title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Elinor and Marianne accompany Mrs Jennings to London. On arriving, Marianne rashly writes several personal letters to Willoughby, which go unanswered. When they meet by chance at a dance, Willoughby is with another woman. He greets Marianne reluctantly and coldly, to her extreme distress. She leaves the party completely distraught. Soon Marianne receives a curt letter enclosing their former correspondence and love tokens, including the lock of her hair. Willoughby is revealed to be engaged to a young lady, Miss Grey, who has a large fortune. Marianne is devastated. After Elinor reads the letter, Marianne admits to Elinor that she and Willoughby were never engaged. She behaved as if they were because she knew she loved him and thought that he loved her.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: As Marianne grieves, Colonel Brandon visits and reveals to Elinor that Willoughby seduced, impregnated, then abandoned Brandon's young ward, Miss Eliza Williams. Willoughby's aunt subsequently disinherited him, and so, in great personal debt, he chose to marry Miss Grey for her money. Eliza is the illegitimate daughter of Brandon's first love, also called Eliza, a young woman who was his father's ward and an heiress. She was forced into an unhappy marriage to Brandon's elder brother, in order to shore up the family's finances, and that marriage ended in scandal and divorce while Brandon was abroad with the Army. After Colonel Brandon's father and brother died, he inherited the family estate and returned to find Eliza dying in a pauper's home, so Brandon took charge of raising her young daughter. Brandon tells Elinor that Marianne strongly reminds him of the elder Eliza for her sincerity and sweet impulsiveness. Brandon removed the younger Eliza to the country, and reveals to Elinor all of these details in the hope that Marianne could get some consolation in discovering Willoughby's true character.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Meanwhile, the Steele sisters have come to London. After a brief acquaintance, they are asked to stay at John and Fanny Dashwood's London house. Lucy sees the invitation as a personal compliment, rather than what it is: a slight to Elinor and Marianne who, being family, should have received such an invitation first. Too talkative, Anne Steele betrays to Fanny Lucy's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars. As a result, the sisters are turned out of the house, and Edward is ordered by his wealthy mother to break off the engagement on pain of disinheritance. Edward, still sensitive of the dishonour of a broken engagement and how it would reflect poorly on Lucy Steele, refuses to comply. He is immediately disinherited in favour of his brother, Robert, which gains Edward respect for his conduct and sympathy from Elinor and Marianne. Colonel Brandon shows his admiration by offering Edward the clerical living of the Delaford parsonage, so to enable him to marry Lucy after he is ordained.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Mrs Jennings takes Elinor and Marianne to the country to visit her second daughter, Mrs. Charlotte Palmer, at her husband's estate, Cleveland, on their way back to their home in Devonshire. Marianne, still in misery over Willoughby's marriage, goes walking in the rain and becomes dangerously ill. She is diagnosed with putrid fever, and it is believed that her life is in danger. Elinor writes to Mrs. Dashwood to explain the gravity of the situation, and Colonel Brandon volunteers to go and bring Marianne's mother to Cleveland to be with her. In the night, Willoughby arrives and reveals to Elinor that his love for Marianne was genuine and that losing her has made him miserable. He elicits Elinor's pity because his choice has made him unhappy, but she is disgusted by the callous way in which he talks of Miss Williams and his own wife. He also reveals that his aunt said she would have forgiven him if he married Miss Williams but that he had refused.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Marianne recovers from her illness, and Elinor tells her of Willoughby's visit. Marianne realizes she could never have been happy with Willoughby's immoral, erratic, and inconsiderate ways. She values Elinor's more moderated conduct with Edward and resolves to model herself after her courage and good sense. Edward later arrives and reveals that, after his disinheritance, Lucy jilted him in favour of his now wealthy younger brother, Robert. Elinor is overjoyed. Edward and Elinor marry, and later Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, having gradually come to love him. The two couples live as neighbours, with sisters and husbands in harmony with each other. Willoughby considers Marianne as his ideal but the narrator tells the reader not to suppose that he was never happy.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Jane Austen wrote the first draft of the novel in the form of a novel-in-letters (epistolary form) perhaps as early as 1795 when she was about 19 years old, or 1797, at age 21, and is said to have given it the title "Elinor and Marianne". She later changed the form to a narrative and the title to "Sense and Sensibility".


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Austen drew inspiration for "Sense and Sensibility" from other novels of the 1790s that treated similar themes, including Adam Stevenson's "Life and Love" (1785) which he had written about himself and a relationship that was not meant to be. Jane West's "A Gossip's Story" (1796), which features one sister full of rational sense and another sister of romantic, emotive sensibility, is considered to have been an inspiration as well. West's romantic sister-heroine also shares her first name, Marianne, with Austen's. There are further textual similarities, described in a modern edition of West's novel.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Austen may have drawn on her knowledge of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, in her portrayal of Colonel Brandon. Hastings had been rumoured to be the biological father of Austen's cousin Eliza de Feuillide. Linda Robinson Walker argues that Hastings "haunts "Sense and Sensibility" in the character of Colonel Brandon": both left for India at the age of seventeen; Hastings may have had an illegitimate daughter named Eliza; both Hastings and Brandon participated in a duel.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: "Sense" means good judgment, wisdom, or prudence, and "sensibility" means sensitivity, sympathy, or emotionality. Elinor is described as a character with great "sense" (although Marianne, too, is described as having sense), and Marianne is identified as having a great deal of "sensibility" (although Elinor, too, feels deeply, without expressing it as openly). By changing the title, Austen added "philosophical depth" to what began as a sketch of two characters.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: "Sense and Sensibility," much like Austen's other fiction, has attracted a large body of criticism from many different approaches. Early reviews of "Sense and Sensibility" focused on the novel as providing lessons in conduct (which would be debated by many later critics), as well as reviewing the characters. The Norton Critical Edition of "Sense and Sensibility," edited by Claudia Johnson, contains a number of reprinted early reviews in its supplementary material. An "Unsigned Review" in the February 1812 "Critical Review" praises "Sense and Sensibility" as well-written with well-supported and -drawn characters, realistic, and with a "highly pleasing" plot in which "the whole is just long enough to interest the reader without fatiguing." This review praises Mrs. Dashwood, the mother of the Dashwood sisters, as well as Elinor, and claims that Marianne's extreme sensibility makes her miserable. It claims that "Sense and Sensibility" has a lesson and moral which is made clear through the plot and the characters. Another "Unsigned Review" from the May 1812 "British Critic" further emphasizes the novel's function as a type of conduct book. In this author's opinion, Austen's favouring of Elinor's temperament over Marianne's provides the lesson. The review claims that "the object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined and excessive susceptibility on the other." The review states that "Sense and Sensibility" contains "many sober and salutary maxims for the conduct of life" within a "very pleasing and entertaining narrative." W. F. Pollock's 1861 review from "Frasier's Magazine," titled "British Novelists," becomes what editor Claudia Johnson terms an "early example of what would become the customary view of "Sense and Sensibility."" In addition to emphasizing the novel's morality, Pollock reviews the characters in catalogue-like fashion, praising and criticizing them in according to the notion that Austen favours Elinor's point of view and temperament. Pollock even praises Sir John Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, and comments on the humour of Mr. Palmer and his "silly wife." Pollock criticizes Sir John Dashwood's selfishness without mentioning Fanny's influence upon them. He also criticizes the Steele sisters for their vulgarity.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: An anonymous piece titled "Miss Austen" published in 1866 in "The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine" departs from other early criticism in its sympathizing with Marianne over Elinor, claiming that Elinor is "too good" a character. The article also differs from other reviews in that it claims that the "prevailing merit" of the book is not in its sketch of the two sisters; rather, the book is effective because of its "excellent treatment of the subordinate characters." Alice Meynell's 1894 article "The Classic Novelist" in the "Pall Mall Gazette" also concurs with Austen's attention to small things. Meynell claims that Austen deals in lesser characters and small matters because "that which makes life, art, and work trivial is a triviality of relations." In her attention to secondary characters, Meynell discusses the children's function to "illustrate the folly of their mothers," especially Lady Middleton.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Austen biographer Claire Tomalin argues that "Sense and Sensibility" has a "wobble in its approach", which developed because Austen, in the course of writing the novel, gradually became less certain about whether sense or sensibility should triumph. Austen characterises Marianne as a sweet person with attractive qualities: intelligence, musical talent, frankness, and the capacity to love deeply. She also acknowledges that Willoughby, with all his faults, continues to love and, in some measure, appreciate Marianne. For these reasons, some readers find Marianne's ultimate marriage to Colonel Brandon an unsatisfactory ending.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: The Dashwood sisters stand apart as being virtually the only characters capable of intelligent thought and any sort of deep thinking. Brownstein wrote that the differences between the Dashwood sisters have been exaggerated, and in fact the sisters are more alike than they are different, with Elinor having an "excellent heart" and being capable of the same romantic passions as Marianne feels, while Marianne has much sense as well. Elinor is more reserved, more polite, and less impulsive than Marianne who loves poetry, taking walks across picturesque landscapes and believes in intense romantic relationships, but it is this very closeness between the sisters that allows these differences to emerge during their exchanges.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Many critics explore "Sense and Sensibility" in relation to authors and genres popular during Austen's time. One of the most popular forms of fiction in Austen's time was epistolary fiction. This is a style of writing in which all of the action, dialogue, and character interactions are reflected through letters sent from one or more of the characters. In her book "Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the Fiction of Letters," Mary Favret explores Austen's fraught relationship with epistolary fiction, claiming that Austen "wrestled with epistolary form" in previous writings and, with the publication of "Sense and Sensibility," "announced her victory over the constraints of the letter." Favret contends that Austen's version of the letter separates her from her "admired predecessor, Samuel Richardson" in that Austen's letters are "a misleading guide to the human heart which, in the best instances, is always changing and adapting." According to Favret, the character of Elinor Dashwood is an "anti-epistolary heroine" whose "inner world" of thoughts and feelings does not find "direct expression in the novel, although her point of view controls the story." "Sense and Sensibility" establishes what Favret calls a "new privacy" in the novel, which was constrained by previous notions of the romance of letters. This new privacy is a "less constraining mode of narration" in which Austen's narrator provides commentary on the action, rather than the characters themselves through the letters. Favret claims that in "Sense and Sensibility," Austen wants to "recontextualize" the letter and bring it into a "new realism." Austen does so by imbuing the letter with dangerous power when Marianne writes to Willoughby; both their love and the letter "prove false." Additionally, Favret claims that Austen uses both of the sisters' letter writing to emphasize the contrasts in their personalities. When both of the sisters write letters upon arriving in London, Elinor's letter is the "dutiful letter of the 'sensible sister'" and Marianne writes a "vaguely illicit letter" reflecting her characterization as the "sensitive" sister. What is perhaps most striking about Favret's analysis is that she notes that the lovers who write to one another never unite with each other.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: A common theme of Austen criticism has been on the legal aspects of society and the family, particularly wills, the rights of first and second sons, and lines of inheritance. Gene Ruoff's book "Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility" explores these issues in a book-length discussion of the novel. Ruoff's first two chapters deal extensively with the subject of wills and the discourse of inheritance. These topics reveal what Ruoff calls "the cultural fixation on priority of male birth." According to Ruoff, male birth is by far the dominant issue in these legal conversations. Ruoff observes that, within the linear family, the order of male birth decides issues of eligibility and merit. When Robert Ferrars becomes his mother's heir, Edward is no longer appealing to his "opportunistic" fiancée Lucy, who quickly turns her attention to the foppish Robert and "entraps him" in order to secure the inheritance for herself. According to Ruoff, Lucy is specifically aiming for the heir because of the monetary advantage. William Galperin, in his book "The History Austen," comments on the tendency of this system of patriarchal inheritance and earning as working to ensure the vulnerability of women. Because of this vulnerability, Galperin contends that "Sense and Sensibility" shows marriage as the only practical solution "against the insecurity of remaining an unmarried woman."


