CHAPTER VI

THE PARTITIONERS AND THEIR POLES[*]

[*] This chapter has not been written without giving consideration to the Russian point of view. There is an excellent book on Russia since the Japanese War (from 1906 to 1912) by Peter Polejaïeff.

When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, there were at the most six million Poles in the vast territory stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Of these a large number, especially in Eastern Prussia and in Silesia, had already lost their sense of nationality. Poland was a country of feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status of the land in which they lived.

To-day there are twenty million Poles. Although they owe allegiance to three different sovereigns, they are more united than ever in their history. For their national feeling has developed in just the same way that the national feeling of Germans and Russians has developed, by education primarily, and by that remarkable tendency of industrialism, {97} which has grouped people in cities, and brought them into closer association. This influence of city life upon the destinies of Poland comes to us with peculiar force when we realize that since the last map of Europe was made Warsaw has grown from forty thousand to eight hundred thousand, Lodz from one thousand to four hundred thousand, Posen from a few hundreds to one hundred and fifty thousand, Lemberg and Cracow from less than ten thousand to two hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand respectively. These great cities (except Lodz, which Russia foolishly allowed to become an outpost of Pan-Germanism in the heart of a Slavic population) are the _foyers_ of Polish nationalism.

The second and third dismemberments of Poland (1793 and 1795) were soon annulled by the Napoleonic upheaval. The larger portion of Poland was revived in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The Congress of Vienna, just one hundred years ago, made what the representatives of the partitioning Powers hoped would be a definite redistribution of the unwelcome ghost stirred up by Napoleon. Poznania was returned to Prussia, and in the western end of Galicia a Republic of Cracow was created. The greater portion of Poland reverted to Russia, _not as conquered territory, but as a separate state, of which the Czar assumed the kingship and swore to preserve the liberties_. The unhappiness, the unrest, the agitation, among the Poles of the Muscovite Empire, just as among the Finns, came from the breaking of the promises by Russia to Europe when these subjects of alien races were allotted to her.

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The story of modern Poland is not different from that of any other nationalistic movement. A sense of nationality and a desire for racial political unity are not the phenomena which have been the underlying causes of the evolution of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Alsace-Lorraine, in Finland, among the various races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan Peninsula, as well as in Turkey and Persia, the underlying cause of political agitation, of rebellions and of revolutions has been the desire to secure freedom from absolutism. Nationalism is simply the tangible outward manifestation of the growth of democracy. There are few national movements where separatism could not have been avoided by granting local self-government. Mixed populations can live together under the same government without friction, if the lesser races are granted social, economic, and political equality. But nations that have achieved their own unity and independence through devotion to a nationalistic movement have shown no mercy or wisdom with smaller and less fortunate races under their domination. The very methods that European statesmen have fondly believed were necessary for assimilation have proved fatal to it.

The Polish question, as we understand it to-day, has little connection with the Polish revolutions of 1830 and of 1863. These movements against the Russian Government were conducted by the same elements of protest against autocracy that were at work in the larger cities and universities throughout Europe during the middle of the nineteenth century. {99} Nationalism was the reason given rather than the cause that prompted. The revolutions were unsuccessful because they were not supported by the nation. The mass of the people were indifferent to the cause, just as in other countries similar revolutions against despotism failed for lack of real support. The apathy of the masses has always been the bulwark of defence for autocracy and reactionary policies. Popular rights do not come to people until the masses demand them. Education alone brings self-government. This is the history of the evolution of modern Europe.

The Poles _as a nation_ began to worry their partitioners in the decade following the last unsuccessful revolution against Russia. To understand the contemporary phases of the Polish question, it is necessary for us to follow first its three-fold development, as a question of internal policy in Russia, Germany, and Austria. Only then is its significance as an international question clear.

