attention the unrest created among the residents of this country of Ukrainian parentage by press reports from Paris indicating that the section of Eastern Galicia inhabited by Ukrainians is to be incorporated in

Poland.

A dispatch from Dr. Dillon in the Philadelphia Public Ledger stated that the American delegation at Paris favored such action. An Associated Press dispatch in the Washington Star further asserted that the conference commission on Polish affairs will recommend to the supreme council that Ukrainian Galicia be put under the dominion of Poland. An arrangement of this character would violate the right and the claim of the Ukrainian people to self-government. It would perpetuate the elements of instability in eastern Europe and, I fear, nullify the hope of the world for permanent peace.

But I desire now chiefly to report the harm already done in this country by the spreading of the reports cited. During the war and subsequent to the armistice more than 400 mass meetings and parades have been held in this country by the half million Ukrainians resident in the industrial States. The purpose of all these has been to inform the American people of the situation of the Ukraine, which on every consideration of ethnography, history, religion, and economics are entitled to self-rule.

I need not, I am sure, recall to you the statements of President Wilson and of Secretary of State Lansing, made during 1918, which recognized the justice of the Ukrainian claim to independence. No more is it necessary to revert to the fact that a recognition of Ukraine's integrity as a nation was implicit in the terms of the armistice.

It is important, however, that I, as the president of the Ukrainian Federation of the United States, should record the dangerous feeling of despair which would be engendered among all Ukrainians if the future of their motherland were to be sacrificed to Polish imperialism. At this state of the world, it is surely imperative that the natural desire of a people such as the Ukrainians who have been so much of a bulwark of civilization both against German imperialism and Russian Bolshevism be not frustrated. I can conceive of no action which would more effectually poison the springs of true democracy and transform a right love of independence into that despair which breeds Bolshevism.

In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and elsewhere in industrial America mass meetings have been held to protest against the sacrifice of the Ukraine to Polish aggrandizement. Ukrainians know too well the horrors of Austro-Hungraian imperialism to find reassurance in its substitution by a Polish hogonomy over the libertyloving peoples of Eastern Europe. The memory of ancient Polish Empire which held sway over the Ukraine and Lithuania in no less brutal fashion than did the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns after a partition of Poland in 1772 still rankles. How deeply and securely rooted is this feeling may be judged from the fact that many Polish historians attribute Poland's downfall to the unscrupulous religious, national and social oppression of the Ukrainian, freeholders and peasants, by the Polish aristocracy.

A brief while ago even Premier Paderewski acknowledged and supported the validity of the demands of the Ukrainian people. Following the mass meeting of the oppressed nationalities of central Europe held in Carnegie Hall, September 15, 1918, Mr. Paderewski presented the resolution of the meeting to President Wilson. In part the resolution was as follows:

"Resolved, That since the majority of the inhabitants of Austria-Hungary, to wit: Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Ukrainians, Roumanians, Jugo-Slavs and Italians, have been unjustly and cruelly governed by a ruling minority of Germans and Magyars, we demand the dissolution of the present empire and the organization of its freed peoples according to their own will."

A year has not passed and yet Mr. Roman Dmowski, Premier Paderewski's representative at Paris, is demanding not the organization of the freed peoples of AustriaHungary according to their own will, but the organization of a new Polish empire on a purely Prussian pattern. He talks of annexation by forceful conquest, of economic necessity, of the superiority of Polish culture, of the Polish mission in Eastern Europe. The old German will to conquer, translated into Polish terms, is intriguing for the reestablishment of a Polish empire, incorporating within its boundaries recalcitrant millions of people of other nationalities.

The peace of the world can not be reared on that foundation. A poor peace will it be which would shift Alsace-Lorraine from Western to Eastern Europe. President Wilson expressly stated that Poland should be constituted of undoubtedly and genuinely Polish territories. The peace conference months ago insisted that the Polish attempt to subdue by force of arms Ukrainian Galicia be stopped and yet the unchallenged word goes forth that now Ukrainians are to be delivered to the Government of Poland.