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Feminist critics have long been engaged in conversations about Jane Austen, and "Sense and Sensibility" has figured in these discussions, especially about the patriarchal system of inheritance and earning. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's seminal feminist work "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination" contains several discussions of "Sense and Sensibility." Gilbert and Gubar read the beginning of "Sense and Sensibility" as a retelling of "King Lear" from a female perspective and contend that these "reversals imply that male traditions need to be evaluated and reinterpreted from a female perspective." Gilbert and Gubar argue that Austen explores the effects of patriarchal control on women, particularly in the spheres of employment and inheritance. In "Sense and Sensibility" they educe the fact that Mr. John Dashwood sends his stepmother and half sisters from their home as well as promised income, as an instance of these effects. They also point to the "despised" Mrs. Ferrars's tampering with the patriarchal line of inheritance in her disowning of her elder son, Edward Ferrars, as proof that this construction is ultimately arbitrary. Gilbert and Gubar contend that while "Sense and Sensibility"'s ultimate message is that "young women like Marianne and Elinor must submit to powerful conventions of society by finding a male protector," women such as Mrs. Ferrars and Lucy Steele demonstrate how women can "themselves become agents of repression, manipulators of conventions, and survivors." In order to protect themselves and their own interests, Mrs. Ferrars and Lucy Steele must participate in the same patriarchal system that oppresses them.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: In the chapter ""Sense and Sensibility:" Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous" from her book "Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel," Claudia Johnson also gives a feminist reading of "Sense and Sensibility." She differs from previous critics, especially the earliest ones, in her contention that "Sense and Sensibility" is not, as it is often assumed to be, a "dramatized conduct book" that values "female prudence" (associated with Elinor's sense) over "female impetuosity" (associated with Marianne's sensibility). Rather, Johnson sees "Sense and Sensibility" as a "dark and disenchanted novel" that views "institutions of order" such as property, marriage, and family in a negative light, an attitude that makes the novel the "most attuned to social criticism" of Austen's works. According to Johnson, "Sense and Sensibility" critically examines the codes of propriety as well as their enforcement by the community. Key to Austen's criticism of society, per Johnson's argument, is the depiction of the unfair marginalization of women resulting from the "death or simple absence of male protectors." Additionally, the male characters in "Sense and Sensibility" are depicted unfavourably. Johnson calls the gentlemen in "Sense and Sensibility" "uncommitted sorts" who "move on, more or less unencumbered, by human wreckage from the past." In other words, the men do not feel a responsibility to anyone else. Johnson compares Edward to Willoughby in this regard, claiming that all of the differences between them as individuals do not hide the fact that their failures are actually identical; Johnson calls them both "weak, duplicitous, and selfish," lacking the honesty and forthrightness with which Austen endows other "exemplary gentlemen" in her work. Johnson's comparison of Edward and Willoughby reveals the depressing picture about gentlemen presented in the novel.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: Mary Poovey's analysis in "The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen" concurs with Johnson's on the dark tone of "Sense and Sensibility." Poovey contends that "Sense and Sensibility" has a "somber tone" in which conflict breaks out between Austen's engagement with her "self-assertive characters" and the moral codes necessary to control their potentially "anarchic" desires. Austen shows, according to Poovey, this conflict between individual desire and the restraint of moral principles through the character of Elinor herself. Except for Elinor, all of the female characters in "Sense and Sensibility" experience some kind of female excess. Poovey argues that while Austen does recognize "the limitations of social institutions," she demonstrates the necessity of controlling the "dangerous excesses of female feeling" rather than liberating them. She does so by demonstrating that Elinor's self-denial, especially in her keeping of Lucy Steele's secret and willingness to help Edward, even though both of these actions were hurtful to her, ultimately contribute to her own contentment and that of others. In this way, Poovey contends that Austen suggests that the submission to society that Elinor demonstrates is the proper way to achieve happiness in life.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: "Sense and Sensibility" criticism also includes ecocritical approaches. Susan Rowland's article "The 'Real Work': Ecocritical Alchemy and Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility"" studies the effects of alienation upon Edward Ferrars. Edward is alienated from society because he lacks what Rowland calls "useful employment." According to Rowland, Edward's condition represents problems with the history of work in Western industrialised societies. Edward's alienation from work also represents "the culture evolution of work" as a "progressive estrangement from nonhuman nature." Rowland argues that human culture estranges people from nature rather than returning them to it. Marianne also suffers from this estrangement of nature as she is ripped from her childhood home where she enjoyed walking the grounds and looking at trees. Rowland thus connects both Edward's and Marianne's progressive discomfort throughout the novel to their alienation from nature.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: In 1811, Thomas Egerton of the Military Library publishing house in London accepted the manuscript for publication in three volumes. Austen paid to have the book published and paid the publisher a commission on sales. The cost of publication was more than a third of Austen's annual household income of £460 (about £15,000 in 2008 currency). She made a profit of £140 (almost £5,000 in 2008 currency) on the first edition, which sold all 750 printed copies by July 1813. A second edition was advertised in October 1813.


title: Sense and Sensibility

text: The novel has been in continuous publication through to the 21st century as popular and critical appreciation of all the novels by Jane Austen slowly grew. The novel was translated into French by Madame Isabelle de Montolieu as "Raison et Sensibilité". Montolieu had only the most basic knowledge of English, and her translations were more of "imitations" of Austen's novels as Montolieu had her assistants provide a summary of Austen's novels, which she then translated into an embellished French that often radically altered Austen's plots and characters. The "translation" of "Sense and Sensibility" by Montolieu changes entire scenes and characters, for example having Marianne call Willoughby an "angel" and an "Adonis" upon first meeting him, lines that are not in the English original. Likewise, the scene where Mrs Dashwood criticises her husband for planning to subsidise his widowed stepmother might be disadvantageous to "our little Harry", Mrs Dashwood soon forgets about Harry and it is made apparent her objections are founded in greed; Montolieu altered the scene by having Mrs Dashwood continuing to speak of "our little Harry" as the basis of her objections, completely changing her motives. When Elinor learns the Ferrars who married Lucy Steele is Robert, not Edward, Montolieu adds in a scene where Edward, the Dashwood sisters and their mother all break down in tears while clasping hands that was not in the original. Austen has the marriage of Robert Ferrars and Lucy Steele end well while Montolieu changes the marriage into a failure.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established in 1918, in the aftermath of the First World War. The Second Republic ceased to exist in 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the European theatre of the Second World War.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In 1938, the Second Republic was the sixth largest country in Europe. According to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, this had grown to an estimated 35.1 million. Almost a third of the population came from minority groups: 13.9% Ruthenians; 10% Ashkenazi Jews; 3.1% Belarusians; 2.3% Germans and 3.4% Czechs and Lithuanians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country's borders.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: When, after several regional conflicts, the borders of the state were finalised in 1922, Poland's neighbours were Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Free City of Danzig, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and the Soviet Union. It had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia, known as the Polish Corridor. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia. The political conditions of the Second Republic were heavily influenced by the aftermath of the First World War and conflicts with neighbouring states as well as the emergence of Nazism in Germany.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The Second Republic maintained moderate economic development. The cultural hubs of interwar PolandWarsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Wilno and Lwówbecame major European cities and the sites of internationally acclaimed universities and other institutions of higher education.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The official name of the state was the "Republic of Poland". In the Polish language, it was referred to as "Rzeczpospolita Polska" (abbr. "RP"), with the term "Rzeczpospolita" being a traditional name for the "republic" referred to in various Polish states, including the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, the current Third Polish Republic. In other regionally-used official languages, the state was referred to as: "Republik Polen" in German, "Польська Республіка" (transcription: "Polʹsʹka Respublika") in Ukrainian, "Польская Рэспубліка" (transcription: "Poĺskaja Respublika") in Belarusian, and "Lenkijos Respublika", in Lithuanian.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Between 14 November 1918 and 13 March 1919, the state was referred to in Polish as "Republika Polska", instead of "Rzeczpospolita Polska". Both terms mean the "Republic"; however, "republika" is a general term, while "Rzeczpospolita" traditionally refers exclusively to Polish states. Additionally, between 8 November 1918 and 16 August 1919, the "Journal of Laws of the Polish State" referred to the country as the "Polish State" (Polish: "Państwo Polskie").