THE POLES SINCE 1864 IN RUSSIA

The troubles of Russia in her relationship to the Poles have come largely from the fact that the distinction between Poland proper, inhabited by Poles, and the provinces which the Jagellons conquered but never assimilated, was not grasped by the statesmen who had to deal with the aftermath of the revolution. What was possible in one was thought to be possible in the other. What was vital in one was believed to be vital in the other. In the kingdom {100} of Poland, as it was bestowed upon the Russian Czar by the Congress of Vienna, there were massed ten million Poles who could be neither exterminated nor exiled. Nor was there a sound motive for attempting to destroy their national life. The kingdom of Poland was not an essential portion of the Russian Empire, and was not vitally bound to the fortunes of the Empire. So unessential has the kingdom of Poland been to Russia, and so fraught with the possibilities of weakness to its owner, that patriotic and far-sighted Russian publicists have advocated its complete autonomy, its independence or its cession to Germany. Because it was limitrophe to the territories occupied by the Poles of the other

## partitioners, there was constantly danger of weakening the defences of

the empire and of international complications. Through failing to treat these Poles in such a way that they would be a loyal bulwark against her enemies, Russia has done irreparable harm to herself as well as to them.

The Polish question in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine was a totally different matter. These provinces had been added to Russia in her logical development towards the west and the south-west. Their possession was absolutely essential to the existence of the Empire. Their population was not Polish, but Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and Russian. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the acquisition of these territories made possible the entrance of Russia into the concert of European nations. They had been conquered by Poland during the period of her greatness, and had naturally been lost by her {101} when she became weak. In these portions of Greater Poland, the Poles were limited to the landowning class, and to the more prosperous artisans in the cities and villages. They were the residue of an earlier conquering race that had never assimilated the country. They had abused their power, and were heartily disliked. These provinces were vital to Russia, and she was able to carry out the policy of uprooting the Poles. Their villages were burned, their fortunes and their lands confiscated, the landed proprietors deported to Siberia, and others so cruelly persecuted that, when their churches and schools were closed and they found themselves forbidden to speak their language outside of their own homes, they emigrated. In Lithuania, the Lithuanian language was also proscribed. The Russians had no intention of blotting out a Polish question in order to make place for a Lithuanian one.

Where the Poles were few in number, these measures, which were exactly the same as the Poles had employed themselves in the same territories several centuries before, were successful. The peasants were glad to see their traditional persecutors get a taste of their own medicine. It was not difficult to make these provinces Russian. They have gradually been assimilated into the Empire. In all fairness, one can hardly condemn the Russian point of view, as regards the Poles in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine. Only youthful Polish irredentists still dream of the restoration of the Empire of the Jagellons.

In the kingdom of Poland, the situation was {102} entirely different. This huge territory had been given to Russia by the Congress of Vienna upon the solemn assurance that it was to be governed as a separate kingdom by the Romanoffs. There was no thought in the Congress of Vienna of the disappearance of the Poles as a separate nationality from the map of Europe. But the autonomy of Poland was suppressed after the rebellion of 1830.

After the rebellion of 1863, Russia tried to assimilate the kingdom of Poland as well as the Polish marches. The repression was so severe that Polish nationalism was considered dead. The peasants had been indifferent to the movement. Not only had they failed to support it, but they had frequently shown themselves actually hostile to it.

It was because the nobles and priests were believed to be leaders of nationalistic and separatist movements, not only in Poland but in other allogeneous portions of the composite Empire, that Czar Alexander II emancipated the serfs. The policy of every autocratic government, when it meets the first symptoms of unrest in a subject race, is to strike at their church and their aristocracy. The most efficient way to weaken the power of the nobles is to strengthen the peasants. Alexander himself may have been actuated by motives of pure humanity, but his ministers would never have allowed the _ukase_ to be promulgated, had they not seen in it the means of conquering the approaching revolution in Poland. For the moment it was an excellent move, and accomplished its purpose. The Polish {103} peasants were led to believe that the Czar was their father and friend and champion against the exactions of the church and landowner. Was not their emancipation proof of this?

