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The New Poland
By
Charles O. Cameron
L
941
A Series of Articles Reprinted by Permission of
THE DETROIT JOURNAL (Copyright)
Published by
THE NATIONAL POLISH DEPARTMENT OF AMERICA
2138 Pierce Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
Copyright 1919
11
Nat, Polis! Dept.
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Poland's Historic Stand for Democracy
and Liberty
A
NEW Great Power of Democracy is looming up on the war-
scarred frontiers of the three fallen empires of Prussia,
Russia and Austria.
The new Great Power is Poland-a new government but an old
nation, a kingdom-republic older in history than Prussia or Russia
or Austria.
*
Her old independent government was slowly crushed to death
about 125 years ago by the conspiracies of the Hohenzollerns, the
Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs.
But though her government was crushed, though her elected
kings were dethroned and her parliaments silenced, though heroic
leaders were martyred or exiled, her people have never surrendered
their individuality to the conquerors. Under the oppression of
Czars and Kaisers the Poles have clung to their own language, their
traditions of democracy, and to their undying hope that the day of
deliverance would come.
The day of deliverance has now come indeed, when the freemen
of Poland will take their place among the republics of the world.
The time came when the whole world was weary of Czars and
Kaisers, just as Poland had long been weary of them. The time
came when the world was prepared for the ideals of democracy for
which ancient Poland stood, which her heroes died to maintain.
And when the war finally brought deliverance to the captive
nation, the long-oppressed people were found prepared and ready
to assume the burden of self-government. They have been trained
in a school of liberty through a thousand years of glory, and
they have kept the faith of democracy through two centuries of
oppression.
In one respect there is no story like this story, no history like
the history of Poland. Everything in her past has a significance
for the present and the future. Everything developing in the pres-
ent readjustment in Europe is better understood by a study of
Poland's past.
-10
2
POLAND'S HISTORIC STAND
For Poland is a land with an Interrupted History. During
many generations she has been kept from the great state of Europe.
Now she reappears, as if out of prison, to resume the noble role she
maintained in mightier centuries, and to march among modern
nations in the spirit of her ancient chivalry.
The Old Land
of Freemen
THE
HE hopes of future Poland rest in the spirit of the historic.
past. What we have witnessed in her is the carrying forward
of principles of freedom which she sought in vain to work out
in old ages of force and blood.
The Poles were valiant in war, but never aggressors. They
sought to work out principles of human happiness and increasing
democracy, while Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns and Romanoffs
and the dynasty of Sweden plotted restlessly for more empire.
Poland was a nation traveling peaceably on her way, defending
herself, defending Prussia and Austria and Russia and all Europe
at times, but who finally fell among thieves and was despoiled.
We shall see the thieves deprived of their booty, we shall see
the defrauded nation rehabilitated. To know what this shall mean
we must consider what the records of Poland's glory reveal.
The first faint records of life in what is now Poland, and what
is to be Poland, show a people dwelling in communities or cities,
but each freeman in his own house.
This individualism of the freemen is a striking feature of the
oldest Polish life. Some of the Slavic peoples dwelt in community
houses like vast tenements. The Pole always maintained his indi-
vidual family life.
This capacity for individualism continues to this day a marked
trait of the Polish people. The Polish immigrant to America dwells
each by himself. In many Polish rooming houses each roomer has
his own account at the grocer. There never was in Polish history
an effort by prince or king to crush out the individual life.
The Poles developed a notion of individual liberty which jealous
kings were able to crush by their armies of conscripts. Neverthe-
less, these ideals are the ideals for which all democracies stand
today.
3
FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
The sufferings of Poland at the hands of surrounding empires
was not her fault. It was due to her ideals. Left to herself in
the past, as she will be in the future, Poland would have developed
a freedom and a culture to make the world marvel. Her sorrows
and tribulations were due wholly to the constant conspiracies of
Russian,.Prussian, Saxon, Swedish and Austrian rulers to interfere
with her internal liberties, and break her strength among the nations.
Means Much to
All Americans
T
HE past sufferings and the future hopes of this splendid peo-
ple mean much to all Americans. For we and the Poles, even
the Poles in their own land under Russian or Teutonic oppres-
sion, have common heroes.
Their Thaddeus Kosciuszko, hero of the great revolt of the last
decade of the eighteenth century. Kosciuszko, in whose honor a
mound of earth was raised at Cracow from soils brought from every
Polish battlefield, was the same Kosciuszko who served as an aide
to Washington, and whom Washington described as "the ideal
soldier of liberty."
Their Count Casimir Pulaski, who fought in vain for Polish
freedom in 1768, escaped to America to fight for the independence
of the colonies, and after serving at Brandywine and on other fields,
was mortally wounded in fighting at Savannah as a general in the
American army.
4
This Count Pulaski was the forerunner of many other Poles
who have died for this republic. The Civil War had soldiers whose
fathers fled from Austria in the thirties, and from Germany in
1848, while many sons of the Great Migration of 1880 fought in the
Spanish war and in this last war.
So while we as American children read of Kosciuszko and
Pulaski as of Lafayette, the Poles also read of these men in their
European achievements. Everyone knows that Lafayette and
Franklin have proved the great ties of union between America and
France-these men are the common heroes of both republics. So
it is with Kosciuszko and Pulaski. The Poles in remotest Poland
know how these heroes loved America.
Nor is this all. Niemcewicz, the beloved Polish patriotic his-
4
POLAND'S HISTORIC STAND
torian, the biographer of Kosciuszko, wrote also for his own people
a biography of Washington, whom he knew in America during our
Revolution. So the name of our first President is enshrined in a
Polish classic. The student of Polish history may read of Wash-
ington as of Casimir the Great or John Sobieski.
The Pole in remotest Poland thus looks upon the Americans as
a people morally akin to him. We also can look upon these old
champions of liberty as our own comrades and kinsmen in human-
ity's long battle for freedom. It needs only a little consideration of
the great achievements of the past to make us appreciate how the
spirit of Old Poland and of New Poland is also the spirit of
America.
The Unrecorded
Slavic Empires
T
HE Slavic nations, including Russians, Poles, Bohemians,
Ukrainians, Serbs, Bulgars, Slovenians, etc., seem once to have
spread much farther into western Europe than they do today.
In the days before recorded history there were great struggles and
wars between the same Teutons and Slavs who have battled before
our eyes during the past four years.
The Slavs, in different groups, once held such well-known Teu-
tonic cities as Berlin, Vienna, Jena, Leipzig. Potsdam is a Slavic
name, so is Pomerania. But long before written history, long before
the influence of missionaries brought regular records, the different
Slavic peoples had taken some definite form. Some of the Slavic
nations then in existence, like the Lusatians and the Polabish peo-
ple, were later overwhelmed by Teutonic absorption, which sought
in vain to absorb the Poles and Bohemians.
So as early as the eighth and ninth centuries of the Christian eraˆ
there are traces of a definite nationality in "the Plain" or "Pole,"
the vast rich level land spreading about the River Vistula..
This national stock was divided into tribes, each with tribal gods
and spirits, chiefly gods of the trees and harvests and the storm.
Here is where the Poles and Poland emerge into history just at
the same time that the successors of Charlemagne are laying the
foundations of France and Germany and Italy, and while England
is taking new unity under the kings of Wessex,
A
FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
5
Now even in that far past the character of the Pole was revealed.
He was never an aggressive warrior. He was happy to let his
neighbor pray to his own tribal gods, while he prays to his own.
His society was based upon the freeman. Individual vengeance
was provided in his law.
Centuries later a Bohemian poet described the Slavs as "dove-
blooded." Dove-blooded in a sense: peace-loving, home-loving,
farm-loving, the Poles of that old time were.
We can see the character of the old time Pole revealed in his
descendant of today. He still is ready to fight for defense, for the
liberty of Poland and other lands-yet how Poland has rejoiced in
the coming of peace! The Poles have never mingled in our more
aggressive activities to the same extent as other nations, yet they
gave the largest proportion of volunteers to the American army
when democracy was to be saved.
Ages of Battle
Are Begun
Th
HE reader of Polish history will remain convinced of one
thrilling fact.
That is, that if the Poles had been left undisturbed on their
acres, they might never have become warriors at all. Several times,
when the Poles made war, they had previously been so peaceful that
the battlefield saw them with no arms but scythes and other imple-
ments of peace.
It was outside attack that developed the great war record of
Poland, outside attack and, the demand of her chivalry that she
protect Christendom in many hours of peril.
Today, as the shadowy lines of Great Poland again loom up in
eastern Europe, many are asking, "What will be the spirit of this
new Great Power?" There is a shadowy outline drawn of a great
level land, enriched by many navigable rivers and crossed by old
highways and modern railroads, a country of 110,000 square miles
and 30,000,000 inhabitants.
We shall then create another Great Power-will it be a great
power for good or for evil? Will it be a force for all humanity, or
merely a selfish force?
6
POLAND'S HISTORIC STAND
The answer must be sought in the ancient history of Poland's
greatness.
Until the rise of the American republic there was no history
like hers. It was a history of aggrandizement chiefly by peaceful
annexation, by states seeking admission. But at all times her power
was exerted to strike at tyrants, or to beat back invaders.
She was not a conquering oppressor. In fact, for many weary
centuries, while sheltered nations grew to power in entrenched
Europe, Poland stood at the barrier of the east and spent her blood
and strength holding the Tartar and the Turk from the western
lands.
If Poland in those dim ages could develop a character that won
her the title of "The Knight Among Nations," what will she develop
in a modern age of enlightenment and national honor?
The real truth is that the old ideals of Poland were too fine and
true for those bloody centuries. It required the moral strength of
modern enlightenment to bring Poland to the place where she can
work out her own noble traditions, and be appreciated by a modern.
world.
Baptized
in Fire
T
HE greatest decision in the history of Poland was in her choice.
of a form of Christian faith. In the ninth century Russia,
under St. Vladimir, embraced the Greek church. In the same
century Emperor Otto the First, of the Holy Roman empire, was
seen making war on all the lands round about. He hurled a body
of Teutonic warriors against the pagan Poles, thus making the first
clear record of the old, old strife between Slav and Teuton.
Mieszko, or Mieczyslaw the First, was then leader of the Polish
people. He was the leader in some ancient and Slavic sense, and
the fruit of his leadership was to lead Poland into the western fam-
ily of nations instead of the eastern. He was the first Polish king
to accept the spreading Christian faith, and he accepted it from
Roman Catholic missionaries.
•
Thus a definite line of difference was drawn between the Rus-
sian Vladimir at Kieff and the Polish Mieszko in his new capital at
Gniezno. The decision made Poland western. It gave her national
7
FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
soul a western outlook. It brought up her individual citizens in
touch with the active powers of Europe.
The fruits of this were rich and everywhere abundant. Poland
had a chain of great universities when Russia scarcely had schools.
And Poland was a limited monarchy centuries ago, while Russia
could not limit the Czar until she dethroned him.
Mieszko felt the grim and ruthless power of the Emperor Otto
and his Teutonic knights. So, though the Teutonic invaders were
withdrawn after the pagan ruler embraced Christianity, Mieszko
nevertheless bowed to the gigantic German power. He was there-
fore given the title of Duke of Poland, the first of a series of Pol-
ish rulers, dukes and kings, who will be succeeded in our day by
presidents of Poland.