title: Second Polish Republic

text: After the Second World War and the establishment of the later states of the Polish People's Republic and the Third Polish Republic, the state was referred to as the "Second Polish Republic". In the Polish language, the country is traditionally referred to as "II Rzeczpospolita", which means the "Second Republic".


title: Second Polish Republic

text: After more than a century of partitions between the Austrian, the Prussian, and the Russian imperial powers, Poland re-emerged as a sovereign state at the end of the First World War in Europe in 1917–1918. The victorious Allies of the First World War confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the great stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of border wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the eastern half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922 and internationally recognised by the League of Nations.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Over the course of the First World War (1914-1918), the German Empire gradually dominated the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back. German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up the puppet Kingdom of Poland on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State and (from 15 October 1917) a Regency Council ("Rada Regencyjna Królestwa Polskiego"). The Council administered the country under German auspices (see also Mitteleuropa), pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Provisional Council of State and announced its intention to restore Polish independence (7 October 1918). With the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania ("SDKPiL"), most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński and began conscription into the Polish Army.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In 1918–1919, over 100 workers' councils sprang up on Polish territories; on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia. The same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland ("Tymczasowy Rząd Ludowy Republiki Polskiej") in Lublin. On Sunday, 10 November at 7 a.m., Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaw's railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski and by Colonel Adam Koc. Next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. On 14 November, the Council dissolved itself and transferred all its authority to Piłsudski as Chief of State ("Naczelnik Państwa"). After consultation with Piłsudski, Daszyński's government dissolved itself and a new government formed under Jędrzej Moraczewski. In 1918, the Kingdom of Italy became the first country in Europe to recognise Poland's renewed sovereignty.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Centres of government that formed at that time in Galicia (formerly Austrian-ruled southern Poland) included the National Council of the Principality of Cieszyn (established in November 1918), the Republic of Zakopane and the Polish Liquidation Committee (28 October). Soon afterward, the Polish–Ukrainian War broke out in Lwów (1 November 1918) between forces of the Military Committee of Ukrainians and the Polish irregular units made up of students known as the Lwów Eaglets, who were later supported by the Polish Army (see Battle of Lwów (1918), Battle of Przemyśl (1918)). Meanwhile, in western Poland, another war of national liberation began under the banner of the Greater Poland uprising (1918–1919). In January 1919, Czechoslovak forces attacked Polish units in the area of Zaolzie (see Polish–Czechoslovak War). Soon afterwards, the Polish–Lithuanian War (ca 1919–1920) began, and, in August 1919, Polish-speaking residents of Upper Silesia initiated a series of three Silesian Uprisings. The most critical military conflict of that period, however, the Polish–Soviet War (1919-1921), ended in a decisive Polish victory. In 1919, the Warsaw government suppressed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg and the workers' councils.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The Second Polish Republic was a parliamentary democracy from 1919 (see Small Constitution of 1919) to 1926, with the President having limited powers. The Parliament elected him, and he could appoint the Prime Minister as well as the government with the "Sejm"'s (lower house's) approval, but he could only dissolve the "Sejm" with the Senate's consent. Moreover, his power to pass decrees was limited by the requirement that the Prime Minister and the appropriate other Minister had to verify his decrees with their signatures. Poland was one of the first countries in the world to recognise women's suffrage. Women in Poland were granted the right to vote on 28 November 1918 by a decree of General Józef Piłsudski.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The major political parties at this time were the Polish Socialist Party, National Democrats, various Peasant Parties, Christian Democrats, and political groups of ethnic minorities (German: German Social Democratic Party of Poland, Jewish: General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, United Jewish Socialist Workers Party, and Ukrainian: Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance). Frequently changing governments (see 1919 Polish legislative election, 1922 Polish legislative election) and other negative publicity the politicians received (such as accusations of corruption or the 1919 Polish coup attempt), made them increasingly unpopular. Major politicians at this time, in addition to General Piłsudski, included peasant activist Wincenty Witos (Prime Minister three times) and right-wing leader Roman Dmowski. Ethnic minorities were represented in the "Sejm"; e.g. in 1928 – 1930 there was the Ukrainian-Belarusian Club, with 26 Ukrainian and 4 Belarusian members.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: After the Polish – Soviet war, Marshal Piłsudski led an intentionally modest life, writing historical books for a living. After he took power through a military coup in May 1926, he emphasised that he wanted to heal Polish society and politics of excessive partisan politics. His regime, accordingly, was called "Sanacja" in Polish. The 1928 parliamentary elections were still considered free and fair, although the pro-Piłsudski Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government won them. The following three parliamentary elections (in 1930, 1935 and 1938) were manipulated, with opposition activists sent to Bereza Kartuska prison (see also Brest trials). As a result, the pro-government party Camp of National Unity won huge majorities in them. Piłsudski died just after an authoritarian constitution was approved in the spring of 1935. During the last four years of the Second Polish Republic, the major politicians included President Ignacy Mościcki, Foreign Minister Józef Beck and the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły. The country was divided into 104 electoral districts, and those politicians who were forced to leave Poland founded Front Morges in 1936. The government that ruled the Second Polish Republic in its final years is frequently referred to as Piłsudski's colonels.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Interwar Poland had a large army of 950,000 soldiers on active duty: in 37 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades, and two armored brigades, plus artillery units. Another 700,000 men served in the reserves. At the outbreak of the war, the Polish Army was able to put in the field almost one million soldiers, 4,300 guns, around 1,000 armored vehicles including in between 200 and 300 tanks (the majority of the armored vehicles were outclassed tankettes) and 745 aircraft (however, only around 450 of them were bombers and fighters available to fight as of September 1st, 1939).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The training of the Polish Army was thorough. The non-commissioned officers were a competent body of men with expert knowledge and high ideals. The officers, both senior and junior, constantly refreshed their training in the field and in the lecture hall, where modern technical achievement and the lessons of contemporary wars were demonstrated and discussed. The equipment of the Polish Army was less developed technically than that of Nazi Germany and its rearmament was slowed down by confidence in Western European military support and by budget difficulties.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The Polish command system at the level of the entire Polish military and the armies was obsolete. The generals in command of the armies had to ask permission from the high command. The Polish military attempted to organize fronts made of armies' groups only when it was already too late during the Polish Defensive War in 1939.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: After regaining its independence, Poland was faced with major economic difficulties. In addition to the devastation brought by the First World War, the exploitation of the Polish economy by the German and Russian occupying powers, and the sabotage performed by retreating armies, the new republic was faced with the task of economically unifying disparate economic regions, which had previously been part of different countries and different empires. Within the borders of the Republic were the remnants of three different economic systems, with five different currencies (the German mark, the Imperial Russian rouble, the Austrian crown, the Polish mark and the Ostrubel) and with little or no direct infrastructural links. The situation was so bad that neighbouring industrial centres, as well as major cities, lacked direct railway links because they had been parts of different jurisdictions and different empires. For example, there was no direct railway connection between Warsaw and Kraków until 1934. This situation was described by Melchior Wańkowicz in his book "Sztafeta".