But in the long run the emancipation of the serfs proved fatal to Russian domination in Poland. For the advisers of Alexander had not realized that freemen would demand and attend schools, and that schools, no matter how careful the surveillance and restrictions might be, created democrats. Democrats would seize upon nationalism to express their aspiration for self-government. The emancipation of the serfs, launched as a measure to destroy Poland, has ended in making it. Emancipation created Polish patriots. It was a natural and inevitable result. The artificial aid of a governmental persecution helped and hastened this result. The Irishman expressed a great truth when he said that there are things that are not what they are.

A flock of hungry Russian functionaries descended upon Poland in 1864. They took possession of all departments of administration. The Polish language was used in courts only through an interpreter, and was forbidden as the medium of instruction in schools. No Polish signs were tolerated in the railways or post-offices. In the parts of the kingdom where there were bodies of the Lithuanians, their nationalism was encouraged, and they were shown many favours, in contradiction to the policy adopted towards the Lithuanians of Lithuania. Catholics who followed the Western Rite were forced to join the national church. There was a clear intention {104} to assimilate as much as possible the populations of the border districts of Poland.

After thirty years of repression, Russia had made no progress in Poland. In 1897, Prince Imeretinsky wrote to the Czar that the policy of the Government had failed. Polish national spirit, instead of disappearing, had spread remarkably among the peasant classes. The secret publication and importation of unauthorized journals and pamphlets had multiplied. The number of cases brought before the courts for infraction of the "law of association," which forbade unlicensed public gatherings and clubs, had so increased that they could not be heard. Heavy fines and imprisonment seem to have had no deterring effect.

[Illustration: Map--Partitions of Poland]

Could Russia hope to struggle against the tendencies of modern life? Free press and free speech are the complement of education. When men learn to read, they learn to think, and can be reached by propaganda. When men increase in prosperity, they begin to want a voice in the expenditure of the money they have to pay for taxes. When men come together in the industrial life of large cities, they form associations. No government, no system of spies or terrorism, no laws can prevent propaganda in cities. From 1864 to 1914, the kingdom of Poland has become more Polish than ever before in her history. Instead of a few students and dreamers, fascinated by the past glories of their race, instead of a group of landowners and priests, thinking of their private interests and of the Church, there is awakened a spirit of protest against Russian {105} despotism in the soul of a race become intelligently nationalistic.

The issue between Russia and her Poles has become clearer, and for that reason decidedly worse, since the disastrous war with Japan. The Poles have demanded autonomy in the fullest sense of the word. The Russians have responded by showing that it is their intention to destroy Poland, just as they intend to destroy Finland. There is an analogy between the so-called constitutional _régimes_ in Russia and Turkey. In each Empire, the granting of a constitution was hailed with joy by the various races. These races, who had been centres of agitation, disloyalty, and weakness, were ready to co-operate with their governments in building up a large, broad, comprehensive, national life upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But in both Empires, the dominant race let it soon be understood that the Constitution was to be used for a destructive policy of assimilation. In the Ottoman Empire, the Constitution was a weapon for destroying the national aspirations of subject races. In Russia it has been the same.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Czar Nicholas and his ministers had their great opportunity to profit by the lessons of Manchuria. But the granting of a constitution was a pure farce. Blind to the fact that the enlightened Poles were interested primarily in political reforms, and in securing equity and justice for the kingdom of Poland, instead of for the advancement of a narrow and theoretical nationalistic ideal, the Russians repulsed the proffered {106} loyalty of the Poles to a free and constitutional Russian Empire. In the second Duma, Dmowski and other Polish deputies unanimously voted the supplies for strengthening the Russian army. They stated that the Poles were willing to cast their lot loyally and indissolubly with constitutional Russia. Were they not brethren, and imbued with the same Pan-Slavic idea? Was it not logical to look to Russia as the defender of all the Slavs from Teutonic oppression?