Here appears one of the first great surprises of Polish history.
Poland was first a formless and unorganized land of farmers pray-
ing to local idols and spirits.
Then, all at once, in the course of a few splendid years, she
became organized into military departments, and into ecclesiastical
dioceses. Suddenly she saw her dove-cote towns divided among
feudal castellans or barons. Immigrant monks from France, Eng-
land and. Italy laid the foundations of a new agriculture. With the
development of the country came an influx of German labor on the
feudal estates, and German residents in the cities. Poland suddenly
marched forward to a place of power among nations.
This all had its effect when Poland's first great warrior king,
Boleslaw the First, son of Mieszko the First, took the throne. He
gained first the full inheritance of his father, then he fought to
establish Poland among the powers. He pushed his arms triumph-
antly to the conquest of Pomerania and the Baltic shore, swept far
into Russia, and temporarily gained Bohemia.
These wars were fought nearly 1,000 years ago, yet they were
the wars of a free people against Kaiserism, and against German
Kaisers or Emperors. This recent war has brought the western
world very late into conflict with the two ancient enemies of Poland,
Germany and Turkey. Many of the old battles of the tenth and
eleventh centuries had war-notes which might have been sounded
anywhere from Belgium to Mesopotamia during the past four years.
Boleslaw the First was offered an early alliance with Germany,
as a subordinate king. This was in the year 1000. His answer
8
POLAND'S HISTORIC STAND
༣
was a strangely typical instance of Polish independence. Boleslaw
did not take the title from the hand of the German Kaiser of that
Holy Roman Empire. But 24 years later he called the princes and
prelates together at Gniezno, and there was crowned king by his
own decree. Thereafter he refused to acknowledge any subordinate
duty to the Emperors.
The Sad Free
Kingdom
T
HE self-crowning of Boleslaw was typical of the Pol-
ish spirit, even in the face of many perils. There was in this
a strange, unbelievable daring. The Polish country, an open
land, was surrounded by enemies, Teutonic and Slavic. It was
exposed to the advancing, threatening rush of Tartar tribes from
the eastern steppes. Amalgamation with the Holy Roman Empire.
might seem a natural preservative policy.
But it was part of Poland's destiny always to cling to her own
individuality, and she did this from the tenth century to the twen-
tieth.
Later articles in this series will set forth some of the later great
events in the advancing history of Poland. What Americans should
understand and appreciate, what thoughtful students of history the
world over must appreciate, is the noble and steadfast spirit that
governs that history. We come to appreciate that Poland, even
when her institutions appeared ancient, had a spirit of freedom
which we are proud to call modern.
Boleslaw was indeed more of the type of conqueror than most
Polish kings. But that was in the first century of his nation's
emergence from barbarism. The later heroes of Poland are often
found sword in hand, but it is a defensive sword.
The spirit of her patriotism is that of a nation often bruised by
ruffian empires, stricken to the earth in wars of alien conquest, but
rising with the patient defiance of her patriotic hymn, "Poland Is
Not Yet Lost."
The moral grandeur of her old ideals can be seen in her early.
traditions. The legends of many nations trace their kings to de-
scent from the sun or the gods.
The Polish tradition was morę
like a story out of the Scriptures. The legend was that the first
FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
9
king, Piast, when a poor man, entertained two strangers one night
in his peasant cottage. In the morning it was revealed that his
visitors were angels, and that for his hospitality he was to be
crowned the ruler of the land. The dynasty was founded not in a
boasted record of blood, but in a tradition of benevolence. Nothing
in Polish history is so illustrative of the Polish temperament as this
old legend. Only a people of great worth can produce a fiction of
noble action.
The story of Piast the Peasant is really like an allegory of all
Poland's story. Poland has never been a rich nation, but she has
been noble and generous and brave. Great misfortunes were hers
after the reign of Boleslaw. Divisions split the kingdom, internal
strife distressed the people, Tartar hordes swept through Russia
into Poland, and Poland in her suffering held them back from
countries further west.
In the midst of these sorrows outside interference in Poland's
internal affairs never ceased, nor did it end until the last partition
of the country. In the eleventh century it took the efforts of a
series of kings to secure the rights of succession to the throne to
the eldest son. The old Polish ducal law had been that every patri-
mony must be divided. Neighboring powers wanted this law kept
by the princes so that Poland's kings would always divide the
country, and thus the land would steadily diminish into smaller and
smaller portions.
However, Casimir the Great succeeded finally in establishing a
regular succession, an undivided inheritance.
When he had done this, it could have been noted that all the
distresses of the country had not halted the general advance of the
people toward liberty.
The Polish liberty of those early centuries was not like ours in
statute. But it was strangely like our liberty in its spirit. One of
the reasons, possibly, why Poland has always attracted Americans,
and America is so dear a name to the Poles, is this likeness of spirit..
Early Polish life, like early American life, included provision
for slaves. But there was a steady approximation to greater liberty.
And the honored heroes of Poland are not slave-makers like Wil-
liam the Conqueror, but rather liberators of serfs, like Kosciuszko.
Thus America honors Abraham Lincoln more than Cortez.
10
POLAND'S HISTORIC STAND
The best study of Poland's real policy of liberty, her early doc-
trine of "self determination," is found by leaving Boleslaw and the
beginnings of her greatness, and advancing to the period in the
fifteen and sixteenth centuries, when Poland became the largest
state in Europe.
After the Tartar invasion had been swept away, Conrad of
Poland forgot the early dangers from the German arms, and him-
self invited the German Knights of the Cross to settle in his domin-
ions. The avowed task of these knights, who settled on the coasts
of the Baltic, was partly helping to convert the pagan Lettish
tribes. But the knightly forces grew into an aggressive temporal
organization.
The Polish dukes showed no advanced fear of the Teutonic
knights, until all at once these swordsmen rushed out of their as-
signed territories and battled successfully to wrest from Poland.
sections of the present East and West Prussia.
Casimir the
Great
W
Gla
They then struck to the south. But by this time Wladislaw,
king of Poland, had re-united his forces and the divided country,
and was able to defeat them and drive them back.
date the Polish state.
LADISLAW died in 1332. Then arose his son, Casimir
the Great, who overwhelmed the plans of the Teutonic
Knights completely. For 37 years he labored to consoli-
He left her strong and united, able to laugh at German plots and
intrigue, and ready for her great territorial era.
Casimir the Great was the only Polish monarch who was called
"the Great," and this because he built cities of marble in place of
huts of wood or rushes. He left no son, so the throne went to his
son-in-law, Louis of Hungary. His daughter, St. Hedwig, suc-
ceeded Louis on the throne. In 1386 the queen married Jagellon
of Lithuania, and founded a new dynasty in Poland.
This union of Lithuania and Poland, made more and more com-
plete and solid during two centuries, has always been a proud inci-
dent in the history of Poland.
FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
11
The Poles are proud of their Lithuanian writers, such as Mic-
kiewicz and Sienkiewicz, and of the patriotic Lithuanian Kosciuszko.
They are proud that they were able to effect a union with a nation.
speaking a separate language and worshiping in a different church.
To this day in America it is common to see the arms of Lithuania
and the arms of Poland both emblazoned over a Polish church or
place of assembly.
But recent debates between these old allies show how near to
the present time are these events of the past. There is a strong
movement in Lithuania for complete independence of Poland un-
der the peace treaty. Lithuanians are found demanding "absolute
self-determination."
Now, though the Poles would like to have as large a country as
possible, it is expected that they will not in any way contest the
right of Lithuania to form her own republic, if she wishes. The
self-determination of small nations, the freedom of union on the
part of separate nationalities, is treasured by the Poles today as it
was by St. Hedwig.
It required two centuries and many conventions to cement the
union between Poland and Lithuania. But in the meantime there
had been other accretions to the Polish territory-West Prussia,
Pomerania, Livonia, Courland.
In each of these cases there was no war of conquest, but a vol-
untary application by the affected states for a union with the Polish
state. Family connections made possible temporary unions be-
tween Poland and Hungary, but none of these continued.
No state, until America arose, ever grew so great without armed ·
conquest as Poland became. She arose to this dignity and strength
in the teeth of opposition and envy, without meddling with other
nations, and by the pure force of her own popular ideas. And her
kings ruled over different nationalities and different languages by
the force of moral authority. It is true that in the next few cen-
turies feuds among the nobles developed, aided by the conspiracies
of meddling outside monarchs. But Poland in her most glorious
period ruled by the voluntary co-operation of all her citizens.
12
POLAND'S HISTORIC STAND
Heritages of
Freedom
TH
HE present day Pole or Polish-American knows these things,
though they are strange to Americans. The Polish soldier,
whether fighting in France, or in Russia, or in any other coun-
try, has not been fighting for "liberty" of any vague or hazy sort.
He has not been fighting for liberty for himself or his own nation
alone.
He has been fighting for the long-submerged but still vitalized
ideals of the old Polish freedom, singularly like the doctrines laid
down by the Wilsons, and the Lloyd Georges, and the Clemenceaus
of the present day.
The current newspapers have printed a report from Poland
which throws a fascinating sidelight on the ancient Polish liberties.
A Jewish leader in Poland has declared that the Jews will ask there
for autonomy in their own communities and for separate courts.
It might seem a startling thing for representatives of one reli-
gion to ask autonomy and separate courts.
But the fact is that in the old days of Polish liberty, Jewish.cit-
izens did have separate autonomous districts and separate courts.
These demands of one section of the present population of Poland
fall within the liberal limits of the old Polish constitution.
Thus in many ways it can be seen that the Polish people, now
about to resume their own self-government, are fortified by the
noblest traditions and principles of human liberty. They are en-
tering on no new experiment, like a Russian republic or a Turkish
limited monarchy. The oppression the Poles have suffered has been
foreign, the liberty they hope to enjoy has always been their own.
The nation the United States has helped to set free is a nation.
whose sons helped to set us free. It is a nation which had devel-
oped doctrines of freedom before the Mayflower landed at
Plymouth, before the founding of Jamestown.
So the American nation, or any other liberty-loving people, can
be sure that the spirit of the old, Polish heroes of freedom still rules.
There are thousands of glorious proofs of this enduring spirit, and
some of its manifestations will be shown in later articles.
FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
13
Whether any particular clause of the old Polish order is
adopted, such as the local autonomy of religious communities, is
yet to be decided.
But it is clear that the spirit of religious liberty, of personal
liberty, of social and individual justice, as caught from the inspira-
tion of the past, and as taught by the example of present day
thriving democracies, will rule throughout the new dominion of the
free Polish people.
Polish Undying Passion for Liberty Shown in
Modern and Ancient Heroism
REE Poland will very soon assume her place in the world's
great sisterhood of republics.
The future success of the statesmen and people of Free
Poland is of vital interest and vital importance to all Americans,
and to all the free peoples of the world.
Humanity itself is at stake in the success of all the oppressed
democracies which have been freed by the downfall of autocracy.
For unless these young republics stand firm, holding fast their
popular liberties, the war will seem to have been waged in vain.
But we have two grand assurances that Free Poland will stand
the test, and will prove worthy of a high place in the council of
free nations.
One great assurance is in the Past, in the mighty history of Old
Poland's wars for freedom, which she fought until her very life-
blood was drained for the cause of liberty.