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In addition to this was the massive destruction left after both the First World War and the Polish–Soviet War. There was also a great economic disparity between the eastern (commonly called "Poland B") and western (called "Poland A") parts of the country, with the western half, especially areas that had belonged to Prussia and the German Empire, being much more developed and prosperous. Frequent border closures and a customs war with Germany also had negative economic impacts on Poland. In 1924, Prime Minister Władysław Grabski, who was also the Economic Minister, introduced the "złoty" as a single common currency for Poland (it replaced the Polish mark), which remained a stable currency. The currency helped Poland to control the massive hyperinflation. It was the only country in Europe able to do this without foreign loans or aid. The average annual growth rate (GDP per capita) was 5.24% in 1920–29 and 0.34% in 1929–38.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Hostile relations with neighbours were a major problem for the economy of interbellum Poland. In the year 1937, foreign trade with all neighbours amounted to only 21% of Poland's total. Trade with Germany, Poland's most important neighbour, accounted for 14.3% of Polish exchange. Foreign trade with the Soviet Union (0.8%) was virtually nonexistent. Czechoslovakia accounted for 3.9%, Latvia for 0.3%, and Romania for 0.8%. By mid-1938, after the "Anschluss" with Austria, Greater Germany was responsible for as much as 23% of Polish foreign trade.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The basis of Poland's gradual recovery after the Great Depression was its mass economic development plans (see Four Year Plan), which oversaw the building of three key infrastructural elements. The first was the establishment of the Gdynia seaport, which allowed Poland to completely bypass Gdańsk (which was under heavy German pressure to boycott Polish coal exports). The second was construction of the 500-kilometre rail connection between Upper Silesia and Gdynia, called the Polish Coal Trunk-Line, which served freight trains with coal. The third was the creation of a central industrial district named COP – "Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy" (English: Central Industrial Region). Unfortunately, these developments were interrupted and largely destroyed by the German and Soviet invasion and the start of the Second World War. Other achievements of interbellum Poland included Stalowa Wola (a brand new city, built in a forest around a steel mill), Mościce (now a district of Tarnów, with a large nitrate factory), and the creation of a central bank called the Bank of Poland. There were several trade fairs, with the most popular being Poznań International Fair, Lwów's "Targi Wschodnie", and Wilno's "Targi Północne". Polish Radio had ten stations (see Radio stations in interwar Poland), with the eleventh one planned to be opened in the autumn of 1939. Furthermore, in 1935, Polish engineers began working on TV services. By early 1939, experts of the Polish Radio built four TV sets. The first movie broadcast by experimental Polish TV was "Barbara Radziwiłłówna", and by 1940, a regular TV service was scheduled to begin operation.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Interbellum Poland was also a country with numerous social problems. Unemployment was high, and poverty in the countryside was widespread, which resulted in several cases of social unrest, such as the 1923 Kraków riot, and 1937 peasant strike in Poland. There were conflicts with national minorities, such as the Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia (1930), relations with Polish neighbours were sometimes complicated (see Soviet raid on Stołpce, Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts, and the 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania). On top of this, there were natural disasters, such as the 1934 flood in Poland.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Interbellum Poland was unofficially divided into two parts – better developed "Poland A" in the west, and underdeveloped "Poland B" in the east. Polish industry was concentrated in the west, mostly in Polish Upper Silesia, and the adjacent Lesser Poland's province of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, where the bulk of coal mines and steel plants was located. Furthermore, heavy industry plants were located in Częstochowa ("Huta Częstochowa", founded in 1896), Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski ("Huta Ostrowiec", founded in 1837–1839), Stalowa Wola (brand new industrial city, which was built from scratch in 1937 – 1938), Chrzanów ("Fablok", founded in 1919), Jaworzno, Trzebinia (oil refinery, opened in 1895), Łódź (the seat of Polish textile industry), Poznań (H. Cegielski – Poznań), Kraków and Warsaw (Ursus Factory). Further east, in Kresy, industrial centres included two major cities of the region – Lwów and Wilno (Elektrit).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Besides coal mining, Poland also had deposits of oil in Borysław, Drohobycz, Jasło and Gorlice (see Polmin), potassium salt (TESP), and basalt (Janowa Dolina). Apart from already-existing industrial areas, in the mid-1930s an ambitious, state-sponsored project called the Central Industrial Region was started under Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. One of the characteristic features of the Polish economy in the interbellum was the gradual nationalisation of major plants. This was the case for the Ursus Factory (see Państwowe Zakłady Inżynieryjne) and several steelworks, such as "Huta Pokój" in Ruda Śląska – Nowy Bytom, "Huta Królewska" in Chorzów – Królewska Huta, "Huta Laura" in Siemianowice Śląskie, as well as "Scheibler and Grohman Works" in Łódź.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: According to the 1939 "Statistical Yearbook of Poland", the total length of the railways in Poland (as of 31 December 1937) was . Rail density was per . Railways were very dense in the western part of the country, while in the east, especially Polesie, rail was non-existent in some counties. During the interbellum period, the Polish Government constructed several new lines, mainly in the central part of the country (see also Polish State Railroads Summer 1939). Construction of the extensive Warszawa Główna railway station was never finished due to the war, while Polish railways were famous for their punctuality (see Luxtorpeda, Strzała Bałtyku, Latający Wilnianin).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In the interbellum, the road network of Poland was dense, but the quality of the roads was very poor – only 7% of all roads were paved and ready for automobile use, and none of the major cities were connected with each other by a good-quality highway. In 1939 the Poles built only one highway: 28 km of straight concrete road connecting the villages of Warlubie and Osiek (mid-northern Poland). It was designed by Italian engineer Piero Puricelli.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In the mid-1930s, Poland had of roads, but only 58,000 had a hard surface (gravel, cobblestone or sett), and 2,500 were modern, with an asphalt or concrete surface. In different parts of the country, there were sections of paved roads, which suddenly ended, and were followed by dirt roads. The poor condition of the roads was the result of both long-lasting foreign dominance and inadequate funding. On 29 January 1931, the Polish Parliament created the State Road Fund, the purpose of which was to collect money for the construction and conservation of roads. The government drafted a 10-year plan, with road priorities: a highway from Wilno, through Warsaw and Kraków, to Zakopane (called Marshal Piłsudski Highway), asphalt highways from Warsaw to Poznań and Łódź, as well as a Warsaw ring road. However, the plan turned out to be too ambitious, with insufficient money in the national budget to pay for it. In January 1938, the Polish Road Congress estimated that Poland would need to spend three times as much money on roads to keep up with Western Europe.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In 1939, before the outbreak of the war, LOT Polish Airlines, which was established in 1929, had its hub at Warsaw Okęcie Airport. At that time, LOT maintained several services, both domestic and international. Warsaw had regular domestic connections with Gdynia-Rumia, Danzig-Langfuhr, Katowice-Muchowiec, Kraków-Rakowice-Czyżyny, Lwów-Skniłów, Poznań-Ławica, and Wilno-Porubanek. Furthermore, in cooperation with Air France, LARES, Lufthansa, and Malert, international connections were maintained with Athens, Beirut, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Helsinki, Kaunas, London, Paris, Prague, Riga, Rome, Tallinn, and Zagreb.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Statistically, the majority of citizens lived in the countryside (75% in 1921). Farmers made up 65% of the population. In 1929, agricultural production made up 65% of Poland's GNP. After 123 years of partitions, regions of the country were very unevenly developed. The lands of the former German Empire were the most advanced; in Greater Poland, Upper Silesia and Pomerelia, farming and crops were on a Western European level. The situation was much worse in parts of Congress Poland, the Eastern Borderlands, and what was formerly Galicia, where agriculture was quite backward and primitive, with a large number of small farms, unable to succeed in either the domestic or international market. Another problem was the overpopulation of the countryside, which resulted in chronic unemployment. Living conditions were so bad in several eastern regions, such as the counties inhabited by the Hutsul minority, that there was permanent starvation. Farmers rebelled against the government (see: 1937 peasant strike in Poland), and the situation began to change in the late 1930s, due to the construction of several factories for the Central Industrial Region, which gave employment to thousands of rural and small town residents.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Beginning in June 1925, there was a customs' war, with the revanchist Weimar Republic imposing a trade embargo against Poland for nearly a decade; it involved tariffs and broad economic restrictions. After 1933 the trade war ended. The new agreements regulated and promoted trade. Germany became Poland's largest trading partner, followed by Britain. In October 1938, Germany granted a credit of 60,000,000| Reichsmarks to Poland (120,000,000 "zloty", or £4,800,000 stg) which was never realised, due to the outbreak of war. Germany would deliver factory equipment and machinery in return for Polish timber and agricultural produce. This new trade was to be "in addition" to the existing German-Polish trade agreements.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In 1919, the Polish government introduced compulsory education for all children aged 7 to 14, in an effort to limit illiteracy, which was widespread, especially in the former Russian Partition and the Austrian Partition of eastern Poland. In 1921, one-third of citizens of Poland remained illiterate (38% in the countryside). The process was slow, but by 1931 the illiteracy level had dropped to 23% overall (27% in the countryside) and further down to 18% in 1937. By 1939, over 90% of children attended school. In 1932, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, the Minister for Religion and Education, carried out a major reform which introduced two main levels of education: "common school" ("szkoła powszechna"), with three levels – 4 grades + 2 grades + 1 grade; and "middle school" ("szkoła średnia"), with two levels – 4 grades of comprehensive middle school and 2 grades of specified high school (classical, humanistic, natural and mathematical). A graduate of middle school received a "small matura", while a graduate of high school received a "big matura", which enabled them to seek university-level education.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Before 1918, Poland had three universities: Jagiellonian University, the University of Warsaw and Lwów University. The Catholic University of Lublin was established in 1918; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, in 1919; and finally, in 1922, after the annexation of the Republic of Central Lithuania, Wilno University became the Republic's sixth university. There were also three technical colleges: the Warsaw University of Technology, Lwów Polytechnic and the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, established in 1919. Warsaw University of Life Sciences was an agricultural institute. By 1939, there were around 50,000 students enrolled in further education. Women made up 28% of university students, the second highest proportion in Europe.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Polish science in the interbellum was renowned for its mathematicians gathered around the Lwów School of Mathematics, the Kraków School of Mathematics, as well as the Warsaw School of Mathematics. There were world-class philosophers in the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic and philosophy. Florian Znaniecki founded Polish sociological studies. Rudolf Weigl invented a vaccine against typhus. Bronisław Malinowski counted among the most important anthropologists of the 20th century.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: In Polish literature, the 1920s were marked by the domination of poetry. Polish poets were divided into two groups – the Skamanderites (Jan Lechoń, Julian Tuwim, Antoni Słonimski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz) and the Futurists (Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieński, Aleksander Wat, Julian Przyboś). Apart from well-established novelists (Stefan Żeromski, Władysław Reymont), new names appeared in the interbellum – Zofia Nałkowska, Maria Dąbrowska, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Jan Parandowski, Bruno Schultz, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Witold Gombrowicz. Among other notable artists there were sculptor Xawery Dunikowski, painters Julian Fałat, Wojciech Kossak and Jacek Malczewski, composers Karol Szymanowski, Feliks Nowowiejski, and Artur Rubinstein, singer Jan Kiepura.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Theatre was immensely popular in the interbellum, with three main centres in the cities of Warsaw, Wilno and Lwów. Altogether, there were 103 theatres in Poland and a number of other theatrical institutions (including 100 folk theatres). In 1936, different shows were seen by 5 million people, and main figures of Polish theatre of the time were Juliusz Osterwa, Stefan Jaracz, and Leon Schiller. Also, before the outbreak of the war, there were approximately one million radios (see Radio stations in interwar Poland).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The administrative division of the Republic was based on a three-tier system. On the lowest rung were the "gminy", local town and village governments akin to districts or parishes. These were then grouped together into "powiaty" (akin to counties), which, in turn, were grouped as "województwa" (voivodeships, akin to provinces).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Historically, Poland was almost always a multiethnic country. This was especially true for the Second Republic, when independence was once again achieved in the wake of the First World War and the subsequent Polish–Soviet War, the latter war being officially ended by the Peace of Riga. The census of 1921 shows 30.8% of the population consisted of ethnic minorities, compared with a share of 1.6% (solely identifying with a non-Polish ethnic group) or 3.8% (including those identifying with both the Polish ethnicity and with another ethnic group) in 2011. The first spontaneous flight of about 500,000 Poles from the Soviet Union occurred during the reconstitution of sovereign Poland. In the second wave, between November 1919 and June 1924, some 1,200,000 people left the territory of the USSR for Poland. It is estimated that some 460,000 of them spoke Polish as the first language. According to the 1931 Polish Census: 68.9% of the population was Polish, 13.9% were Ukrainian, around 10% Jewish, 3.1% Belarusian, 2.3% German and 2.8% other, including Lithuanian, Czech, Armenian, Russian, and Romani. The situation of minorities was a complex subject and changed during the period.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Poland was also a nation of many religions. In 1921, 16,057,229 Poles (approx. 62.5%) were Roman (Latin) Catholics, 3,031,057 citizens of Poland (approx. 11.8%) were Eastern Rite Catholics (mostly Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Armenian Rite Catholics), 2,815,817 (approx. 10.95%) were Orthodox, 2,771,949 (approx. 10.8%) were Jewish, and 940,232 (approx. 3.7%) were Protestants (mostly Lutheran).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: By 1931, Poland had the second largest Jewish population in the world, with one-fifth of all the world's Jews residing within its borders (approx. 3,136,000). The urban population of interbellum Poland was rising steadily; in 1921, only 24% of Poles lived in the cities, in the late 1930s, that proportion grew to 30%. In more than a decade, the population of Warsaw grew by 200,000, Łódź by 150,000, and Poznań – by 100,000. This was due not only to internal migration, but also to an extremely high birth rate.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: From the 1920s, the Polish government excluded Jews from receiving government bank loans, public sector employment, and obtaining business licenses. From the 1930s, measures were taken against Jewish shops, Jewish export firms, "Shechita" as well as limitations being placed on Jewish admission to the medical and legal professions, Jews in business associations and the enrollment of Jews into universities. The political movement National Democracy ("Endecja", from the abbreviation "ND") often organised anti-Jewish business boycotts. Following the death of Marshal Józef Piłsudski in 1935, the "Endecja" intensified their efforts, which triggered violence in extreme cases in smaller towns across the country. In 1937, the National Democracy movement passed resolutions that "its main aim and duty must be to remove the Jews from all spheres of social, economic, and cultural life in Poland". The government in response organised the Camp of National Unity (OZON), which in 1938 took control of the Polish "Sejm" and subsequently drafted anti-Semitic legislation similar to the Anti-Jewish laws in Germany, Hungary, and Romania. OZON advocated mass emigration of Jews from Poland, numerus clausus (see also Ghetto benches), and other limitations on Jewish rights. According to William W. Hagen, by 1939, prior to the war, Polish Jews were threatened with conditions similar to those in Nazi Germany.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The pre-war government also restricted the rights of people who declared Ukrainian nationality, belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church and inhabited the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic. Ukrainian was restricted in every field possible, especially in governmental institutions, and the term "Ruthenian" was enforced in an attempt to ban the use of the term "Ukrainian". Ukrainians were categorised as uneducated second-class peasants or third world people, and rarely settled outside the Eastern Borderland region due to the prevailing Ukrainophobia and restrictions imposed. Numerous attempts at restoring the Ukrainian state were suppressed and any existent violence or terrorism initiated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was emphasised to create the image of a "brutal Eastern savage".