It avails nothing that Poland talks of autonomy for Ukrainian Galicia. All groups in the Ukraine from the conservative Catholics to the radical Socialist would reject Ukrainian autonomy under Polish suzerainty as decisely as the French citizens of Alsace would have spurned Alsatian self-government under Hohenzollern tutelage. The self-government of a free republic, not the dependence of province alien in language, literature, customs, religion, economics, ideals, is the aspiration of the Ukrainian people.

It is not to be wondered that in the United States and in Canada, wherever men of Ukrainian descent have access to the bar of unfettered opinion, appeals are being made that the Ukraine be freed and that the tragedies of the past be not repeated. Poland will gain nothing of permanent value from a conquest of the Ukrainians. The safety of the world will be no whit strengthened. The solidarity of the United States which has been built upon the contentment of self-governing people will not be fortified. The subjection of the Ukraine will be a perpetual source of trouble, for as America could not remain half slave and half free so eastern Europe will harvest distress and unrest while imperialism endeavors to enslave millions of freemen.

Yours, very respectfully,

MIROSLAV SICHINSKY

President, Ukrainian Federation of United States.

THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF PETROGRAD, on the UKRAINIAN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE.1

THE CONSTITUENTS OF THE COMMITTEE THAT PREPARED THE REPORT.

"The Committee on the Abolition of the Restrictions of the Ukrainian Language, presided by the Academician F. E. Korsh, and composed of the Academicians V. V. Zalensky, A. S. Lappo Danilevsky, S. F. Oldenburg, A. S. Famintsin, Ph. F. Fortunatov, and O. O. Shakhmatov,2 after a thorough examination of the question proposed by the Council of the Ministers, arrived at the conclusions herewith submitted to the general session."

The Imperial Academy of Sciences on the Repeal of the Restrictions of the Little Russian Printed Literature. St. Petersburg, 1905. Printed by the order of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, March, 1915. 2 Fiodor E. Korsh (1843-1915), renowned Russian linguist, professor of Roman language first at the University of Odessa, later at the University of Moscow; ordinary member of the Russian Academy; author of many linguistic and philologic works. "He possesses a prominent erudition not only in his specialty but also in the history of European literatures and the philology of Indo-European and Asiatic dialects." (The Russian Encyclopaedic Dictionary of F. A. Brockhaus and I. A. Efron.)

Vladimir V. Zalensky (1846- ), professor of natural science at the University of Odessa, since 1893 an ordinary member of the Imperial Academy.

Alexander S. Lappo Danilevsky, famous Russian historian, professor of Russian history at the University of Petrograd, since 1894 an ordinary member of the academy.

Sergey F. V. Oldenburg, authority on the history and literature of Asiatic people, permanent secretary of the academy; member of the committee on the compilation of ethnographic map of Russia, of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society; the correspondent member of the Liverpool University School of Russian Studies.

Andrey S. Famintsin (1861- ), professor of botanies first at the Medical Academy of Petrograd, then at the University of Petrograd, since 1891 an ordinary member of the academy. "He is not only the greatest botanist-physiologist of Russia, but also the teacher of a whole generation of physiologists." The Russian Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Breckhaus and Efron.)

Philip F. Fortunatov, prominent Russian philologian, since 1875 professor of Indo-European philology at the University of Moscow, in 1884 for his scientific works nominated by the Universities of Moscow and Kiev "honoris causa doctor of comparative philology."

Alexsey A. Shakhmatov (1864- ), since 1890 professor of philology at the University of Moscow, 1894 nominated by the same university "doctor of Russian language and literature," since 1894 member of the Academy, later elected president of the division of Russian language and literature of the academy and chief librarian of the same division. "By the depth of his knowledge, originality and independence of his opinions, and the copiousness of the scientific works of first rate, Shakhmatov, at present occupies one of the most prominent places among our specialists on the history of the Russia and Slavic languages." (The Russian Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron.)

With the exception of V. V. Zalensky, all the above mentioned scholars are great Russians.