But Poland, like Finland, was to continue to be the victim of Russian bureaucracy and of an intolerant nationalism which the Russians were beginning to feel as keenly and as arrogantly as the Prussians. Is the Kaiser, embodying the evils of militarism, more obnoxious and more dangerous to civilization than the Czar, standing for the horrors of bureaucratic despotism and absolutism? Have not the Armenian massacres, ordered from Constantinople, and the Jewish pogroms, ordered from Petrograd, associated Christian Czar with Mohammedan Sultan at the beginning of the twentieth century?

The first deliberate violation of the integrity of the kingdom of Poland was sanctioned by the Russian Duma in the same session in which it approved violation of Russian obligations to Finland. A law separating Kholm from the kingdom of Poland was voted on July 6, 1912. The test of the law declared that Kholm was still to be regarded as a portion of the kingdom of Poland, but to be directly attached to the Ministry of the Interior without passing by the intermediary of the Governor-General of Warsaw; {107} and to preserve the Polish adaptation of the Code Napoléon for its legal administration, but to have its court of appeal at Kief.

The elections of 1913 from the kingdom of Poland to the Duma gave a decided setback to the party of Dmowski, who had so long and so ably pled for a policy of Pan-Slavism through accommodation with Russia. The law concerning Kholm had been the response of the Duma to Dmowski's olive branch. The moderates were discredited. But the failure of the radical nationalists to conciliate the Jewish element caused their candidates to lose both at Warsaw and Lodz.

The birth of an anti-Semitic movement has been disastrous to Polish solidarity during recent years. The Polish nationalists suspected the Jews of working either for German or Russian interests. They were expecially bitter against the _Litvak_, or Lithuanian and south Russian Jews, who had been forced by Russia to establish themselves in the cities of Poland. Poland is one of the most important pales in the Empire. The Jewish population is one-fifth of the total, and enjoys both wealth and education in the cities. Their educated youth had been courageous and forceful supporters of Polish nationalism. Before the Russian intrigues of the last decade and the introduction of these non-Polish Jews, there had never been a strong anti-Semitic feeling in Poland. The Polish protests against the encroachment of the Russians upon their national liberties have been greatly weakened by their antagonism to the Jews. The anti-Semitic movement, which has carried away {108} both the moderate party of Dmowski and the radical nationalists, as was expected, has played into the hand of Russia.

The Muscovite statesmen, while endeavouring to use the Balkan Wars for the amalgamation of south Slavic races under the wing of Russia against Austria have treated the Poles as if they were not Slavs. During 1913 and the first part of 1914, the policy of attempting to russianize the Poles has proved disastrous to their feeling of loyalty to the Empire. The government announced definitely that the kingdom of Poland would be "compensated" for the loss of Kholm by a law granting self-government to Polish cities. This promise has not been kept. The municipal self-government project presented to the Duma was as farcical in practical results as all democratic and liberal legislation which that impotent body has been asked to pass upon.

THE POLES SINCE 1867 IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

The disappearance of Austria from Germany after the battle of Sadowa led to the organization of a new state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We must divorce in our mind the Austria before 1867 from the Austria-Hungary of the Dual Monarchy. The political situation changed entirely when Austrians and Hungarians agreed to live together and share the Slavic territories of the Hapsburg Crown. Austria no longer had need of her Galicians to keep the Hungarians in check. But there was equally important work for them to do.

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The Austrians have always treated the Poles very well. Galicia, which had been Austria's share in the partition of Poland, was given local self-government, with its own Diet, and proper representation in the Austrian _Reichsrath_. Poles were admitted in generous numbers to the functions of the Empire.