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The Second Polish Republic was mainly flat with an average elevation of above sea level, except for the southernmost Carpathian Mountains (after the Second World War and its border changes, the average elevation of Poland decreased to ). Only 13% of territory, along the southern border, was higher than . The highest elevation in the country was Mount Rysy, which rises in the Tatra Range of the Carpathians, approximately south of Kraków. Between October 1938 and September 1939, the highest elevation was Lodowy Szczyt (known in Slovak as "Ľadový štít"), which rises above sea level. The largest lake was Lake Narach.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The country's total area, after the annexation of Zaolzie, was . It extended from north to south and from east to west. On 1 January 1938, total length of boundaries was , including: of coastline (out of which were made by the Hel Peninsula), the with Soviet Union, 948 kilometers with Czechoslovakia (until 1938), with Germany (together with East Prussia), and with other countries (Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Danzig). The warmest yearly average temperature was in Kraków among major cities of the Second Polish Republic, at in 1938; and the coldest in Wilno ( in 1938). Extreme geographical points of Poland included Przeświata River in Somino to the north (located in the Braslaw county of the Wilno Voivodeship); Manczin River to the south (located in the Kosów county of the Stanisławów Voivodeship); Spasibiorki near railway to Połock to the east (located in the Dzisna county of the Wilno Voivodeship); and Mukocinek near Warta River and Meszyn Lake to the west (located in the Międzychód county of the Poznań Voivodeship).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Almost 75% of the territory of interbellum Poland was drained northward into the Baltic Sea by the Vistula (total area of drainage basin of the Vistula within boundaries of the Second Polish Republic was , the Niemen (), the Odra () and the Daugava (). The remaining part of the country was drained southward, into the Black Sea, by the rivers that drain into the Dnieper (Pripyat, Horyn and Styr, all together ) as well as Dniester ()


title: Second Polish Republic

text: The beginning of the Second World War in September 1939 ended the sovereign Second Polish Republic. The German invasion of Poland began on 1 September 1939, one week after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. On that day, Germany and Slovakia attacked Poland, and on 17 September the Soviets attacked eastern Poland. Warsaw fell to the Nazis on 28 September after a twenty-day siege. Open organised Polish resistance ended on 6 October 1939 after the Battle of Kock, with Germany and the Soviet Union occupying most of the country. Lithuania annexed the area of Wilno, and Slovakia seized areas along Poland's southern border - including Górna Orawa and Tatranská Javorina - which Poland had annexed from Czechoslovakia in October 1938. Poland did not surrender to the invaders, but continued fighting under the auspices of the Polish government-in-exile and of the Polish Underground State. After the signing of the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation on 28 September 1939, Polish areas occupied by Nazi Germany either became directly incorporated into Nazi Germany, or became part of the General Government. The Soviet Union, following Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus (22 October 1939), annexed eastern Poland partly to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and partly to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (November 1939).


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Polish war plans (Plan West and Plan East) failed as soon as Germany invaded in 1939. The Polish losses in combat against Germans (killed and missing in action) amounted to ca. 70,000 men. Some 420,000 of them were taken prisoners. Losses against the Red Army (which invaded Poland on 17 September) added up to 6,000 to 7,000 of casualties and MIA, 250,000 were taken prisoners. Although the Polish Army – considering the inactivity of the Allies – was in an unfavourable position – it managed to inflict serious losses to the enemies: 20,000 German soldiers were killed or MIA, 674 tanks and 319 armored vehicles destroyed or badly damaged, 230 aircraft shot down; the Red Army lost (killed and MIA) about 2,500 soldiers, 150 combat vehicles and 20 aircraft. The Soviet invasion of Poland, and lack of promised aid from the Western Allies, contributed to the Polish forces defeat by 6 October 1939.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: A popular myth is that Polish cavalry armed with lances charged German tanks during the September 1939 campaign. This often repeated account, first reported by Italian journalists as German propaganda, concerned an action by the Polish 18th Lancer Regiment near Chojnice. This arose from misreporting of a single clash on 1 September 1939 near Krojanty, when two squadrons of the Polish 18th Lancers armed with sabers surprised and wiped out a German infantry formation with a mounted saber charge. Shortly after midnight the 2nd (Motorized) Division was compelled to withdraw by Polish cavalry, before the Poles were caught in the open by German armored cars. The story arose because some German armored cars appeared and gunned down 20 troopers as the cavalry escaped. Even this failed to persuade everyone to reexamine their beliefs—there were some who thought Polish cavalry had been improperly employed in 1939.


title: Second Polish Republic

text: Between 1939 and 1990, the Polish government-in-exile operated in Paris and later in London, presenting itself as the only legal and legitimate representative of the Polish nation. In 1990, the last president in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, handed the presidential insignia to the newly elected President, Lech Wałęsa, signifying continuity between the Second and Third republics.