The second great assurance is in the Present, in the heroic rec-
ord of Polish troops battling for democracy on every front in the
Great War. These showed their clear inheritance of the old liberty-
loving blood of Poland.
How the Sons
Proved Worthy
TH
HE sorrows and sufferings of Poland during the past two
centuries drove many of her sons into exile in far-away lands.
But when the trumpets blew for the Great War there was
thrilling unanimity among the sons of those exiles, who arose in
England, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and other
countries and rushed to the standards of Democracy.
*
In our own country hundreds of thousands of Polish descent
enrolled under the American flag. In addition, there were thou-
sands of Poles not citizens, or born in enemy countries, or outside.
the American enlistment ages, who enrolled here in the Polish army
for service in France.
POLISH UNDYING PASSION FOR LIBERTY
16
D
Just as Thaddeus Kosciuszko crossed the wide ocean to fight
for the liberty of America, so these Poles crossed the ocean again
to fight for freedom in France. And the records of the war shine.
with testimony that the spirit of Kosciuszko's soldiers is as imper-
ishable as their love of liberty.
Our American cities recently saw a group of 13 soldiers, in the
blue of the Polish army, whose very presence. bore testimony to
the unquenchable Polish spirit. These were 12 soldiers of the Pol-
ish army, every one of whom had volunteered from America. Their
leader was the French-born son of a Polish father and a French
mother.
The leader, still in his early twenties, was scarred with 231
wounds. He had received 22 wounds, and his breast was ablaze
with decorations, when he hurried back to the front, and his leg
was carried away by a cannon ball. He cried, in his native French
and in the spirit of his ancestral country, "Vive la Pologne!" or
"Long live Poland," as he fell unconscious on the roaring field.
The Undying
Aspiration
WH
Such was the leader. And what of his 12 companions, who
came from this country which is so fond of peace? Every one of
those young men had at least the Croix de Guerre, for distinguished
valor on the field. Every one had been wounded. And every one,
while rejoicing in the advent of peace, rejoiced also that he had had
his part in the great work.
HAT was the reason for this?
The reason furnishes our
second great assurance that Free Poland will deserve her
place among the world's democracies. That reason is found
in Poland's past, in her long, long war for democracy and civiliza-
tion, the war of a thousand years.
These young men were the sons of Polish exiles. The grand-
father of one of them had fallen in a Polish revolt in 1863. An-
other traced a proud descent to a hero of Kosciuszko's army of
peasants.
Whether born in America or in France, in England or Australia,
the sons of Polish freemen are all born to the same passion for
liberty. They are never warlike, never aggressive, they seldom are
SHOWN IN MODERN AND ANCIENT HEROISM
17
found among professional soldiers or students at military acade-
mies, yet none of all the free peoples will fight more bravely for a
cause of justice than these pacific men.
We all know the future of the Polish people is vital to our
American liberties, and to all human liberties. But in the same
way the past history of this people is charged with significance for
our history.
This was never appreciated until the Great War revealed the
manifold meaning of that history.
This Great War has thrillingly awakened every American to
realize that the history of every nation is really part of our own.
Poland, remote among her plains and rivers, with her grandest work
achieved before America became a nation, could have given us from
her bleeding past some tremendous warnings of the Teutonic peril,
long before we saw that peril in drowned ships, and in notes an-
nouncing ruthless war.
What Poland ·
Could Have Told
TH
HE Great War itself was a baffling, maddening mystery to
peaceable Americans who had studied only the history of
Anglo-Saxon and Latin countries. These countries did not
know what Poland could tell of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern ambi-
tions, Hohenzollern and Hapsburg plots against free and peaceful
peoples.
مه
The neglected history of Poland could have served as a book
of lurid prophecy to warn all free peoples of the menace to human
liberty in Berlin and Vienna.
A
The neglected history of Poland, the unheard outcries of her
agonized inhabitants, should have warned the whole world of the
later "frightfulness" and "ruthlessness" in Belgium. For all that
Belgium has learned in four years Poland has known for more than
a century. And the "mad imperial ambition" of Wilhelm II, so
astounding to western Europe, must seem a familiar tale to Polish
school children who know how their noble republic was torn
asunder by the plots of Frederick the Great.
18
POLISH UNDYING PASSION FOR LIBERTY
How Poland
Saved Europe
P
OLAND can no longer count her burned cities and her mar-
tyred citizens in these many years of oppression. And even
in this past war, while the sufferings of Belgium were made
known to all humanity through open English cables, the agonies.
of Poland under German rule or German invasion were veiled by
intervening battlefields, and hushed into silence by the roar of the
two war fronts.
The sufferings of Poland, the universal death of little children,
starving of sick men and women, depopulation of cities, went on
far from the sight of our sympathetic eyes, hidden by the smoke.
and flame of a burning world,
How terrible must have been Poland's "sufferings in this war
was shown when Paderewski declared:
"No children under ten are left alive in the Polish war zone!
"There are now no classes left in Poland. There is now only
one class, the poor."
But though Poland has had greater suffering than most nations
in this war and before this war, her people have doubtless rejoiced
more than others in the greatness of the world's deliverance.
Americans of Polish blood, exiles and sons and grandsons of exiles,
have sorrowed deeply but have deeply rejoiced.
For this same neglected history of Poland, which could have
warned the world of the Teutonic peril, of ruthlessness and fright-
fulness, could also have assured the world by past triumphs of the
eventual victory of democracy.
Poland, the beautiful, imperishable Democracy, could point to
a score of grassgrown battlefields, and say:
"Here is another place where my brave sons rallied from their
peaceful occupations, and fought for democracy, and won, when
perhaps the peoples of western Europe never dreamed that the
liberty of all minkind was in danger!"
SHOWN IN MODERN AND ANCIENT HEROISM
19
The Knight
Among Nations
L
OOKING upon this now-unveiled Polish history, looking on
it as Polish children have looked upon it for so long, we see
for the first time the lessons which have inspired the Polish
heroes of the Great War. We realize, with humility and with great
gratitude to the dead, that we have entered the stage in a later act
in a very old drama; which had great scenes of battle before Amer-
ica was first disclosed to the eyes of Columbus.
We rejoice that the world is delivered from Kaiserism in 1918.
This helps us to appreciate how Poland delivered the world from
Kaiserism and Teutonism in former centuries.
By a strange act of laggard world-justice, Poland is delivered
from German captivity by the very western nations which she saved
from German captivity in the years when Poland was a great power.
Those were the ages when Poland was the Knight Among Nations,
the chivalrous deliverer and protector of all.
Gruenwald,
Tannenberg
P
OLAND'S first great struggle with Kaiserism was a struggle
with the Hohenstaufen kings of Germany, who usually became
also Emperors or Kaisers of the Holy Roman Empire. Re
peatedly these German Kaisers of that age sought to compel Poland
to obedience as a vassal state, because they saw beyond Poland the
vast steppes of submissive Russia, which in 1318 and in 1918 were
alluring realms for land-greedy Germanic rulers.
Boleslaw III met the issue in battle at Breslau with Kaiser
Henry V, and routed him and his hosts. A century later the great-
est of the Hohenstaufens, Frederick Barbarossa, marched into
Poland, but his expedition was ruined by the craft and skill of
Boleslaw IV. The German Kaiserism was temporarily repulsed,
but the Teutonic Knights began to show a new menace, the infant
but furious menace of Prussianism.
#
The citation of old history might be wearisome if it were not
for the intimate family connection with the most recent world
events.
20
POLISH UNDYING PASSION FOR LIBERTY
The Teutonic Knights were at first an order of knightly mis-
sionaries, invited into the Polish regions on the Baltic to convert.
the pagan Letts. They soon ceased missionary activity and built
up a powerful armed state, which grew in the course of later cen-
turies into the kingdom of Prussia.
J
But if it had not been for Poland's faithfulness to civilization in
her days of might, this Prussian state would have been a great
power centuries before Frederick the Great, and long before Europe
was able to withstand her.
The chivalry of the Knight Among Nations was the only force.
that could meet the menace of the Teutonic Knights. This is what
saved Europe from the earlier Prussianization. The struggle was
one which the world never could have appreciated until the vast
Prussianizing schemes of the present century were revealed to an
outraged world.
At one time, while the Teutonic Knights were gaining more and
more territory in the Polish dominions, it looked as if Poland was
doomed to be Germanized. Teutonic immigration was enormous.
Agents, spies, intriguers, plotters, Germanizers all, were every-
where. Wladislaw Lokietek nevertheless rallied the Polish people
to give the Teutonic Knights a great check. However, Casimir the
Great, working to unify the Polish people within, made territorial
concessions to the Teutonic Knights.
Wladislaw Lokietek made an alliance with Lithuania against the
Knights. The Teutons, strove to divide and break this alliance,
as they are even today striving to break Lithuania and Poland apart.
But all the Teuton conspiracies of that day failed, the two lands.
merged into a dual alliance, and at Tannenberg in 1410 they broke
the power of the Teutonic Knights in one terrific battle.
Poland and Lithuania were saved. Europe was saved: Western
Europe did not realize until 1914 the degree of its deliverance. But
a debt was incurred which shall never be fully paid until Poland
has enjoyed centuries of her new liberty which Tannenberg made
possible.
Poland's Ten Centuries of Democracy Ended
by Plots of Czars and Kaisers
GNACE JAN PADEREWSKI, the Polish master musician
whom the war has revealed as an eloquent leader of the best
thought of Free Poland, made an illuminating declaration before.
the All Poland convention held in Detroit last August:
I
"It is superfluous to explain to Poles the principles and ideals
of America. They know these principles well, for they have been
following them for one thousand years!"
This revelation of the strength of ancient liberties in the Polish
Constitution should be understood in the light of a famous prophecy
by the Polish author Buszczynski:
"The role of the Poles among the free peoples of the earth has
been interrupted—but not ended!”
The living descendants of Polish freemen today know that in
former centuries their kingdom-republic was a leader of liberty.
They know that the old passion for liberty has never died, even
through many generations of oppression.
Therefore the world can be assured that the New Poland of the
future will not merely be democratic, but will take her place as an
advanced leader of democracy. Free Poland will lead the nations
of the future, as she led them in the past, in the great march of
world-wide liberty.
The Ancient
Constitution
HIS is no mere national dream. The people of Poland itself,
THIS
or the American descendants of Polish heroes, can be as cer-
tain of the future policy of the Polish Republic as Americans
can be of the continued liberty of our own beloved land.
D
:
For when Poland lost her liberty, she did not lose her soul. She
did not lose her patriots, her statesmen, her thinkers. Her sons
have continued to study, earnestly and zealously, the shining pages
of her past history. .
22
POLAND'S TEN CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
They have studied that history while in prison in Siberia, while
in refuge homes in Switzerland or Britain, while fighting in armies
of liberty in all corners of the world. And when Poland's own
statesmen again take their seats in a free parliament to frame the
fundamental law of their country, they will have the illumination
shed by that past history, and by the work of all the statesmen
since the last partition.
The sons of Poland have worked on this task for all the 130
years since independence was lost. They have felt sure that in
time Providence would restore their despoiled lands. They wished
to see their people prepared for that day of great rejoicing. They
wished to see Poland ready to assume a foremost place among
peoples wholly free.
The time has about come. And when the democracies of the
world at their peace table restore Poland to her place, she will enter
the sisterhood of republics with clear vision and with a prepared
national conscience.