The Polish nationalists of Russia and Prussia feel very bitter about the indifference of the Galicians to the nation at large--or rather in captivity. They claim that the lack of national feeling among the Austrian Poles is due to the fact that they have been bribed by the Austrians to desert not only their brethren of Russia and of Prussia, but also their fellow-Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have heard this criticism ably and feelingly presented, but I do not think it just. Since national aspirations are awakened and sustained by the effort to secure political equality and justice, the enjoyment of these takes away need or desire to plot against the Government. The Poles of Austria are like the French of Canada. Their nationalism is literary and religious in character. There is no reason for its being anti-governmental.

Of late years, however, there has been a national Polish agitation in Galicia. It is directed not against the Government, but against the Ruthenians, who, to the number of three millions--nearly forty per cent. of the total population--inhabit the eastern section of Galicia. This local racial conflict, which has strengthened rather than weakened the attachment of the Poles to the Vienna Government, arose after the introduction of universal suffrage, when {110} eastern Galicia began to send in large numbers Ruthenian deputies to the Galician Diet and to the Austrian Parliament.

On April 12, 1908, Count Potocki was assassinated by a Ruthenian student, whose death sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment. With the complicity of wardens, the assassin escaped from jail after three years. There has never been peace between the Poles and the Ruthenians since that time. After serious disorders at the University of Lemberg, where the Ruthenian students were treated disgracefully, Polish and Ruthenian leaders tried to find common ground for reconciliation in December, 1911. The Ruthenians demanded electoral reform with greater representation, and the creation of a Ruthenian university. The imperial government communicated to the representatives of the two nationalities the project of a decree of public instruction in Galicia in January, 1913. The project was a marvel of ingenuity. A Ruthenian university was to be established after four years, but if by October 1, 1916, the law voting credits for it was not yet passed, a special school for Ruthenians would be attached to the University of Lemberg, until their own university was a reality. The teaching of the Ruthenian language would cease in the University of Lemberg when this "special school" was inaugurated. The Ruthenians were suspicious of a trick in the project. They could not understand its vagueness. It looked as if they would be giving up their present rights in the University of Lemberg, limited as they were, for an uncertainty. Why was {111} no definite date for opening specified, or indication given of the new university's location? Would it be maintained by Galicia with a budget appropriation in proportion to the taxes paid by Ruthenians?

The Ruthenian question in Galicia has been cited here to show how there are wheels within wheels in the complex questions of nationalities. European racial questions seem to follow the law of the animal world. The littlest animals are eaten by little animals, who in turn serve as food for larger animals. Nations which have suffered most cruelly from race persecution are generally themselves relentless and fanatical when the power to persecute is in their hands.

The Ruthenian question shows also how Poles and Austrians work together, and are content with the mutual advantages of their union. I have never met an Austrian Pole, who lived in Galicia and had a settled profession or business there, who was not a loyal--even ardent--supporter of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Austrian Poles are dismayed as they face the terrible dilemma of union with Russia or Germany.

THE POLES SINCE 1870 IN GERMANY

Germany, like Russia, has had a twofold Polish question: The acquisition of Polish territory on either side of the Vistula to the Baltic Sea was as essential to the creation of a strong Prussian kingdom as was the acquisition of Pomerania. The portion of Poland which, before the partition, cut off eastern {112} from western Prussia was fully as much German as Polish,--in fact more so. It became German by logical and natural conquest in the course of Prussia's evolution.

The situation was different in Poznania. This territory of the later

## partition reverted to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. In 1815, its

population was only twenty per cent. German. For fifty years the process of Germanization went on naturally--in no way forced. When the German Empire was formed, nearly half of Poznania was German. Many of the leading Poles had lost their sense of Polish nationality. They had become German in language and in culture. How many families there are in Prussia whose Polish origin is betrayed only by their names!

But the Germanized Poles, for the most part, retained their religion. The notorious _Kulturkampf_ of Bismarck aroused again the sense of nationality which had been lost, not only among the prosperous Poles of Poznania, but even of Silesia. Only the bureaucratic classes were unaffected by this renaissance of nationalism awakened by revolt against religious persecution.