title: Soil

text: Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish "dirt" from "soil" by restricting the former term specifically to displaced soil.


title: Soil

text: Soil consists of a solid phase of minerals and organic matter (the soil matrix), as well as a porous phase that holds gases (the soil atmosphere) and water (the soil solution). Accordingly, soil is a three-state system of solids, liquids, and gases. Soil is a product of several factors: the influence of climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), organisms, and the soil's parent materials (original minerals) interacting over time. It continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness, soil ecologists regard soil as an ecosystem.


title: Soil

text: Most soils have a dry bulk density (density of soil taking into account voids when dry) between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm, though the soil particle density is much higher, in the range of 2.6 to 2.7 g/cm. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, although fossilized soils are preserved from as far back as the Archean.


title: Soil

text: The pedosphere interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere. Collectively, Earth's body of soil, called the pedosphere, has four important functions:


title: Soil

text: Soil science has two basic branches of study: edaphology and pedology. "Edaphology" studies the influence of soils on living things. "Pedology" focuses on the formation, description (morphology), and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is included in the broader concept of regolith, which also includes other loose material that lies above the bedrock, as can be found on the Moon and other celestial objects.


title: Soil

text: Soil is a major component of the Earth's ecosystem. The world's ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the processes carried out in the soil, with effects ranging from ozone depletion and global warming to rainforest destruction and water pollution. With respect to Earth's carbon cycle, soil acts as an important carbon reservoir, and it is potentially one of the most reactive to human disturbance and climate change. As the planet warms, it has been predicted that soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to increased biological activity at higher temperatures, a positive feedback (amplification). This prediction has, however, been questioned on consideration of more recent knowledge on soil carbon turnover.


title: Soil

text: Soil acts as an engineering medium, a habitat for soil organisms, a recycling system for nutrients and organic wastes, a regulator of water quality, a modifier of atmospheric composition, and a medium for plant growth, making it a critically important provider of ecosystem services. Since soil has a tremendous range of available niches and habitats, it contains a prominent part of the Earth's genetic diversity. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial and largely still unexplored. Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 10 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 10 prokaryotic organisms per milliliter (gram) of seawater. Organic carbon held in soil is eventually returned to the atmosphere through the process of respiration carried out by heterotrophic organisms, but a substantial part is retained in the soil in the form of soil organic matter; tillage usually increases the rate of soil respiration, leading to the depletion of soil organic matter. Since plant roots need oxygen, aeration is an important characteristic of soil. This ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for uptake by plants. Since plants require a nearly continuous supply of water, but most regions receive sporadic rainfall, the water-holding capacity of soils is vital for plant survival.


title: Soil

text: Soils can effectively remove impurities, kill disease agents, and degrade contaminants, this latter property being called natural attenuation. Typically, soils maintain a net absorption of oxygen and methane and undergo a net release of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Soils offer plants physical support, air, water, temperature moderation, nutrients, and protection from toxins. Soils provide readily available nutrients to plants and animals by converting dead organic matter into various nutrient forms.


title: Soil

text: A typical soil is about 50% solids (45% mineral and 5% organic matter), and 50% voids (or pores) of which half is occupied by water and half by gas. The percent soil mineral and organic content can be treated as a constant (in the short term), while the percent soil water and gas content is considered highly variable whereby a rise in one is simultaneously balanced by a reduction in the other. The pore space allows for the infiltration and movement of air and water, both of which are critical for life existing in soil. Compaction, a common problem with soils, reduces this space, preventing air and water from reaching plant roots and soil organisms.


title: Soil

text: Given sufficient time, an undifferentiated soil will evolve a soil profile which consists of two or more layers, referred to as soil horizons. These differ in one or more properties such as in their texture, structure, density, porosity, consistency, temperature, color, and reactivity. The horizons differ greatly in thickness and generally lack sharp boundaries; their development is dependent on the type of parent material, the processes that modify those parent materials, and the soil-forming factors that influence those processes. The biological influences on soil properties are strongest near the surface, though the geochemical influences on soil properties increase with depth. Mature soil profiles typically include three basic master horizons: A, B, and C. The solum normally includes the A and B horizons. The living component of the soil is largely confined to the solum, and is generally more prominent in the A horizon. It has been suggested that the "pedon", a column of soil extending vertically from the surface to the underlying parent material and large enough to show the characteristics of all its horizons, could be subdivided in the "humipedon" (the living part, where most soil organisms are dwelling, corresponding to the "humus form"), the "copedon" (in intermediary position, where most weathering of minerals takes place) and the "lithopedon" (in contact with the subsoil).


title: Soil

text: The soil texture is determined by the relative proportions of the individual particles of sand, silt, and clay that make up the soil. The interaction of the individual mineral particles with organic matter, water, gases via biotic and abiotic processes causes those particles to flocculate (stick together) to form aggregates or peds. Where these aggregates can be identified, a soil can be said to be developed, and can be described further in terms of color, porosity, consistency, reaction (acidity), etc.


title: Soil

text: Water is a critical agent in soil development due to its involvement in the dissolution, precipitation, erosion, transport, and deposition of the materials of which a soil is composed. The mixture of water and dissolved or suspended materials that occupy the soil pore space is called the soil solution. Since soil water is never pure water, but contains hundreds of dissolved organic and mineral substances, it may be more accurately called the soil solution. Water is central to the dissolution, precipitation and leaching of minerals from the soil profile. Finally, water affects the type of vegetation that grows in a soil, which in turn affects the development of the soil, a complex feedback which is exemplified in the dynamics of banded vegetation patterns in semi-arid regions.


title: Soil

text: Soils supply plants with nutrients, most of which are held in place by particles of clay and organic matter (colloids) The nutrients may be adsorbed on clay mineral surfaces, bound within clay minerals (absorbed), or bound within organic compounds as part of the living organisms or dead soil organic matter. These bound nutrients interact with soil water to buffer the soil solution composition (attenuate changes in the soil solution) as soils wet up or dry out, as plants take up nutrients, as salts are leached, or as acids or alkalis are added.


title: Soil

text: Plant nutrient availability is affected by soil pH, which is a measure of the hydrogen ion activity in the soil solution. Soil pH is a function of many soil forming factors, and is generally lower (more acid) where weathering is more advanced.


title: Soil

text: Most plant nutrients, with the exception of nitrogen, originate from the minerals that make up the soil parent material. Some nitrogen originates from rain as dilute nitric acid and ammonia, but most of the nitrogen is available in soils as a result of nitrogen fixation by bacteria. Once in the soil-plant system, most nutrients are recycled through living organisms, plant and microbial residues (soil organic matter), mineral-bound forms, and the soil solution. Both living soil organisms (microbes, animals and plant roots) and soil organic matter are of critical importance to this recycling, and thereby to soil formation and soil fertility. Microbial soil enzymes may release nutrients from minerals or organic matter for use by plants and other microorganisms, sequester (incorporate) them into living cells, or cause their loss from the soil by volatilisation (loss to the atmosphere as gases) or leaching.


title: Soil

text: Soil is said to be formed when organic matter has accumulated and colloids are washed downward, leaving deposits of clay, humus, iron oxide, carbonate, and gypsum, producing a distinct layer called the B horizon. This is a somewhat arbitrary definition as mixtures of sand, silt, clay and humus will support biological and agricultural activity before that time. These constituents are moved from one level to another by water and animal activity. As a result, layers (horizons) form in the soil profile. The alteration and movement of materials within a soil causes the formation of distinctive soil horizons. However, more recent definitions of soil embrace soils without any organic matter, such as those regoliths that formed on Mars and analogous conditions in planet Earth deserts.


title: Soil

text: An example of the development of a soil would begin with the weathering of lava flow bedrock, which would produce the purely mineral-based parent material from which the soil texture forms. Soil development would proceed most rapidly from bare rock of recent flows in a warm climate, under heavy and frequent rainfall. Under such conditions, plants (in a first stage nitrogen-fixing lichens and cyanobacteria then epilithic higher plants) become established very quickly on basaltic lava, even though there is very little organic material. Basaltic minerals commonly weather relatively quickly, according to the Goldich dissolution series. The plants are supported by the porous rock as it is filled with nutrient-bearing water that carries minerals dissolved from the rocks. Crevasses and pockets, local topography of the rocks, would hold fine materials and harbour plant roots. The developing plant roots are associated with mineral-weathering mycorrhizal fungi that assist in breaking up the porous lava, and by these means organic matter and a finer mineral soil accumulate with time. Such initial stages of soil development have been described on volcanoes, inselbergs, and glacial moraines.


title: Soil

text: How soil formation proceeds is influenced by at least five classic factors that are intertwined in the evolution of a soil: parent material, climate, topography (relief), organisms, and time. When reordered to climate, relief, organisms, parent material, and time, they form the acronym CROPT.


title: Soil

text: The physical properties of soils, in order of decreasing importance for ecosystem services such as crop production, are texture, structure, bulk density, porosity, consistency, temperature, colour and resistivity. Soil texture is determined by the relative proportion of the three kinds of soil mineral particles, called soil separates: sand, silt, and clay. At the next larger scale, soil structures called peds or more commonly "soil aggregates" are created from the soil separates when iron oxides, carbonates, clay, silica and humus, coat particles and cause them to adhere into larger, relatively stable secondary structures. Soil bulk density, when determined at standardized moisture conditions, is an estimate of soil compaction. Soil porosity consists of the void part of the soil volume and is occupied by gases or water. Soil consistency is the ability of soil materials to stick together. Soil temperature and colour are self-defining. Resistivity refers to the resistance to conduction of electric currents and affects the rate of corrosion of metal and concrete structures which are buried in soil. These properties vary through the depth of a soil profile, i.e. through soil horizons. Most of these properties determine the aeration of the soil and the ability of water to infiltrate and to be held within the soil.