HAVE THEY THE RIGHT TO SPEAK ABOUT A "PAN-RUSSIAN" LANGUAGE?

There is no doubt that the ancestors of the Great Russians and the Ukrainians had spoken one language in the time of yore; this language, which has not survived to our times in written monuments, and which was reconstructed only hypothetically, is generally called in science the "Pan-Russian" language. But of course, this is not the language which those who contrast Ukrainian with "Pan-Russian" have in view. As early as the prehistoric epoch, the "Pan-Russian" language exhibited in its individual branches such pronounced dialectic peculiarities as to furnish a foundation for a hypothesis that the Russian race, from time immemorial, has been divided into three groups: North Russian, Middle Russian, and South Russian. The South Russian monuments of our old literature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as it was proved for the first time by our fellow member, the academician, A. A. Sobolevsky, display a series of typical peculiarities of the Ukrainian language; from them one can surely convince oneself of the considerable remoteness of the South Russian (Little Russian) dialects from the Middle Russian as well as from the North Russian dialects in the very period preceding the Tartar invasion. This remoteness could not be remedied by the political union of the Russian tribes in the tenth and eleventh centuries; on the contrary, the breaking up of the Russian lands into independent principalities, the growth of a new political center in the basin of the Oka River, the tributary of the Upper Volga, the downfall of Kiev in the second half of the thirteenth century-all these served considerably the Southeastern Russia, and the Tartar invasion completed the separation. Later, within the Russo-Lithunian Empire, the South Russian tribes found the basis for a closer connection with other Russian tribes, namely, that western branch of the Middle Russian tribes which grew to be the foundation of the White Russian nationality. On the other hand, the eastern branch of the Middle Russians, united by the Muscovites with the North Russians, became a part of the Great Russian nationality. Only the more recent colonization of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought more closely the Great Russians and the Ukrainians in the basins of the Seym, Donets, and Don Rivers. Thus the historic development contributed towards the creation of two nationalities: The Great Russian and the Ukrainian. The historic life of the two natioalities failed to develop a common language; quite the contrary, the very life strengthened those dialectic varieties with which endowed the ancestors of the Ukrainians, on the one hand, and the ancestors of the Great Russian, on the other hand, made their appearance at the beginning of our history. And, of course, the living Great Russian idiom, as it is spoken by the people of Moscow, Riezen, Archangel, Novgorod, can not be called "Pan-Russian" language as apposed to the Ukrainian of "Poltava, Kiev, of Lviv (Lemberg)."

"But do we possess perhaps, some ground to consider our (Great Russian) language as the Pan-Russian language? Was it, perhaps, created by the common efforts of all the Russian nationalities? Has it reflected perhaps, itself, the varieties of all the Russian dialects? According to the views so often repeated by some publicists, the Ukrainians have played an important part in creating and elaborating our literary language. To prove this, it is deemed sufficient to mention the influence of the Ukrainian writers and scientists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, first upon the Muscovite enlightenment, then also upon the reforms of the star Peter the Great. To be sure, this influence reflected itself also in our literature, but it was of a merely passing character; the efforts of our great writers were bringing our written language more and more closely to the vernacular, and so far nothing has stopped this current, which made our literary language fully Great Russian in its character as early as the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, when it became emancipated, among other things, also from the Ukrainian accent, which, according to Prof. Budda, was not foreign to the language of Lomonosov and Sumarkov. The Great Russian literary language, which in its origins constituted a gaudy mixture of church-Slavonic elements (in lexical and partly also in grammatical respect) with the vernacular of the Great Russian tribes, was receiving since the old period, it can be said, since the sixteenth century, a more and more popular tinge. Its development in this direction was stopped twice; the first time, in the fourteenth century, when it had to struggle against other Slavic elements, which, due to Serbian and Bulgarian scientists, had come from the South Slavic countries; the second time, in the seventeenth century, when it was permeated with the peculiarities of the Ukrainian literary language. Both times, however, the Great Russian element came out victorious, and for this reason our literary language, the language of our educated class and the language of our literature of all kinds, should be considered fully Great Russian language. We can see no basis to call this language Pan-Russian, since it constitutes no amalgam, in which could reflect themselves, however unequally it may be, the peculiarities of all living Russian idioms.”