The Past and
the Future
T
HIS is what explains the known devotion of the Polish citizen
to Polish history. He reads these records to keep his own
heart true to the spirit of his ancestors.
He would not follow the letter of ancient regulations, any more
than modern Americans would adopt the first Constitution of the
United States, without its amendments. But he will keep the free
spirit of the old times, just as we rejoice to maintain the spirit of
the Continental Congress.
This is the inspiration of Polish history to all of Polish blood.
This is what makes the Pole in America so ready as a disciple c
Americanism, so valuable as an addition to our democracy. Th:
is why men of Polish blood will fight for this country as the ol
peasants of the Vistula fought for their farms.
ENDED BY PLOTS OF CZARS AND KAISERS
23
Treasured
Inheritances
TH
HE old records of the kingdom-republic of Poland have their
priceless documents, their sacred pages.
Some of these are as precious as the parchments of Magna
Charta in the history of Anglo-Saxon liberty.
Magna Charta, signed by King John at Runnymede in 1215,
belonged to the old age of feudalism. But it contained the death-
less seed of liberty, the seed of all the liberty we now possess. Some
of these old statutes of Poland are likewise feudal, but they contain
the great principles of human justice.
These old statutes likewise proved their power. There never
was in Poland such an era of autocracy as England saw under
Henry VIII, France under Louis XIV, or Germany under the Ho-
henzollern Kaisers.
As far back as 1180, in the reign of Casimir the Just of Poland,
nine years before Richard Lion Heart had succeeded Henry II as
King of England, a council was held at Lenczyca. This Polish
council was called to impose restrictions on the power of the
monarch..
In England, King Henry reigned, then Richard Lion Heart
became king, then King John was crowned, and it was not until
1215, thirty-five years after the council in Lenczyca, that the king
of England accepted the restrictions on his power laid down in
Magna Charta.
1
That same Polish council was the germ of the later Polish sen-
ate. It has long been honored in Polish history, because it laid
down the principle that every freeman should have "full right of
person and possession." The rights of freemen are also a golden
section in the English Magna Charta.
The Broader
Freedom
I
N 1331 King Wladislaw Lokietek, famous for his alliance with
Lithuania and his battles against the Teutonic Knights, called a
council in Checiny.
It had not been unusual for the king to call conferences of
24
POLAND'S TEN CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
higher nobles and clergy. But Wladislaw called in all the holders
of land, and made them a part of his council. He did not go so far
as a modern representative government, but he went far ahead of
the thought of his time. In those early centuries the nobility, great-
er and lesser, were taken as the representatives of the whole people.
So the first Diet of Checiny was intended as representative gov-
ernment.
Let enough history be cited to show the continuing spirit of the
Polish state. We can understand better why that history of an old
kingdom is still inspiring, even to men and women of Polish descent
born in republican America or republican France or democratic
Britain.
+
Seventy years before Columbus sailed to the discovery of Amer-
ica, the nobles imposed a new limitation on the sovereign. The
property of nobles was recognized as inviolate. And the nobles in
Poland were not a small and limited class, but a large representative
body including one-eighth of the entire population.
The law of inviolable property is called the "Czerwinsk privi-
lege." Eight years afterward a law was passed to restrict the power
of the crown to make arrests. This law declared that. "No one
shall be imprisoned unless condemned by law," that is, without a
legal warrant. This is regarded as the Polish version of the great
legal principle of the Habeas Corpus act. The Poles also worked
out their own version of the English saying, "A man's house is his
castle."
The freedom of Poland grew steadily, like the liberty of Eng-
land. Each century was fuller of liberty than the last. Some stu-
dents of history in past years shook their heads over the freedom
of Poland. They declared that if Poland had not been so free, if
the kings had been autocrats, Poland would not have been dismem-
bered.
But today we know that it was better for Poland to love free-
dom. If her people had not been inspired to love liberty, they could
not have kept their national hopes alive and aflame through these
years of oppression. And Poland is now fit for freedom, prepared
to join the free democracies of the world, because of the foundations
laid in the old ages.
ENDED BY PLOTS OF CZARS AND KAISERS
25
Election of
Kings
TH
HE security of British liberty under her kings is due to the
principle that the king reigns by the will of Parliament. It is
said of the English king or queen that he "reigns but does not
rule." Centuries ago this very thing was said of the king of Poland,
in the Latin of the time: "Regnat, sed non imperat." And cen-
turies ago it was an established principle in Poland that the king
ruled by the will of the people, expressed by the voting nobles, and
not by mere hereditary succession.
The crown did go from father to son when the son seemed
worthy. But the Polish nobles with great freedom turned aside
from family to family. They even went abroad, to Hungary, to
France, for kings or queens. Some of the greatest of the Polish
kings, like King John Sobieski and King Stanislaw Leszczynski,
were born as nobles, and were elected to the kingship. In three
generations the Poniatowski family rose from the rank of gentry to
that of senator and then to royalty.
}
In later centuries of Polish history the elections were doubtful
contests whose outcome none could predict. The enemies of Poland,
writing in autocratic countries, have condemned this lack of cer-
tainty. But to a modern democracy, or to a modern Pole planning
the future democracy of his country, these old records are full of
inspiration.
In one election, several centuries ago, 200,000 nobles voted on
the kingship. In 1848, in the French republic, the qualifications of
voters were so restricted that there were fewer actual ballots for
president than the Polish kingdom-republic had seen cast for the
royal office.
The Meaning
of History
T
HESE old records of fact from the statute books of the past
are full of living significance for all free nations.
We know that no country in the eighteenth century was as
free as the democracies of the twentieth. But we know that in
the eighteenth century and long before, Poland was one of the
26
POLAND'S TEN CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
•
freest lands on earth. We know that if the Poles had been left to
themselves, they would have worked out the same great principles
of freedom in which we rejoice.
1791, 1831,
1863 and 1918
F
OR every Polish movement for liberty has been established on
a firmer and broader foundation. The liberty movement in
Poland has always been dreaded by neighboring autocrats.
This is natural. As far back as 1610, before the Romanoffs ascended
the throne of Russia, Polish thinkers inspired a movement for free-
dom which led to the calling of a double Duma. In our own gen-
eration we saw revived in Petrograd what the Poles had inspired.
in 1610 in Moscow.
The fact in Polish history hardest to understand is that the very
liberties of the people were used by her autocratic enemies to destroy
her.
The election of kings made the nobles and gentry all-powerful,
so the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs and Romanoffs worked forever to
create factions and to increase distress.
When the nobles themselves undertook measures to limit their
own powers, to establish some definite dynasty to contend with for-
eign kings, to give further liberties to the people, the surrounding
autocrats hastened their partitions, hastened to despoil, to ruin, to
obliterate Poland, that they might obliterate democracy.
This is what the poet Campbell means when he exclaims that
"Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell!" For in the Great Diet
held by the Poles from 1788 to 1792, just before the Second Par-
tition, Poland, though already suffering from the First Partition,
adopted a Constitution inspired by freedom.
There is nothing in history more glorious or more tragic than
the framing of this Constitution by a free people on the verge of
doom. This charter abolished the serfdom of the peasants. This
convention of nobles limited the privileges of the nobles. The right
of any member of the nobility to oppose and kill a measure was
taken away. A modern government, which Rousseau declared to
be freer than that of England, was about to be established, with
ENDED BY PLOTS OF CZARS AND KAISERS
27
the kings and nobles assisting, and the people at the very threshold
of liberty.
Then came the answering blow from the Hohenzollerns and
Romanoffs, the Second Partition of Poland of 1793. Only a frag-
ment of Poland was left, to be partitioned again between Russia,
Prussia and Austria in 1795. And in this Second Partition Russia
imposed laws on the fragment of Poland, which showed the real
meaning of the quarrel. The Empress Catherine insisted that serf-
dom be restored. She insisted on all the old disturbing powers
being reserved to the nobility. She opposed the establishment of
regular dynasty.
The poet Campbell understood. Poland was butchered to destroy
democracy. She was butchered to maintain serfdom, which was
not abolished in most German countries for many years afterward,
and lasted in Russia until 1863.
Poland was the free nation, crucified for human liberty in 1791,
in 1831, in 1863. Had she been an autocracy, had her Diet not
sought to free the serfs, had she not made the cause of human
liberty her cause, there might still be kings in Poland. The auto-
crats of those days complained of the anarchy of Poland. Those
same tyrants hissed what they called the "anarchy" of Jefferson
and Washington in the American continent. They loved the old.
ways, for we remember that it was a German prince who sold
Hessian troops to fight against American liberty upon this soil. This
was the type of tyranny that struck at freedom wherever it appeared,
on the banks of the Vistula or on the shores of New England.
These facts from the far past explain why the Pole of today,
the American of Polish descent of today, finds inspiration and con-
fidence in the history of the lost kingdom-republic.
No one can read understandingly the story of Polish liberty, and
the story of how that liberty was lost, without sharing the enthusi-
asm of the Pole for the past of his people, and also sharing his
proud confidence in the greatness and freedom of her future.
Greatness of the Future Poland Proved By
Great Men of the Past
TH
HE world which will set Poland free will confer only justice
on the long-oppressed nation. It will confer more than jus-
tice on the world, in the benefits which a Free Poland will
be able to confer upon all humanity.
The loss of Poland's ancient liberty was a blighting blow to
civilization. The tyranny of Romanoffs and Hapsburgs and Hohen-
zollerns repressed the free expression of Polish culture. The trio
of tyrannical dynasties sought to deprive humanity of the great
services which might be given by Polish culture.
But, though shackled and suffering, with the Russian tyrants
striving to crush out national feeling and the German oppressors
laboring to silence the ancient language, there has nevertheless been
no end to literary and artistic life.
There has never been a time when students, if permitted, did.
not crowd to her ancient universities.
The presses of Poland, which began to operate within a few
years after the first invention of the printing press, have never
ceased to pour forth Polish productions. Often operating secretly,
often operating with the publishers in imminent peril of exile or
death, the presses of Poland have supplied the unarmed hosts of
Polish freedom with the ammunition of thought which kept up the
ceaseless silent battle for liberty.
In Cracow, during the past half century, a remarkable special
edition of the great Polish classics has been issued, for distribution
among the poorer people.
For even among the poorer people the great writers of the past
are valued and loved. The foreign tyrants have uniformly re-
pressed real Polish education, and in many districts have provided
no education at all. But even in the darkest provinces the poets.
and orators of the old time are read by all who read, and their
songs are known to thousands whom the alien oppressors have
barred from education.
30
GREATNESS OF THE FUTURE POLAND
뼇
​The Castle of
Sienkiewicz
T
HE Polish people showed within our own time what a burn-
ing appreciation they have for what is great in literature and
art.
Henryk Sienkiewicz, the novelist, is best known to Americans.
as the author of "Quo Vadis?". To Polish readers this is one of
his minor works, which reveals only glimpses of the tremendous.
power of his Polish historical novels, "Pan Michael," "The Deluge,'
and "With Fire and Sword."
""
The American public bought and read “Quo Vadis?". They
watched it in plays and in moving pictures. Many of them went
on from this one novel to read the other novels by this author, and
thereby to get some vision of the old chivalry of classic Poland.
