tive shop, which had to be closed after the dissolution of these councils.
"As a result of this action of the German Government a total disorganisation resulted, and the German Authorities were absolutely unable to cope with the situation." Yet it is obvious that the, German Administration in Poland must have foreseen the paralysis of social life in Poland which their arbitrary act involved—they must have foreseen it and deliberately intended to bring it about.
Why did Germany not content herself with ruining Polish industry? Why did she persecute the Polish workers so relentlessly, after their livelihood was gone and when it was only a question of relieving their distress? She persecuted them because she was determined to wrest something further from them yet. She had seized their food, confiscated their plant, withheld their coal, paralysed their co-operation; and now she was bent on acquiring their most inalienable asset—their labour. She knew better than to commandeer that. She knew that workmen reft away from their workshops and their homes, and driven at the bayonet's point to do a task-master's bidding, would do it ill—that you cannot exploit skill by violence. But if she exerted the violence in a subtler way, if she kept the bayonets in the background and confined herself to making life in Poland impossible, might not Polish skill be induced, by the logic of circumstances, to accept the alternative of migration of its own accord? This was the German view of the psychology of the