Just after the formation of the Empire, when Prussia needed all her strength and force to preserve her hegemony in the new confederation and to lead modern Germany in the path of progress and civilization, on either side of her kingdom she had to cope with nationalist movements of Danes and of Poles. But she did not fear to undertake also the assimilation of Alsace and Lorraine!

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Since the _Kulturkampf_, the Polish renaissance in Prussia has thrived in spite of persecution. As in Russia, the Polish language was banished, Polish teachers were transferred to schools in other parts of the Empire, and about forty thousand Poles of Russian and Austrian nationality were expelled from the country. The persecution has been carried on in the schools, in the army, and in the church. School children have been forbidden to pray in the Polish language. Two unconstitutional laws have been passed by the Prussian Diet. The first of these forbade the Poles to speak Polish in public gatherings. The second, sanctioned by the _Landtag_ on March 8, 1908, authorized the Government to expropriate land owned by Poles _for the purpose of selling it to Germans_.

The Prussian scheme for getting rid of the Poles was to drive them from their lands and instal German colonists. Private enterprise was first tried. A "colonization society" was formed, with a large capital, and given every encouragement by Prussian officialdom. But economic laws are not controlled by politics. The colonists were boycotted. Enormous sums of money were lost in wasted crops. The farms of the colonists had to be resold by the sheriff, and were bought in by Poles. To discourage the buying back of the German farms, a law was passed forbidding Poles to build upon land acquired by them after the date of the colonization society's failure. The Poles got around this law most cleverly. If one goes into Poznania to-day, he will see farmhouses, barns, dairies, stables--even chicken-coops--on {114} wheels. The people live in glorified wagons. They do not build. Will there be a law now against owning wagons?

When the failure of private enterprise was demonstrated, the Prussian Government announced its intention of applying the law of expropriation "for the use of the commission of colonization." This was in October, 1912. At the beginning of 1913, the Polish deputies to the _Reichstag_ brought before their colleagues of all Germany the question of the expropriation of Polish lands in Prussia. They asked the representatives of a supposedly advanced and constitutional nation what they thought of this injustice. Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg tried to keep the question from being debated. He argued with perfect reason that it was a purely internal Prussian matter, which the Imperial Parliament was incompetent to discuss. But the Catholic centre and the Socialist left combined to vote an order of the day allowing the discussion of the Polish lands question.

In the history of the German confederation, it was the first time that an imperial chancellor had received a direct defiance. This vote is mentioned here to show how Prussian dealings with the Poles, just as with Alsace-Lorraine, have tended to weaken the purely Prussian substructure of the German confederation, and to arouse a dangerous protest against Prussian hegemony. Contempt for the elementary principles of justice has been the key-note of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg's career. His mentality is typical of that of German bureaucracy--no, more than that, of German statesmanship. It is {115} possible to have sympathy with German national aspirations, but not with the methods by which those aspirations are being interpreted to the world. To show how little regard he had for parliamentary opinion in the German confederation, the Chancellor forced through the Prussian _Landtag_, on April 22, 1913, only three months after his rebuke from the _Reichstag_, an infamous law, voting one hundred and twenty-five million marks for German colonization in Prussian Poland. Shortly before the European war broke out, another unconstitutional law was passed, which makes possible the arbitrary division of large landed properties owned by Poles.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT OF THE POLISH QUESTION

During the war with Japan, the Czar and the Kaiser understood each other perfectly on the Polish question. The neutrality of Germany was essential to Russia at that time. The Russians owe much to Germany for her benevolent attitude of those trying days. The Poles have since paid the bill.

As in Prussia, the Poles of Russia have seen their liberties menaced more than ever before during the past decade, and have had to struggle hopelessly against a policy of ruthless extermination. If on the one hand the Prussian persecution is more to be condemned because Germany asks the world to believe that she is an enlightened, constitutional nation, and "the torch-bearer of civilization," while Russia is admittedly reactionary and still half-barbarous, on the other hand there is less excuse for {116} the Russian persecution of the Poles. For in Russia it is not Teuton against Slav, but Slav against Slav.