But the Poles did more than merely read the works of their glori-.
ous author. A few years after the appearance of "Quo Vadis?" in
English, the novelist was presented with a castle and estate, the gift
of the Polish race.
The Poles have no king to name a poet laureate, they have no
president to confer decorations of honor. But the whole people
could show that they loved a great representative of the national
soul. They could give him a gift of honor such as no novelist or
poet ever before received from the spontaneous acclaim of a people.
But Sienkiewicz lived to prove that he was not a merely literary
patriot. His patriotism was in his heart. When the war burst forth
he went forth from his home, ruined by the war, ruined in fortune
but still rich in Polish spirit. He went into active service as presi-
dent of the Polish International Relief commission in Switzerland.
From this center he kept in touch with all the world-wide Polish
movement.
He died in Switzerland, died in poverty, died in exile, died be-
fore the clouds of darkness were lifted from the world. But before
he died he proved that he appreciated his own people as fully as
they appreciated him. The high international fame which he had
won had made no change in the simplicity of his Polish-Lithuanian
heart.
PROVED BY GREAT MEN OF THE PAST
31
The Leadership
of Art
T
HE Polish people at the present hour have shown supreme
confidence in the character of their race, and a singular
knowledge of their own national soul.
One striking example before our very eyes is the leadership of
Ignace Jan Paderewski in many of their new national movements.
No other nation would have chosen a professional musician to
be its diplomatic representative in the United States during a period
when its own independence was being established. Some would
have feared the very eminence of Paderewski as a pianist and com-
poser would have made him less able to manage the hard affairs of
a newly forming state.
But the Poles knew Paderewski as the world did not. The Poles
are a musical nation. Even Polish factory workers in this country,
new immigrants from the Vistula, form orchestras to play classical
music. Therefore a musician might be more than a musician.
The Poles knew that Paderewski could not be the musical leader
of Poland, as he was, unless he profoundly understood the whole
genius of his people.
And therefore, when he spoke for Poland, the outside world
was amazed to find that this musician was one of the foremost
scholars in the world. They found that he knew men and nations,
history and principles of government, and the practical possibilities
of the future.
They found, too, that he was a true patriot. For he saw him-
self, like Sienkiewicz, financially ruined by the war, but gave up
his chief effort to the cause of Poland.
´All these things might have surprised the gazing nations of the
world. But the Poles were not surprised. The nation had confi-
dence in the power of the old Polish traditions, and those fine tra-
ditions governed Paderewski and Sienkiewicz, Dmowski and all the
new leaders of the Polish republic.
32
GREATNESS OF THE FUTURE POLAND
Exiles of
Freedom
TH
HE world has not learned to read the great Polish poets, as
in time they will be read. They will be read when the world
comes to realize more fully all that it owes to the old Polish
race, and understands how the great literature of the people ex-
presses the ideals of that race.
The time is not far away when Adam Mickiewicz will be trans-
lated more completely and more fully. Humanity will be richer
when that is done. For Mickiewicz was born after Poland and
Lithuania had lost their liberties. He died in Constantinople, far
from his own land.
Yet he is the greatest of all the Polish poets, whose epics are
on fire with freedom and the glory of revolution. Other nations.
had their greatest poets singing in their days of triumph, but Po̟-
land's Homer sang in her days of oppression.
How is this possible? Because the Polish people refuse to be-
lieve that Poland is downcast forever. They believe as they sing,
"Poland Is Not Yet Lost." They believe in the Great Future, and
their poets have sung and their soldiers have fought in the spirit
of that future.
Mickiewicz died in a foreign land. And in Paris died Freder-
ick Chopin, the Polish composer. Poland has had to see her great
sons part from her, to share their glory with another land, to die
in a land of strange language.
But this is the glory of her great men. They belong to Poland,
and, if left to their own preference, might often prefer to live in
the quiet plains of the old Polish country. But they are destined
to travel abroad, and thereby to prove that they belong to all hu-
manity.
Copernicus
to Mme. Curie
T
HE new Free Poland will be able to educate her own sons for
their share in the world's work. She need not doubt that grand
results will come to the world from this, for she knows that
great things have already been wrought by the learned sons and
daughters of her people.
PROVED BY GREAT MEN OF THE PAST
33
"There are many things for which Poland deserves honor, but
has not been honored. The famous Russian ballet of Petrograd
was originally a Polish ballet in Warsaw. The many Polish dances.
which have been danced throughout the world, such as the polka
and the mazurka, show the genius of the Poles for the Slavic dance.
A typical illustration of what Poland has suffered is found in
the fate of the old Royal Library of Warsaw. After the Russian
occupation this immense collection of 1,500,000 books and manu-
scripts was taken to Petrograd, to form the foundation of the Im-
perial Library. If Poles had not loved and known literature, Russia
might not have had an Imperial Library.
But there are some great achievements of the Polish race which
none can question or deny. There are great works of music, and
history, and philosophy in which the Polish mind has shared. There
are thousands of indications in the past of what the glory of the
future will be, under universal schools and democratic institutions.
In addition to this, Polish scientists have performed two serv-
ices which alone could make the race immortal.
The first of these was the discovery of the solar system by
Copernicus.
The second was the discovery of radium by Mme. Curie.
How Poles
Won Recognition
No
O ONE needs to recite mere facts of the life of Nicholas
Copernicus, the monk of Thorn, who first proved that the
world moves around the sun.
No one needs to dwell on the mere facts of the life of Mme.
Sklodowska-Curie, the discoverer of radium, the only woman ever
elected to the Sorbonne.
One needs only to mention them. They prove that the Polish
race sometimes can furnish leaders to the world when leaders are
needed. They show it has sometimes fallen to Poles to perform
priceless service, which the world could not afford to miss.
Nicholas Copernicus of Thorn and Frauenberg, born a few years
before Columbus discovered America, made discoveries in the
heavens above as great as those of Columbus upon the sea. Like
34
GREATNESS OF THE FUTURE POLAND
Columbus, Copernicus was not merely a great man. He was the
man whose great discoveries made other men great.
Copernicus had no telescope. He had nothing but his clear eyes,
and his clear brain, and his courage. He read all the ancient books,
and they all declared that the sun goes around the earth. Yet by
his clear brain, and his clear sight, and his patient study of the
heavens, he was able to see that all the books were wrong. The
learning of all the centuries was mistaken. He discovered that the
earth is merely one of the planets, all whirling around the sun. He
even estimated the length of the year on each of the planets.
All this is familiar to us now, just as America is familiar, and
the printing-press is familiar. But we all know that without Colum-
bus there would have been no United States of America. Without
the first printing presses of Gutenberg there would have been no
modern newspapers. So without Copernicus there would have been
no modern astronomy. The work of a thousand great men, such
as Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Herschel, is based on the achievements
of the Polish Copernicus.
The work of Mme. Curie, and the wonders of radium, are more
familiar by recent discussion. Mme. Curie has also, in a sense,
founded a new era in science, as Copernicus did. She is the one
striking proof that after these centuries the Polish brain is still
clear and powerful, originative, independent, looking to the future.
What will be the future of Poland in art, in music, in literature,
in science, in world-statesmanship?
Everyone asks, but no one knows just how great it will be. But
everyone knows it must be great. It cannot be commonplace or
ordinary. The Polish race is a race of greatness, and has proved
this under blighting oppression. The leaders of such a race, when
it is freed, will be among the giants of humanity.
Poland's New Era Statesman Are Champions
of Progressive Policy
T
HE new republic of Poland has already the shadow of a
Constitution, with terms to make the new democracy worthy
of its freedom.
These are some principles which the New Poland will write into
her fundamental law:
Universal liberty of religion and race.
Universal suffrage for men and women.
Complete representative government with direct elections.
Equal taxation.
Universal compulsory education.
The closest fraternal relations with Czecho-Slovakia, Jugoslavia,
republican Russia and all the other free nations of the world.
-
A policy of maintaining world-peace, in harmony with the ef-
forts of the Allied Democracies now victorious in the war.
These principles are sure to form a portion of the Constitution
of Free Poland. There is no speculation in declaring this. These
things are certain.
This does not mean that these ideas have been adopted by the
Polish leaders because such principles are current in the world
everywhere. If such ideas were not current anywhere else, they.
would be found current in Poland. They have been the thought
of the representative Polish patriots for many years. They spring
from great principles of liberty enunciated in Poland in all the
revolutions.
Poles Learn
From History
VERY friend of Poland notes how frequently the Polish lead-
ers cite the past history of the kingdom-republic. Nowhere
else except in the United States and Great Britian has history
been made so constantly the subject of patriotic appeal.
E
The reason for this is a reason which illuminates the whole fu-
ture of Poland. Polish history is cited so that the modern Pole
•
36
POLAND'S NEW ERA STATESMEN ARE
can understand the virtues of the old patriots, and also the mistakes
of defeated leaders.
The Poles do not propose to reconstruct merely the ancient
kingdom-republic. They propose to learn from the grand records
of the kingdom-republic whatever is inspiring. They propose also
to study any warning which past distresses and sorrows may give
to a pure-hearted and clear-visioned lover of the ancestral land.
When Poland was building on foundations of democracy she
triumphed. When outside alien autocracies had too much influence
on her nobles she suffered. When she trusted the Czars she re-
gretted it; when she trusted Prussia she was lost.
Every triumph of Poland at home or on foreign battlefields has
been a triumph for the democracy latent within her. Every disas-
ter and distress has been due to some alien enemy force, working
against democracy.
This is the eternal lesson to the modern Pole or the American
of Polish blood who cannot lose a filial interest in the plains of the
Vistula. The Polish patriot loves his history, even when he reads.
it with tears. For the history of Poland repeats to him, warningly,
solemnly, the same lesson: "There is safety for Great Poland only.
in Democracy!"
When the Pole reads of the first kings, of the dynasty of Piast,
he rejoices that the great founder of this line was a wheelwright.
When he records the triumphs of Casimir the Great, he affixes to
him the title, "The Peasant King." The Pole honors John Sobieski,
not because he was born to the kingship, but because he proved
worthy of being elected to the crown.
Submerged
Statesmen
T
HIS explains not merely the attitude of the present-day Polish
leader. It explains also the surprising fact that the Polish
leaders come before the world with a definite national policy,
based on modern progress and also based on the ancient precedents.
of Poland.
In other words, Poland presents to the world finished states-
men, ready to take part in any council of nations. Where have
they been trained? In one of the most wonderful schools of the
}
CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESSIVE POLICY
37
world, the school of Polish liberty, maintained ever since the par-
tition by an unbroken succession of patriots in Russian, Prussian
and Austrian Poland.
Here we come to one of the most wonderful stories of history,
the story of the Submerged Statesmen of Poland. They are men
who have been laying the foundations of a national policy ever
since before the last partition. They have been building steadily,
in the confidence of Poland's deliverance, so that Poland could be
prepared.
This is why the Polish nation is today fitted for self-government,
though long suppressed. It is fitted to take a place among nations,
though long under crushing oppression of despoilers.
Dmowski's
Vision, 1902
To
O SHOW that Poland has her statesmen, one might quote one
comment on the international situation made in 1902 by Ro-
man Dmowski, a political party leader among the Russian
Poles.