title: Soil

text: Soil water content can be measured as volume or weight. Soil moisture levels, in order of decreasing water content, are saturation, field capacity, wilting point, air dry, and oven dry. Field capacity describes a drained wet soil at the point water content reaches equilibrium with gravity. Irrigating soil above field capacity risks percolation losses. Wilting point describes the dry limit for growing plants.


title: Soil

text: Available water capacity is the amount of water held in a soil profile available to plants. As water content drops, plants have to work against increasing forces of adhesion and sorptivity to withdraw water. Irrigation scheduling avoids moisture stress by replenishing depleted water before stress is induced.


title: Soil

text: Capillary action is responsible for moving groundwater from wet regions of the soil to dry areas. Subirrigation designs (e.g., wicking beds, sub-irrigated planters) rely on capillarity to supply water to plant roots. Capillary action can result in an evaporative concentration of salts, causing land degradation through salination.


title: Soil

text: Soil moisture measurement — measuring the water content of the soil, as can be expressed in terms of volume or weight — can be based on "in situ" probes (e.g., capacitance probes, neutron probes), or remote sensing methods.


title: Soil

text: The atmosphere of soil, or soil gas, is very different from the atmosphere above. The consumption of oxygen by microbes and plant roots, and their release of carbon dioxide, decreases oxygen and increases carbon dioxide concentration. Atmospheric CO concentration is 0.04%, but in the soil pore space it may range from 10 to 100 times that level, thus potentially contributing to the inhibition of root respiration. Calcareous soils regulate CO concentration by carbonate buffering, contrary to acid soils in which all CO respired accumulates in the soil pore system. At extreme levels, CO is toxic. This suggests a possible negative feedback control of soil CO concentration through its inhibitory effects on root and microbial respiration (also called soil respiration). In addition, the soil voids are saturated with water vapour, at least until the point of maximal hygroscopicity, beyond which a vapour-pressure deficit occurs in the soil pore space. Adequate porosity is necessary, not just to allow the penetration of water, but also to allow gases to diffuse in and out. Movement of gases is by diffusion from high concentrations to lower, the diffusion coefficient decreasing with soil compaction. Oxygen from above atmosphere diffuses in the soil where it is consumed and levels of carbon dioxide in excess of above atmosphere diffuse out with other gases (including greenhouse gases) as well as water. Soil texture and structure strongly affect soil porosity and gas diffusion. It is the total pore space (porosity) of soil, not the pore size, and the degree of pore interconnection (or conversely pore sealing), together with water content, air turbulence and temperature, that determine the rate of diffusion of gases into and out of soil. Platy soil structure and soil compaction (low porosity) impede gas flow, and a deficiency of oxygen may encourage anaerobic bacteria to reduce (strip oxygen) from nitrate NO to the gases N, NO, and NO, which are then lost to the atmosphere, thereby depleting the soil of nitrogen, a detrimental process called denitrification. Aerated soil is also a net sink of methane (CH) but a net producer of methane (a strong heat-absorbing greenhouse gas) when soils are depleted of oxygen and subject to elevated temperatures.


title: Soil

text: Soil atmosphere is also the seat of emissions of volatiles other than carbon and nitrogen oxides from various soil organisms, e.g. roots, bacteria, fungi, animals. These volatiles are used as chemical cues, making soil atmosphere the seat of interaction networks playing a decisive role in the stability, dynamics and evolution of soil ecosystems. Biogenic soil volatile organic compounds are exchanged with the aboveground atmosphere, in which they are just 1–2 orders of magnitude lower than those from aboveground vegetation.


title: Soil

text: Humans can get some idea of the soil atmosphere through the well-known 'after-the-rain' scent, when infiltering rainwater flushes out the whole soil atmosphere after a drought period, or when soil is excavated, a bulk property attributed in a reductionist manner to particular biochemical compounds such as petrichor or geosmin.


title: Soil

text: Soil particles can be classified by their chemical composition (mineralogy) as well as their size. The particle size distribution of a soil, its texture, determines many of the properties of that soil, in particular hydraulic conductivity and water potential, but the mineralogy of those particles can strongly modify those properties. The mineralogy of the finest soil particles, clay, is especially important.


title: Soil

text: The chemistry of a soil determines its ability to supply available plant nutrients and affects its physical properties and the health of its living population. In addition, a soil's chemistry also determines its corrosivity, stability, and ability to absorb pollutants and to filter water. It is the surface chemistry of mineral and organic colloids that determines soil's chemical properties. A colloid is a small, insoluble particle ranging in size from 1 nanometer to 1 micrometer, thus small enough to remain suspended by Brownian motion in a fluid medium without settling. Most soils contain organic colloidal particles called humus as well as the inorganic colloidal particles of clays. The very high specific surface area of colloids and their net electrical charges give soil its ability to hold and release ions. Negatively charged sites on colloids attract and release cations in what is referred to as cation exchange. Cation-exchange capacity is the amount of exchangeable cations per unit weight of dry soil and is expressed in terms of milliequivalents of positively charged ions per 100 grams of soil (or centimoles of positive charge per kilogram of soil; cmol/kg). Similarly, positively charged sites on colloids can attract and release anions in the soil, giving the soil anion exchange capacity.


title: Soil

text: The cation exchange, that takes place between colloids and soil water, buffers (moderates) soil pH, alters soil structure, and purifies percolating water by adsorbing cations of all types, both useful and harmful.


title: Soil

text: The negative or positive charges on colloid particles make them able to hold cations or anions, respectively, to their surfaces. The charges result from four sources.


title: Soil

text: Cations held to the negatively charged colloids resist being washed downward by water and are out of reach of plant roots, thereby preserving the fertility of soils in areas of moderate rainfall and low temperatures.


title: Soil

text: There is a hierarchy in the process of cation exchange on colloids, as cations differ in the strength of adsorption by the colloid and hence their ability to replace one another (ion exchange). If present in equal amounts in the soil water solution:


title: Soil

text: If one cation is added in large amounts, it may replace the others by the sheer force of its numbers. This is called law of mass action. This is largely what occurs with the addition of cationic fertilisers (potash, lime).


title: Soil

text: As the soil solution becomes more acidic (low pH, meaning an abundance of H), the other cations more weakly bound to colloids are pushed into solution as hydrogen ions occupy exchange sites (protonation). A low pH may cause the hydrogen of hydroxyl groups to be pulled into solution, leaving charged sites on the colloid available to be occupied by other cations. This ionisation of hydroxy groups on the surface of soil colloids creates what is described as pH-dependent surface charges. Unlike permanent charges developed by isomorphous substitution, pH-dependent charges are variable and increase with increasing pH. Freed cations can be made available to plants but are also prone to be leached from the soil, possibly making the soil less fertile. Plants are able to excrete H into the soil through the synthesis of organic acids and by that means, change the pH of the soil near the root and push cations off the colloids, thus making those available to the plant.


title: Soil

text: Cation exchange capacity is the soil's ability to remove cations from the soil water solution and sequester those to be exchanged later as the plant roots release hydrogen ions to the solution. CEC is the amount of exchangeable hydrogen cation (H) that will combine with 100 grams dry weight of soil and whose measure is one milliequivalents per 100 grams of soil (1 meq/100 g). Hydrogen ions have a single charge and one-thousandth of a gram of hydrogen ions per 100 grams dry soil gives a measure of one milliequivalent of hydrogen ion. Calcium, with an atomic weight 40 times that of hydrogen and with a valence of two, converts to = 20 milliequivalents of hydrogen ion per 100 grams of dry soil or 20 meq/100 g. The modern measure of CEC is expressed as centimoles of positive charge per kilogram (cmol/kg) of oven-dry soil.


title: Soil

text: Most of the soil's CEC occurs on clay and humus colloids, and the lack of those in hot, humid, wet climates (such as tropical rainforests), due to leaching and decomposition, respectively, explains the apparent sterility of tropical soils. Live plant roots also have some CEC, linked to their specific surface area.


title: Soil

text: Anion exchange capacity is the soil's ability to remove anions (such as nitrate, phosphate) from the soil water solution and sequester those for later exchange as the plant roots release carbonate anions to the soil water solution. Those colloids which have low CEC tend to have some AEC. Amorphous and sesquioxide clays have the highest AEC, followed by the iron oxides. Levels of AEC are much lower than for CEC, because of the generally higher rate of positively (versus negatively) charged surfaces on soil colloids, to the exception of variable-charge soils. Phosphates tend to be held at anion exchange sites.


title: Soil

text: Iron and aluminum hydroxide clays are able to exchange their hydroxide anions (OH) for other anions. The order reflecting the strength of anion adhesion is as follows:


title: Soil

text: The amount of exchangeable anions is of a magnitude of tenths to a few milliequivalents per 100 g dry soil. As pH rises, there are relatively more hydroxyls, which will displace anions from the colloids and force them into solution and out of storage; hence AEC decreases with increasing pH (alkalinity).


title: Soil

text: Soil reactivity is expressed in terms of pH and is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of the soil. More precisely, it is a measure of hydronium concentration in an aqueous solution and ranges in values from 0 to 14 (acidic to basic) but practically speaking for soils, pH ranges from 3.5 to 9.5, as pH values beyond those extremes are toxic to life forms.