Germany and Russia have had the common interest of fellow-criminals in their relation to the Polish nation. Russia has not hesitated to co-operate with Germany through diplomatic and police channels in riveting more securely the fetters of the Poles. Her championship of the south Slavs against Teutonic aggression has been supposedly on the grounds of "burning love for our brothers in slavery, in whose veins runs the same blood as ours." The sham and hypocrisy of this attitude is revealed when we consider the fact that Russia has never protested to Germany against the treatment of the Poles of Poznania, nor shown any inclination to treat with equity her own Poles. Here are "brothers in slavery" nearer home. There is ground for suspicion that her interest in the south Slavs has been purely because they are on the way to Constantinople and the Mediterranean. One who reads the recent history of Russia stultifies himself if he allows himself to believe that Russia has entered into the present war to defend Servia from Austrian aggression _through any love for or humanitarian interest in the Servians_. If Russia gets the opportunity, will her treatment of Servian national aspirations be any different from that of Austria-Hungary? When we try to answer this question, let us think of Bulgaria after 1878 (the last "war of liberation") and of Poland _in 1914_.

On August 16, 1914, when I read the proclamation of Czar Nicholas to the partitioned Poles, promising {117} to restore administrative autonomy to the kingdom of Poland, and posing as the liberator of Poles now under the yoke of Austria and of Prussia, it was hard to be enthusiastic. For the Jews of Odessa and Kief, and the Finns of Helsingfors, rise up to add their cry of warning to the bitter comments of Polish friends. Only two years ago I saw in those cities subjects of the Czar suffering cruelly from fanaticism and broken promises, and deprived of that which is now being held out as bait to the Poles, and as a sop to Russia's Allies.

Austria-Hungary has been able to use the Russian treatment of Poland as a means of strengthening her own hold on the border regions of the Empire. It was at the instigation of Ballplatz that the Galician deputies, on December 16, 1911, made a motion in the Reichsrath, inviting the Minister of Foreign Affairs "to undertake steps among the Powers who signed the conventions at Vienna in 1815 to assure the maintenance of the frontiers of the kingdom of Poland, of which Russia, in violation of her international obligations, was threatening the integrity. For the separation of Kholm from Poland is an attack upon Polish historic and national consciousness." It was tit for tat with the two Eastern Powers. Russia burned with indignation for the feelings of Servia when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary burned with indignation for the feelings of her own loyal Polish subjects, when Russia separated Kholm from Poland. Both had violated international treaties. Russia had no genuine interest in the Servians, and Austria {118} none in the Poles. They merely seized upon weapons with which to attack each other.

It is a mystery how French and British public opinion, always so traditionally favourable to downtrodden races, and especially to the Poles, can hail the Russian entry into Lemberg as a "victory for civilization." To the Austrian Poles, the coming of the Cossacks is as the coming of the Uhlans to the Belgians. They look upon the Russian invasion of Galicia as a calamity to their national life. Fighting with the Austrians are thirty thousand young Poles who call themselves Sokols (falcons). Their organization is something like the German _Turnverein_, but more purely military. The Poles of Austria-Hungary are a unit against Russia.

One can make no such positive statement about the attitude of the Poles of the other two partitioners. They have little hope of any amelioration of their lot from a change of masters through the present war. As I write, the thunder of German cannon is heard at Warsaw, and the unhappy kingdom of Poland is the centre of conflict between Russia and Germany. The Poles are fighting on both sides, and Polish non-combatants are suffering from the brutality of both "liberating" armies. The situation is exactly expressed by a Polish proverb which is the fruit of centuries of bitter experience: _Gdzie dwóch panów sie, bije, ch[l-tilde]op w skur[e-cedille], dostaje_--"When two masters fight, the peasant receives the blows."

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