This was in 1902, before the first peace conference at The
Hague, before the Russo-Japanese war, before the nations began
the race of building dreadnoughts. And Dmowski wrote in French
in a book published in Paris:
"Just as it was the fall of Poland that gave Prussia special im-
portance in Europe and made possible her leadership in modern
Germany, so 'the renaissance of Poland as a political factor would
mean an end to the domination of Prussia in the German empire."
Roman Dmowski then was the leader of a political party in
Poland known as the Polish National Democratic party. He con-
stantly laid down the doctrine that Germany was aiming at expan-
sion into the east of Europe.
He rested the hopes of the safety of Poland in making Poland
as strong as she could be within the Russian empire, until the day
dawned when she might go out from the Russian empire and from
the other empires.
The world did not note the comment of the Polish leader in
1902. But in 1918 Roman Dmowski spoke as chairman of the Pol-
38
POLAND'S NEW ERA STATESMEN ARE
ish National Committee in Paris. On this side of world cataclysms.
he declared again:
"The assurance of liberty to Russia and the smaller nations is
dependent entirely upon one condition, and that is the re-erection
of a powerful and great Polish state.".
And this time he finds the statesmen of all the world co-oper-
ating with him, and seeing with the same vision.
The world-democracies will restore Poland, not merely to per-
form an act of justice, not merely to reward a gallant race which.
has steadfastly championed all liberty; Poland will be restored as
one of the great champions of eastern Europe, whose task in her
own sphere will be the task of America and England and France,
to keep the world safe for Democracy.
How Great
Poland Grows
A
MERICANS of every descent know how our republic grew
out of the Continental Congress held during the Revolution.
Europe smiled when Edmund Burke declared that this Con-
tinental Congress sitting in the American wilderness was a body
of great statesmen.
So perhaps Germany and Russia did not realize that the leaders.
of submerged Poland were statesmen, that the musician Paderewski,
the soldier Pilsudski, the novelist Sienkiewicz, were statesmen.
?
But statesmanship was nevertheless developing, and is now here.
It developed after the Napoleonic wars. In 1815 the hopes of the
Polish supporters of Napoleon were overthrown with Napoleon's
overthrow. In 1830 the ill-fated revolt of that year ended even the
nominal distinction between Russian Poland and Russia. In 1863
another revolt was followed by more repression and sorrow for
the oppressed people.
These revolts were the revolts of great hearts, but their aims
were dreams. It is the work of statesmen to obey the great ideals
of a people, but to make their aims practical. The statesmen of
Poland did this. They felt, they represented all the great free
aspiration of the people. But they re-directed this national feel-
ing to definite results in liberty.
CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESSIVE POLICY
39
Conciliation,
Reconstruction
A
FTER 1863 a "party of conciliation" appeared in Prussian,
Russian, Austrian Poland. In each empire the policy was to
gain as much liberty as possible under the reigning power.
The leaders of this movement gained some benefits almost imme-
diately in Austria. In Russia their work was slower in developing
results, but the final results were wonderful indeed.
The movement had as a regular part of its system the study of
Polish history. The leaders declared the history should be studied,
to learn how Poland came into such distresses, and how she might
be delivered.
The leaders were confronted with a great problem in the people
themselves. Here were millions long suppressed. The serfdom of
peasants was an institution in the old Polish state. The Constitu-
tion of 1791 would have freed the peasant serfs, but before they
were freed Poland itself was taken prisoner and torn to pieces by
the Third Partition.
•
So in 1886, only five years after the assassination of Alexander
II, the Polish League was formed in the Russian section. The ob-
ject of this league was to carry on a new propaganda of National-
ism among the Polish peasants, a propaganda based upon history
and literature.
The Polish peasant was inspired with the ideal of a new Poland.
It was not to be a kingdom of inherited or elective dynasties. It
was to be a self-governing unit.
The hopes of the peasants were not raised too high. The first
aim was for autonomy within the Russian empire. Independence
was to be gained in the fullness of time.
The movement at first was secret, perilous. Later, the lighter
rule of Nicholas II permitted more open agitation. The movement
took the name of the National Democratic Polish party. Then was
seen the real spirit of the New Poland, for the peasants, the vil-
lagers, the gentry, the middle classes, the nobility, all seemed to be
coming more and more closely together.
Then came the Russian partial revolution of 1905, followed by
the calling of the Duma. There were elections in Russian Poland,
and in every single district the National Democratic Polish party
40
POLAND'S NEW ERA STATESMEN ARE
elected its candidate. This showed that the new movement repre-
sented the whole Polish people, rich and poor.
United Poland,
1914-1918
T
HE years from 1905 to 1914 saw gains for Polish liberty of
thought in Russia, and also in Austria. In both there was
also a greater understanding among the different classes. In
both leaders were found who wished to work out as much liberty
as possible under the imperial system, waiting for deliverance.
This, in both Russia and Austria, formed a school of statesman-
ship for the young Poland. And all the time the three old sections
of Poland had their secret military schools. In Austria, Russia
and Prussia Polish military companies have drilled in woods and
valleys since 1876. And just as Polish political parties formed the
nucleus of the new Polish statesmanship, so Polish revolutionary
companies formed the germ of the new Polish army.
The statesmen of both lands have informed and inspired the
people. The war between the Teutonic empires and the Russian
power for a time divided the Poles. The Russian Polish leaders
would like to put their trust in Slavic success, and still more in the
liberty-loving policies of England and France. For a time, how-
ever, some of the Galician Poles joined with Austria under fair
promises.
The outcome of this was neither pro-German nor pro-Czar. In
Russia the Polish leaders saw less and less hope of real freedom in
a distinctly Russian triumph, despite the liberal proclamations of
Grand Duke Nicholas. Grand Duke Nicholas saluted the Poles as
Poles. Previously Russia had almost ignored the existence of any
nationality but Russian nationality in her immediate dominion.
At the same time the Polish Legion in Austria was becoming
more and more disaffected from the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns.
The end came when the leaders were imprisoned or shot as traitors.
Poles in the German army on the French side, when taken prisoner,
enlisted in scores in the French army.
CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESSIVE POLICY
41
Poland an Ally
of the Allies
The
The
T
HE three empires did not realize what was occurring.
war was merging the thought of all Poles into one.
thought of the vast main body of the Polish race in Russia,
Austria and Prussia became not pro-German, not pro-Czar, not
pro-Austrian—but pro-Ally. Their spirit was the spirit of the
American declarations, that the war was a war for Democracy.
The thought of the overwhelming majority of American Poles
showed the same trend. More and more, day by day, the Polish-
American became pro-Ally.
Long before the Polish National Committee was organized in
Paris, long before the deliverance of Poland was assured by the
Allies, long before Russia overthrew the Czars, the Polish people
throughout the world took their stand for freedom against
autocracy.
They stood for freedom before they knew their old homeland
was to share in it. Poland was an allied nation before the Allies
realized it. And the Poles remained faithful to the Allies in Ger-
many and Austria, despite all tyrannies, and stood firm for the
Allies in Russia, even though the Bolsheviki signed a peace treaty
with Germany at Brest-Litovsk.
Poland is prepared for liberty. She has earned it. She has
been trained for it. Her soldiers and the soldiers of Polish blood
from the four corners of the earth have earned freedom for her.
Their battle is the fruit of the secret companies of freemen who
have been training for all these years in the woods and valleys.
Poland has come to a place among the Allied Nations not by
accident or chance, but by the definite policy of enlightened states-
manship, by the choice of a people. Her people have voted alike in
the three partitions of the dismembered land. They speak as one
for their claims, and as one they face the future.
Sons of Oppressed Poland Liberators
In Many Lands
ESCENDANTS of Polish ancestors in all corners of the earth
now turn their eyes wistfully toward the old land of the plain,
where the River Vistula again flows in freedom toward the
wharves of Danzig.
D
These descendants of the old Polish exiles have always thought
of modern Poland as a country in chains-a nation whose repub-
lican heart still beats, but which is in triple bondage to Russia,
Prussia and Austria.
It seems to them like a dream to see that old land set free by
great, strong nations. The rejoicing of Poland's liberated millions
is joined by the gladness of millions of descendants of Polish an-
cestors in the United States and Canada, in South America, South
Africa, France, Great Britain, and other far-scattered countries.
These descendants of the Polish blood in all lands have a full
right to share in the rejoicing. For they have shared in the liber-
·ation.
The present deliverance of Poland is no mere whimsical act of
justice by the great and war-weary powers.
It is largely a reward to Poland for the work of liberty which
her exiled sons have done in more lands than one.
It is largely a result of the way in which the children of this
kingdom have kept a Polish Question living before the nations,
though Poland herself seemed dead.
The Living
Spirit of Poland
TH
HOUGH Poland was dead, her sons carried her spirit into
many lands. Thus they came to the United States.
A few immortal leaders appeared here in our Revolution..
A few groups of exiles came before the Civil War. After the
Civil War a great emigration was noted from all the Polish lands,
the flight of fugitives from the taxation of Russia, the militarism
of Austria, and the racial and religious persecution of Prussia.
44
SONS OF OPPRESSED POLAND
These emigrants came in thousands to America, and scattered
abroad also in other countries. They assumed the citizenship of
these countries. They brought up their children under strange
skies and in the sound of a strange language. But they brought
them up in the old Polish traditions of freedom and equality.
Americans of Polish descent fix their personal hopes in this land
and nation. But they take deep interest in Liberty in all countries.
And it is because American Poles have been able to enter into the
spirit of American liberty, and French Poles have shared the great
labors for deliverance in France, that the free nations have been
so eager to recognize Free Poland as a sister nation.
The Buried
Republic
F
REE Poland was recognized, in her committee in Paris, while
Germanic troops were occupying every one of her old capitals,
and while Prussia doubtless was planning a perpetual domin-
ion over the Vistula. This recognition was made possible because
Poles, in every land in the world, have proved that they have the
hearts and minds of freemen.
•
The nations could see that a land which produced such spirits
of freedom, the land which could hold the love of its children after
50 years of exile, and could charm the hearts of grandchildren who
had never even seen the country, would require no "training of the
people for self-government." Poland was buried, but not lost.
The Undying
Inheritance
D
UM VINCOR, LIBROR."
This Latin motto was struck on a coin at Warsaw in 1611,
the year which saw the printing of the King James Bible.
In that year the first English settlement in America at Jamestown
was only four years old.
The coin was struck after the Polish troops had captured the
disputed city of Smolensk from the Russians. It was a great day
of triumph for the Polish arms, and the period was one of decline
and weakness in Russia.
LIBERATORS IN MANY LANDS
45
The motto of such a time might have been something imperial
and haughty. But instead, the slogan given to the captured fortress
is "Dum vincor, libror," or "Though I am conquered, I am set free."
The Polish kingdom-republic knew that any land conquered
from the Russian Czars on one side, or from the Prussian and Aus-
trian monarchs on the other, was indeed set free. It was liberty
for any city or citizen to escape from Russian or Teutonic hands
into Poland.
Previous articles in this series have dwelt upon this point. The
growth of Poland was not a growth of conquest. It was chiefly
the addition of cities and territories which sought the freedom of
her protection.
Centuries ago a group of Prussian cities, oppressed by the
knights of the Teutonic order, called for Polish armies to save them
from oppression. Livonia added herself voluntarily to the king-
dom-republic.