title: Soil

text: At 25 °C an aqueous solution that has a pH of 3.5 has 10 moles HO (hydronium ions) per litre of solution (and also 10 moles per litre OH). A pH of 7, defined as neutral, has 10 moles of hydronium ions per litre of solution and also 10 moles of OH per litre; since the two concentrations are equal, they are said to neutralise each other. A pH of 9.5 has 10 moles hydronium ions per litre of solution (and also 10 moles per litre OH). A pH of 3.5 has one million times more hydronium ions per litre than a solution with pH of 9.5 ( or 10) and is more acidic.


title: Soil

text: The effect of pH on a soil is to remove from the soil or to make available certain ions. Soils with high acidity tend to have toxic amounts of aluminium and manganese. As a result of a trade-off between toxicity and requirement most nutrients are better available to plants at moderate pH, although most minerals are more soluble in acid soils. Soil organisms are hindered by high acidity, and most agricultural crops do best with mineral soils of pH 6.5 and organic soils of pH 5.5. Given that at low pH toxic metals (e.g. cadmium, zinc, lead) are positively charged as cations and organic pollutants are in non-ionic form, thus both made more available to organisms, it has been suggested that plants, animals and microbes commonly living in acid soils are pre-adapted to every kind of pollution, whether of natural or human origin.


title: Soil

text: In high rainfall areas, soils tend to acidify as the basic cations are forced off the soil colloids by the mass action of hydronium ions from usual or unusual rain acidity against those attached to the colloids. High rainfall rates can then wash the nutrients out, leaving the soil inhabited only by those organisms which are particularly efficient to uptake nutrients in very acid conditions, like in tropical rainforests. Once the colloids are saturated with HO, the addition of any more hydronium ions or aluminum hydroxyl cations drives the pH even lower (more acidic) as the soil has been left with no buffering capacity. In areas of extreme rainfall and high temperatures, the clay and humus may be washed out, further reducing the buffering capacity of the soil. In low rainfall areas, unleached calcium pushes pH to 8.5 and with the addition of exchangeable sodium, soils may reach pH 10. Beyond a pH of 9, plant growth is reduced. High pH results in low micro-nutrient mobility, but water-soluble chelates of those nutrients can correct the deficit. Sodium can be reduced by the addition of gypsum (calcium sulphate) as calcium adheres to clay more tightly than does sodium causing sodium to be pushed into the soil water solution where it can be washed out by an abundance of water.


title: Soil

text: There are acid-forming cations (e.g. hydronium, aluminium, iron) and there are base-forming cations (e.g. calcium, magnesium, sodium). The fraction of the negatively-charged soil colloid exchange sites (CEC) that are occupied by base-forming cations is called base saturation. If a soil has a CEC of 20 meq and 5 meq are aluminium and hydronium cations (acid-forming), the remainder of positions on the colloids () are assumed occupied by base-forming cations, so that the base saturation is (the compliment 25% is assumed acid-forming cations). Base saturation is almost in direct proportion to pH (it increases with increasing pH). It is of use in calculating the amount of lime needed to neutralise an acid soil (lime requirement). The amount of lime needed to neutralize a soil must take account of the amount of acid forming ions on the colloids (exchangeable acidity), not just those in the soil water solution (free acidity). The addition of enough lime to neutralize the soil water solution will be insufficient to change the pH, as the acid forming cations stored on the soil colloids will tend to restore the original pH condition as they are pushed off those colloids by the calcium of the added lime.


title: Soil

text: The resistance of soil to change in pH, as a result of the addition of acid or basic material, is a measure of the buffering capacity of a soil and (for a particular soil type) increases as the CEC increases. Hence, pure sand has almost no buffering ability, though soils high in colloids (whether mineral or organic) have high buffering capacity. Buffering occurs by cation exchange and neutralisation. However, colloids are not the only regulators of soil pH. The role of carbonates should be underlined, too. More generally, according to pH levels, several buffer systems take precedence over each other, from calcium carbonate buffer range to iron buffer range.


title: Soil

text: The addition of a small amount of highly basic aqueous ammonia to a soil will cause the ammonium to displace hydronium ions from the colloids, and the end product is water and colloidally fixed ammonium, but little permanent change overall in soil pH.


title: Soil

text: The addition of a small amount of lime, Ca(OH), will displace hydronium ions from the soil colloids, causing the fixation of calcium to colloids and the evolution of CO and water, with little permanent change in soil pH.


title: Soil

text: The above are examples of the buffering of soil pH. The general principal is that an increase in a particular cation in the soil water solution will cause that cation to be fixed to colloids (buffered) and a decrease in solution of that cation will cause it to be withdrawn from the colloid and moved into solution (buffered). The degree of buffering is often related to the CEC of the soil; the greater the CEC, the greater the buffering capacity of the soil.


title: Soil

text: Soil chemical reactions involve some combination of proton and electron transfer. Oxidation occurs if there is a loss of electrons in the transfer process while reduction occurs if there is a gain of electrons. Reduction potential is measured in volts or millivolts. Soil microbial communities develop along electron transport chains, forming electrically conductive biofilms, and developing networks of bacterial nanowires.


title: Soil

text: Redox factors in soil development, where formation of redoximorphic color features provides critical information for soil interpretation. Understanding the redox gradient is important to managing carbon sequestration, bioremediation, wetland delineation, and soil-based microbial fuel cells.


title: Soil

text: Seventeen elements or nutrients are essential for plant growth and reproduction. They are carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sulfur (S), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), iron (Fe), boron (B), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), molybdenum (Mo), nickel (Ni) and chlorine (Cl). Nutrients required for plants to complete their life cycle are considered essential nutrients. Nutrients that enhance the growth of plants but are not necessary to complete the plant's life cycle are considered non-essential. With the exception of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, which are supplied by carbon dioxide and water, and nitrogen, provided through nitrogen fixation, the nutrients derive originally from the mineral component of the soil. The Law of the Minimum expresses that when the available form of a nutrient is not in enough proportion in the soil solution, then other nutrients cannot be taken up at an optimum rate by a plant. A particular nutrient ratio of the soil solution is thus mandatory for optimizing plant growth, a value which might differ from nutrient ratios calculated from plant composition.


title: Soil

text: Plant uptake of nutrients can only proceed when they are present in a plant-available form. In most situations, nutrients are absorbed in an ionic form from (or together with) soil water. Although minerals are the origin of most nutrients, and the bulk of most nutrient elements in the soil is held in crystalline form within primary and secondary minerals, they weather too slowly to support rapid plant growth. For example, the application of finely ground minerals, feldspar and apatite, to soil seldom provides the necessary amounts of potassium and phosphorus at a rate sufficient for good plant growth, as most of the nutrients remain bound in the crystals of those minerals.


title: Soil

text: The nutrients adsorbed onto the surfaces of clay colloids and soil organic matter provide a more accessible reservoir of many plant nutrients (e.g. K, Ca, Mg, P, Zn). As plants absorb the nutrients from the soil water, the soluble pool is replenished from the surface-bound pool. The decomposition of soil organic matter by microorganisms is another mechanism whereby the soluble pool of nutrients is replenished – this is important for the supply of plant-available N, S, P, and B from soil.


title: Soil

text: Gram for gram, the capacity of humus to hold nutrients and water is far greater than that of clay minerals, most of the soil cation exchange capacity arising from charged carboxylic groups on organic matter. However, despite the great capacity of humus to retain water once water-soaked, its high hydrophobicity decreases its wettability. All in all, small amounts of humus may remarkably increase the soil's capacity to promote plant growth.


title: Soil

text: The organic material in soil is made up of organic compounds and includes plant, animal and microbial material, both living and dead. A typical soil has a biomass composition of 70% microorganisms, 22% macrofauna, and 8% roots. The living component of an acre of soil may include 900 lb of earthworms, 2400 lb of fungi, 1500 lb of bacteria, 133 lb of protozoa and 890 lb of arthropods and algae.


title: Soil

text: A few percent of the soil organic matter, with small residence time, consists of the microbial biomass and metabolites of bacteria, molds, and actinomycetes that work to break down the dead organic matter. Were it not for the action of these micro-organisms, the entire carbon dioxide part of the atmosphere would be sequestered as organic matter in the soil. However, in the same time soil microbes contribute to carbon sequestration in the topsoil through the formation of stable humus. In the aim to sequester more carbon in the soil for alleviating the greenhouse effect it would be more efficient in the long-term to stimulate humification than to decrease litter decomposition.


title: Soil

text: The main part of soil organic matter is a complex assemblage of small organic molecules, collectively called humus or humic substances. The use of these terms, which do not rely on a clear chemical classification, has been considered as obsolete. Other studies showed that the classical notion of molecule is not convenient for humus, which escaped most attempts done over two centuries to resolve it in unit components, but still is chemically distinct from polysaccharides, lignins and proteins.


title: Soil

text: Most living things in soils, including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi, are dependent on organic matter for nutrients and/or energy. Soils have organic compounds in varying degrees of decomposition which rate is dependent on temperature, soil moisture, and aeration. Bacteria and fungi feed on the raw organic matter, which are fed upon by protozoa, which in turn are fed upon by nematodes, annelids and arthropods, themselves able to consume and transform raw or humified organic matter. This has been called the soil food web, through which all organic matter is processed as in a digestive system. Organic matter holds soils open, allowing the infiltration of air and water, and may hold as much as twice its weight in water. Many soils, including desert and rocky-gravel soils, have little or no organic matter. Soils that are all organic matter, such as peat (histosols), are infertile. In its earliest stage of decomposition, the original organic material is often called raw organic matter. The final stage of decomposition is called humus.