HOW THE UKRAINIAN VERNACULAR BECAME A LITERARY LANGUAGE.

"Our Great Russian language attained a Pan-Russian significance. To a considerable extent this was due to the fact that by virtue of circumstances it became a state language; but that is mostly to be accounted for by the cultural growth of the Great Russian nationality, by the development of its literature and its school education. Peter's the Great reforms, that brought Russia and the West into a closer connection, strengthened the educational significance of the Great Russian centers, Moscow and Petrograd, and brought into the channels of a common life Great and Little Russia. The latter had nothing to place against this secular education, which, thanks to the movement inaugurated by Peter, spread in a broad stream all over the country united by the Muscovite tsars. Because of this the Great Russian language penetrated to the south, into Ukraine on both sides of the Dnieper. The Ukrainian written language had developed in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the basis of two literary languages; the church-Slavonic and the West Russian, the latter of which was saturated with Polish elements; it has assimilated itself to the vernacular in a considerably smaller degree than did the Great Russian literary language, and this, more than anything else, explains the fate it met with in the second half of the eighteenth century; it was gradually forgotten and without a struggle gave place to the Great Russian literary language.

"In this way the growth of culture and education culminated in a natural displacing of the written Ukrainian language by the Great Russian language. But this growth called to life factors which in the previous epoch had hardly found any lawful · expression. The Great Russian becomes enthusiastic for the secular education so much that he can not any more be satisfied with what his ancestors had conceived from the ecclesiastical education, which left unanswered a considerable part of the needs of a thoughtful and sensitive being, that he can not be satisfied with the use of the bookish church language, remote from native tongue. With the appearance of secular education, the literature, without ceasing to satisfy religious wants and material interests, reveals for the Great Russian a possibility to express his thoughts and feelings in new forms, different from those used by his ancestors. And this finds its expression, before all, in the growing assimilation of the written language to the language of every day's feelings and thoughts. We see how quick was the Great Russian literary language to iree itself, thanks to the secular education, from the foreign elements, foreign accents, and unusual words. In Ukraine, where the written language was already forgotten and neglected, the very same secular education had to produce another though similar phenomenon, the living vernacular idiom becomes the literary language. The thoughts and feelings of the Ukrainian force themselves irresistibly upon the paper, there is no other way out for him left than to express them in the common idiom of his own, because the Great Russian language, foreign to him, can not become a guide to the native tongue, can not and by its nature should not be assimilated with or approximated to it. Peter the Great's reforms have led Russia upon the road of secular education. As a result of that, on the one side, the Great Russian written language assimilated itself to the vernacular of the Great Russian. On the other hand, the vernacular of the Ukrainians became the vernacular of the new Ukrainian literature. Not to admit the legitimacy and naturalness of such a result would mean to admit that secular education left the Ukrainians untouched; it would mean that in the north, in Moscow and Petrograd, secular education should bring into closer similarity the vernacular and literary language, with the predominance of the former, while in the south, in Kiev, the same secular education should only exchange the old literary language for a new one, still more dissimilar from the vernacular, still more foreign.

"The publicists who deny the Ukrainian literary language to right to exist are prone to refer to White Russia; they frightened the Russian Government and the Russian public with the prospective of the demand of freedom for the White Russian written language. What the future has in store we do not know; the past, however, testifies clearly that the White Russian educated class became Polonized while the Great Russian and the Ukrainian kept in sacred veneration their respective literary language. The White Russian educated class experienced no desire, nor did they possess any basis, to return to the vernacular, while the Ukrainian did it out of sheer necessity."

THE LEGITIMACY AND NATURALNESS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UKRAINIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE.