When Lithuania and Poland were united, Lithuania kept her
language and her religion and her courts. The final union of Poland
and Lithuania brought liberties to the Lithuanians which were un-
known before. Every country over which Poland extended its rule
could say with captured Smolensk: "Though I am conquered, I
am set free."
The Destiny of
the Poles
E AMERICANS love to believe our country has a high
W destiny, in liberty and enlightenment.
We can now see that Great Britain also had a high
destiny. She was so long feared because of her terrible strength.
But we can now see that that very strength was to be used, in a
dreadful hour, to protect the world from destruction.
We can see that France had a great destiny, in the unchanged
laughing bravery of her people. Only such a nation could offer
their beautiful country as the living sacrifice of war, and fight
unflinchingly until the day of victory.
Devoted Belgium, and chivalrous Italy, the faithful sons of
Czecho-Slovakia, and all the other liberty-loving nations, have
proved that they had a great mission in the world.
46
SONS OF OPPRESSED POLAND
And now, as we have a better understanding of the different
peoples, the real destiny of Poland is made clear. She was the
advance nation of democratic liberty. When she had power, she
conferred freedoms, though surrounded by despotism. By the
freedom of her own citizens she inspired all her people with the
spirit of liberty.
Then, when the kingdom itself was destroyed, her national
destiny was still a destiny of liberty. Her sons went out into all
countries. And wherever an oppressed people lifted up their
hands against oppressive government, somewhere in the ranks
were Polish liberators, and somewhere in the councils of most of
them were Polish leaders.
One historian declares:
"Up to the eighteenth century, every attempt to check abso-
lutism among kings was inspired by Polish institutions."
When one reads the old Polish constitution in the light of what
the new Polish constitution is to be, it seems antique and aristo-
cratic. But when read in the light of the governments which sur-
rounded Poland in the old days, it was radical and liberal, and
it foreshadowed the coming of a true republic in the course of
time.
It caused continual unrest under the thrones of tyrants, and it
continued down to our own time to be a destroyer of autocracy.
International
Heroes
T
HADDEUS KOŚCIUSZKO'S name returns to memory
whenever the foreign services of Poles are mentioned.
Kosciuszko fought for the freedom of the American col-
onies, but there still was not freedom enough in America to satisfy
his heart. Kosciuszko enrolled his name among the first in Amer-
ica to declare for the emancipation of Negro slaves.
At one time there was a plan to offer to Kosciuszko and his
people an immense tract of land on the Ohio, for their settlement
as citizens. If Kosciuszko had settled here, instead of returning
to the last fatal war for his country, he might have led even the
leaders of this new nation in their doctrines of liberty. States-
manship and justice might have settled the slavery problem in the
LIBERATORS IN MANY LANDS
47
United States, without the bloodshed and horror of civil war. For
in all the advances of Poland toward liberty she never knew civil
war.
Kosciuszko and Pulaski are well known to Americans as among
the Revolutionary heroes. But to the reader of Polish history
they are only types. They are only two of the sons of Poland
who went forth to fight for the liberation of afflicted lands.
Eloquently and justly Antoni Chlonowieski declares, in review-
ing the foreign record of Polish heroes:
"The years 1831 and 1848 saw Polish emigrants at every bar-
ricade and on every battlefield where independence was the issue.
of battle."
"Brigands," some of these were called by the oppressive gov-
ernments from which they rebelled. "Brigands," again, was what
the Czars' autocratic government called the first soldiers who de-
clared for independent' Poland in the present war. But despite
the condemnation of the conquerors, these rebels were able to help
other nations to liberty, when they could not yet free their own
Poland.
A
Hungary and
Italy
T
HE years 1831 and 1848, mentioned by Chlonowieski, were
the great years of revolution, fruitful of results in some
countries, fruitless in others. But the scattered exiles of
Poland were found in all movements for wider freedom.
·
A
The Italians glory in the statesmanship of Cavour, in the dash-
ing genius of Garibaldi, in the foresight and broad vision of Victor
Emanuel I and his descendants. These names are justly held in
honor, as the name of Washington is held in America. These
great Italians fought and labored for Free Italy, and United Italy.
Their victory is now only completed with the conquests. in Austria.
But the uprising for liberty in Sicily was aided by the Polish
Mirolawski, and for a time the army of Sardinia in Italy honored.
Gen. Chrzanowski. Garibaldi knew many Poles among his red-
shirted army of liberators.
The Polish warriors for freedom were not all soldiers by train-
48
SONS OF OPPRESSED POLAND
ing. To Milan came Adam Mickiewicz the poet, with a legion he
had organized.
And Mickiewicz was still a poet, still a teacher of high truth.
He declared that the world's sorrows were due to the sad fact that
rulers are following pagan principles of might, instead of Christian
principles of justice and right. How often, in the last few years of
sorrow, has the world recognized the evil that can still be wrought
by a spirit of pagan tyranny and pagan might!
Revolution in Austria knew the name of the Polish Gen. Bem,
and the calmer statesmanship which brought about some consti-
tutional government in Austria enrolled the names of Smolka and
Goluchowski.
Hungary, which has now declared itself independent of Aus-*
tria, had help from the sons of conquered Poland in her old strug-
gles with the Hapsburgs. Gen. Dembinski, Gen. Wysocki, Gen.
Bem, all will be remembered by future Hungarian historians as
our writers remember Kosciuszko.
Poland
Remembered
OLAND'S sons have thus continued to fight for liberty, when
Poland's own liberties were gone. But they never forgot
Poland itself, nor lost the hope that some day they would
rally their forces to her defense.
P
So eager were all Poland's sons in the homeland and outside
to strike a blow for her, that when the Great War burst forth they
struck for a time on different sides.
シン
​French Poles hurried to the Tricolor to strike at Germany.
Many American Poles, long before the United States entered the
war, crowded to Canada to join the armies of the British empire.
In Austria some great but deceived men, headed by Gen. Joseph
Pilsudski, formed a separate Polish legion to fight against Russia.
This Gen. Pilsudski and his forces will be discussed in a later
article. His is the story of a man of modern Poland, a man of
princely descent but of intense democracy. It is the story of a
man who was deceived into false hopes by the Teutons, but who
found out the deception, and was thrown into prison with all his
*
LIBERATORS IN MANY LANDS
49
leaders as a traitor. Now he is released from prison, and joins
with all his compatriots in other lands for the one great cause.
Poland has a broken history, indeed. But she has an unbroken
line of warriors under different standards of freedom, decorated
in this war with the medals of all the great Allies of Democracy.
Poland's Sons Re-created Poland In Their War
for World Democracy
TW
WO WEEKS after the outbreak of the Great War a group
of leading Poles of all political parties met in Warsaw.
Warsaw is the oldest capital of the dukes of Mazovia, and
became capital of Poland in 1609. It was the scene of sieges in
many wars with Sweden and Russia. It was the heroic city of
the last battles of Kosciuszko, and the mother of many Polish
revolutions. So all Poland listens to a voice from Warsaw, as
if from a voice of the mighty dead and the voice of the living
Poland.
These Polish councilors met to weigh the proclamation of lib-
erty to Poland which had just been made by the Grand Duke
Nicholas, commander of the Russian armies.
They all knew that Russian imperialism had been a bloody
and ruthless tyranny. They saw little hope if the war should per-
petuate the Czar. But they saw also the looming enemy of Russia
was Germany, which for centuries had been the chief enemy of
Poland. And far beyond Germany they saw the other Allies,
France and Great Britian, in whom Poland, like Belgium and
Armenia and Palestine, could finally trust.
•
Therefore these men, representing the four political parties
in Poland voting on candidates for the Russian Duma, declared
for acceptance of the proclamation of Grand Duke Nicholas.
Those who attended that conference report that there were
doubtful hearts who remembered the armies of Suwarrow and
the long files of exiles on the Siberian road. But it was a time
of decision between the Allies and the forces of Kaiserism.
**
These articles have already emphasized the fact that the Poles
knew Kaiserism for centuries before the Belgian outrages re-
vealed its character to the world.
For Kaiserism these Poles could not fight.
And on the other hand was the imperial pledge of the Grand
Duke:
"POLAND SHALL BE RE-BORN, FREE IN FAITH, IN
LANGUAGE, IN SELF-GOVERNMENT!”
The answer of the Polish political parties showed the spirit
of their people when they concluded their reply with these words:
52
POLAND'S SONS RE-CREATED POLAND
"THE BLOOD OF POLAND'S SONS SHED IN UNITED
COMBAT AGAINST THE GERMANS WILL SERVE
EQUALLY AS A SACRIFICE OFFERED UPON THE AL-
TAR OF HER RESURRECTION."
An utterance which now reads as if the united parties of
Russian Poland were inspired as prophets. They were not in-
spired as prophets but as patriots. They all felt the spirit of the
Polish past, which was to be the spirit of the Polish future.
So today no summary of all the battles of Poles in this war
could make a more complete summary of their achievements than
these words:
"The blood of Poland's sons shed in united combat against the
Germans will serve equally as a sacrifice offered upon the altar
of her resurrection!"
Divided Action,
United Spirit
66T
NITED combat against the Germans" did not seem as-
sured in the first flaming years of the war. United ac-
tion would seem impossible, because the first conscrip-
tions of the three empires ranged Polish subjects under the three
banners.
Perhaps the imperial houses now dethroned imagined that the
Poles under their generals were acting for Austria, or Russia, or
Germany. It was clear to watchful Polish-Americans, and to in-
ternational Poles like Paderewski, that the real leaders were act-
ing for Poland only.
From Warsaw
to Cracow
T
HE WORLD, beset with the maddening anxieties of the sud-
den outbreak of war, was painfully puzzled by the contrast
between Russian and Austrian Poland.
For while Poles on the Russian side were organizing in behalf
of Russia, Poles on the Austrian side were organizing to fight
against Russia. The center of the Russian movement was the
old capital of Warsaw. The center of the movement against
Russia was the old capital of Cracow.
IN THEIR WAR FOR WORLD DEMOCRACY
53
In this as in every early phase of the war the Teuton side
gained first advantage. In Cracow rose up Gen. Joseph Pilsudski,
descended of a princely family in Lithuania, but himself a radical
Socialist.
Gen. Pilsudski knew of the sufferings of Poland under Russia.
He had personally suffered much for his homeland. When the
turmoil of the Russo-Japanese war arose Gen. Pilsudski and his
colleagues began to foresee the Great War. They planned, as
revolutionaries had been planning since 1876, to be ready for the
Great War with a Polish force.
The Great-War burst forth. Many of the Poles in Russia
tumbled into the Russian ranks. Poles in Germany were drawn
by machinery into the Germany army. But in Galicia or Austrian
Poland, and in parts of Russian Poland in touch with Austrian
movements, a Polish army which had been organized in the dark-
ness marched forth into the light.
Four days after the war broke out Gen. Joseph Pilsudski left
Cracow with the first section of this army, with the Polish flag
aloft, and marched directly to the Russian border. At Kielce, on
Russian-Polish soil, the independence of Poland under Austrian
protection was proclaimed, and a high celebration was held in
which Russian and Austrian Poles were united.
The Single
Purpose
T
HE LOVERS of Poland might well have wept to see Polish
leaders in Warsaw upholding Russia and trusting in the
Allies; Poles in Germany driven or dragged into the armies
of the Kaiser; Poles in Austria claiming and proclaiming liberty,
and turning all their wrath upon the Russia which their kinsmen
upheld.