"The legitimacy and naturalness of the origin of the Ukrainian literary language explains also the legitimacy of its whole further development. Its sources, as we have seen, was the living colloquial language of the Ukrainian educated class, that

grew up amidst circumstances altogether different from those amidst which grew the Great Russian educated class. Not only in the eighteenth, but also later, in the nineteenth century, the former absorbed the Polish culture, which neither Moscow nor Petrograd was able to suppress, in spite of the very strong influence of the Great Russian culture, supported by common religion and common State interests. Thus in that colloquial language of the Ukrainian educated class, which became the literary language at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there made their appearance, in the form of assimilated foreign elements, on the one hand, Polish, on the other, Great Russian words and phrases. In the future, too, both named literary languages, the Polish and the Great Russian, should serve a source of enrichment of the Ukrainian literary language. To turn to these sources is only too natural a course; which of the two will get the upper hand will depend upon the question which of them will succeed in attaching to itself the Ukrainian literature with close, brotherly ties. It seemed that the influence of the Great Russian language upon the Ukrainian was fully insured under those circumstances under which the new literature grew; to write Ukrainian began men who knew perfectly the Great Russian language, the Ukrainian books were published in the centers of the Great Russian learning, the literary works of the Ukrainians are printed in the Great Russian magazines and periodicals. The repressive measure of the censorship of 1863 and 1866, however, have transferred the literary activities of the Ukrainians to that part of the nationality · that lies beyond the frontiers of Russia. There it developed under a strong influence of the Polish elements in the lexical and syntactic parts. Objections are being raised against the Ukrainian language of the Galician literature because of this foreign, non-Ukrainian tinge it had received in Lviv. But the Polish elements have only taken place of these Great Russian elements displacing of which would be a matter of course if the Ukrainian literature were given in Ukraine a chance of wide and free development.

"The enrichment with foreign linguistic elements-this is the common lot of all literary languages; the west European elements in our own Great Russian language prove that even very highly developed literary languages are not insured against foreign influence. Absolutely inevitable becomes the influence of neighboring language when these languages belong to akin races; thus the Polish literary language exhibits the influence of the Bohemian, and the Polish purists carry on a useless and difficult struggle against the Great Russian influence; thus the Slovenian language has become permeated with Serbo-Croatian elements; thus the Bulgarian language is thoroughly overwhelmed with Great Russian elements. In the same manner it was not possible for the Ukrainain language to escape the Great Russian or Polish influences. The understanding to utilize foreign linguistic elements, absence of all apprehensions of them, a bold handling of the new lexical material very often testify to the power and resisting force of the new literary language, which irresistably aspires to a great and greater range in the domain of the expression of human thoughts and sentiments."

IS THE UKRAINIAN LITERATURE NECESSARY?

"Many Great Russian publicists questioned whether the Ukrainian literature is altogether necessary. Others wanted to limit its domain within certain prescribed boundaries; they admitted its natural life; they considered it proper to collect popular songs and fables; finally, the Ukrainian language was granted even the whole domain of fiction. But to pass beyond these boundaries, it was forbidden; and such restrictions were considered by the publicists who followed the government's regulation to be necessary in the interest of the Great Russian literature. The answer to that hollow after all question whether the Ukrainian literature is altogether necessary gave the life itself; we saw a broad development of this literature even during the period of the sixties, that is at the time when the reforms of the tsar Alexander II had revived the Great Russian nationality to new forms of life, and we discovered, that the creature of that literature were men of various social classes, of various opinions, and of various education. The Ukrainian literature evidently has satisfied, by its appearance, matured needs, and its origin was influenced neither by a political intrigue nor an unsound tendency. Let the facts answer this question that arises in our country as a result of the constant assertions of some publicists: is it really possible to limit, in one way or another, the extent to which a literary language should be used? * Is

* *

it possible to stop a germinated thought, a thought animated, moreover, by the native tongue? What is there to stop it at popular jokes and verses, what is there to prevent it from incarnating itself in new forms of poetry. from permeating the romance and scientific research, from finding its way to the past of its own people, from taking care for the people's future, and passing finally into the domain of religion and focussing itself on the translation of the Holy Scripture and the production of books for moral and