Was this a breach that could not be healed? Was it an un-
changeable division?
It was not. The unity of purpose of these scattered armies
was more plain than their divergences of action.
We know that in the Civil War both the North and the South
displayed American character. We know that each side in its
own way fought for principle. We can forget the sorrow and
54
POLAND'S SONS RE-CREATED POLAND
hatred of old years in the memory of the valor and devotion of
each side to its own cause.
But in our Civil War there were two causes in, conflict. In
Poland there was only One Cause-the Great Cause of Poland.
The conflict was between methods of gaining that great object,
the independence of the old republic.
Battle-Cries
of a Century
66
Never Against
"The Allies"
C
OW SHALL we be free?" has been the cry of the
yearning patriot heart in Poland since Poland lost her
freedom.
This was the aim of Kosciuszko and his
army of peas-
ants with scythes. Such was the cry of the Revolutionaries of
1830 and 1863. In their own way these heroes struck for the
freedom of Poland, and each leader in a different way.
So the inherited passion for liberty came down to the founders
of the political movements in Russian Poland. So it came down
also to the organizers of the secret Polish troops in both Austrian
and Russian Poland. Each in its own way struck for Poland,
though the conference at Warsaw aimed at the Hohenzollerns and
the armies from Cracow aimed at the Romanoffs.
Now
TOW BOTH these parties, under
some great devotions in common.
different emperors, had
Both were alike devoted
to the great memories of the past. Both were alike loyal
to the great friendship which France and Great Britian had shown
for years to the Polish people.
These lands had not set Poland free. But they had never joined
in her enslavement. On the other hand, English and French
poets have eloquently extolled the Polish heroes of liberty, as if
they were heroes of Paris or London.
So the Polish legion that marched out from Cracow against
Russia was .committed to fight against Russia only. It was to
fight the dynasty of the Czars which had oppressed Poland. So
IN THEIR WAR FOR WORLD DEMOCRACY
55
the armies which the Warsaw committee called into existence
marched against Germany, against the dynasty of the Hohen-
zollerns which had oppressed Poland.
This illuminates the dark confusion of the Polish situation. It
is another demonstration of the power of this downtrodden na-
tion to exert a national strength, and to demonstrate a national
spirit.
This national spirit demanded only that the old crusade of
liberty be fulfilled.
To the Pole of the Warsaw committee, hoping that something
could be done for Poland through the desperation of Russia's
promises, Prussia was the Western Front of Poland's War.
To the Pole of the Cracow army, praying that his right arm
⚫could strike some blow for his homeland with Austria trembling
at his back, the land of the Czars was the Eastern Front of Poland's
War.
From the first roar of battle Poland's sons fought this war for
Poland. Their spirit was one spirit, marching west or east.
Both fought better than they knew. When Austrian Poles dug
trenches in the sacred soil of Russian Poland, or when Russian
Poles crossed into Prussian Polish territory, both dreamed of a
new and united Poland. And the blows on both sides told.
Prussia, the·
Last Enemy
T
HE POLISH ármy in Austria lived to see the house of
Romanoff fall. They saw the young republic of Russia pro-
claim Polish independence as a matter of course. They had
already seen proclamation of free Poland by Austria, and a recog-
nition of the Polish army had come from Vienna in the first year of
the war.
But Austria, if she dreamed that any son of the old kingdom-
republic was fighting for the Hapsburgs, had an awakening dur-
ing the years. It was found that the East Galician Polish Legion
had taken the oath to Poland only-it was disbanded. It was
found by the Poles on the other hand. that the German allies of
· Austria were invading Poland with the worst rapine of the whole
•
war. The years went on, thunderous and stormy years, and the
56
POLAND'S SONS RE-CREATED POLAND
By
Poles in Austria put less and less hope in the Austrian promises.
The Austrians depended less and less on the Polish troops.
Austrian Polish legionaries deserted to Russia, especially to
republican Russia. The Poles in Austria saw more and more with
the eyes of their brethren in Russia, and with the eyes of their
brethren in France, and their brethren in the United States.
Democracy the
Issue
THE
HE RUSH of war events showed more and more the true
issue: Autocracy against Democracy. This was the vital
issue of Poland's life. The entrance of America into the war
found the Poles of all sections of old Poland, and their kinsmen
in every land of refuge, united on the great course to be followed.
The far-scattered nation had already agreed on the Great
cause. They had divided on the methods. They found, at last,
that "the blood of Poland's sons shed in united combat against
Germany will serve equally as a sacrifice offered upon the altar of
her resurrection."
So the last years of the war found Austria imprisoning and
interning and shooting officers and soldiers of that Polish Legion
who had discovered the vanity of her promises. The Polish troops
in Russia made no war against republican Russia, but they stood
out against the pro-German Bolsheviki. In the very last year of
the war, the Polish flag flew in France and in Russia and in other
fields, and Polish blood was found in every army under the Allied
flag.
And now that the war is over, the old unity of purpose is
recognized. Roman Dmowski of the Warsaw committee serves
his country in Paris. Gen. Pilsudski of the Austrian Polish Legion
serves in Warsaw. Gen. Haller, who once fought in Russia, heads
the Polish army in France, and to Danzig comes Ignace Jan Pader-
ewski of the Paris committee in a British warship.
"
They will divide
But they demon-
These men were divided in policy before.
again. They differ in opinion on many things.
strate, as everything truly Polish demonstrates, the unity of the
Polish nation in the great cause of Liberty for which it is destined
to live.
"United States of Poland" Rises in Spirit
of American Republics
P
RESIDENT WILSON is of all men the most quoted when
anyone would discuss the spirit of the New Poland, which
is rising from among dead nations to a shining place among
living ones.
One hundred years after the death of Thaddeus Kosciuszko,
the Pole who helped to liberate America but could not free his
own land, President Wilson declared to the American Congress:
"Statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united,
independent and autonomous Poland."
President Wilson made this declaration three months before
America was dragged into the war by Prussia bent on self-des-
truction. Yet Poles throughout America and Europe rose up re-
joicing at this utterance. It was the first acknowledgment by the
head of a great power of the outraged rights of their people.
President Wilson did not merely say "a united Poland." The
czar had pledged himself to unite Poland, under his own scepter.
He had promised to restore her Diet, under his own supervision.
He had promised to maintain her language, but that language was
to speak the will of the Russian czar.
Likewise the kaiser would have been glad to pledge a united
Poland, if he could find some way to join all Poland under Prus-
sianism. Frederick the Great or Nero would have promised a
"united Poland" under their single sway.
President Wilson knew, and the Poles knew, that a united
Poland was not enough.
President Wilson said that there should be "a united, inde-
pendent Poland." He knew that even this, was not enough. Prus-
sia and Austria had even promised that, an independent Poland.
Mala
It was to be a Poland under a king chosen by agreement of
the house of Hohenzollern and the house of Hapsburg. An in-
dependent Poland, under a puppet monarch trained to tremble at
the kaiser's frown, or to obey the slightest hint from Vienna. An
58
"UNITED STATES OF POLAND"
independent Poland, but not independent of Hohenzollernism or
Hapsburgism.
The Full Cup
of Liberty
T
THIS WAS by no means enough. What justice demanded,
what statesmanship demanded, what civilization demanded
was a "united, free and AUTONOMOUS Poland."
Poland must govern herself, not be governed by the czar or
the German czarina. Poland must direct her own destiny, and
not see her high hopes destroyed by a deputy of the Prussian or
Austrian tyrants.
The words of President Wilson were among the first words of
greeting from a world statesman to express what Polish patriotism
has really desired and craved.
$
This was not a Russian sub-kingdom. It was not a Prussian-
Austrian principality. It was a Polish republic.
Nothing but a republic would bring to the thirsting lips of
Poland the full cup of Liberty for which they and their fathers.
had suffered such mighty pangs.
They demanded a Republic, in the foremost rank of the free
nations of today. Even so the old Kingdom-Republic was in the
leadership of free nations in those brave centuries.
The words of President Wilson still echo in Polish hearts
throughout America and Europe. For when those words were -
uttered, German troops had possession of vast stretches of Rus-
sian Poland. The empire of the czars was reeling toward its fall.
Between tottering Russia and conquering Prussia, with Austria
dropping the mask and commencing to imprison the patriots of
the Polish Legion, Poland could scarcely expect language from the
American President which sounded so much like "recognition."
The Poles have seen other recognitions. They had witnessed
the increasing sympathy of the French and British from the firing
of the first guns on the Prussian-Russian frontier. In fact, Presi-
dent Wilson's words were largely the summing up of the growing
conviction of statesmen.
RISES IN SPIRIT OF AMERICAN REPUBLICS
59
The words of President Wilson, spoken from America while
America was still a neutral land, were nevertheless words which
uttered the full thought of Poland's heart.
For the Poland which her sons and descendants see arising in
the wide plains of the Vistula, the land which has been the land of
her people since before the Caesars, is a republic to be built in the
spirit of the American republic.
In fact, the only description that can be found for it by Ameri-
can friends of the Polish cause is the name employed by Dr. A.
Syski: "The United States of Poland."
"E Pluribus
Unum"
Noth
TO ONE knows whether the new Republic will really bear
that name. It is now a name of distinction among the re-
publics of the world.
In the former centuries a duchy was proud when it became a
kingdom. Often a king was rejoiced to call himself Emperor.
But in our day the United States of America has her tributes of
admiration from the Republics named after her:
The United States of Brazil, the United States of Mexico, the
United States of Colombia, the United States of Venezuela.
Some Chinese patriots have desired that their immense home-
land be known as the United States of China. And there are some
who predict that the Germanic dominions of the fallen Hohen-
zollerns and Hapsburgs will yet be called the United States of
Germany-die Vereinigten Staaten von Deutschland!
Thus many lands of foreign speech are christened for Liberty
in the name of the United States. But even where there is no
adoption of our name, there is an adoption of our real system,
and an attempt to assume our spirit.
Our fathers determined to form one nation, but to preserve the
rights of the states. They would make the states powerful, but
preserve the rights of countries, and cities, and townships. They
would make the government powerful, but preserve the rights of
the individual.
60
´UNITED, STATES OF POLAND”
(C
Free States of
Free Poland
a
Out of these many liberties they made one great central na-
tional liberty. They wrote upon their charters the motto, "One
Qut of Many," or, in Latin, "E Pluribus Unum." To build up
the power of the nation, and to maintain the liberties of the states
and of the people, was the whole spirit of this republic.
O
F ALL states brought into being under the inspiration of
America, none has so completely caught her spirit as has
the formative republic of Poland.
For first of all, this republic wishes to be strong. She desires
a place among the powerful nations. The Polish Committee at
Paris, the Polish provisional government in Warsaw, speak in
their own way for 30,000,000 people..
The Polish National Department in America, composed of
American citizens representing 3,000,000 Americans of Polish
blood, likewise see hope for their kinsmen yonder only in the
building up of Poland into strength.
This is why the plans of Polish statesmen sweep over the whole
wide valley of the Vistula.
This is why the hopes of Independent Poland have always in-
cluded the regaining of Gdansk or Danzig. This is a port in the
Prussian kingdom, formerly under Polish rule, added to Prussia
by the Second Partition.
The Vistula is to Poland all that the Missouri-Mississippi sys-
tem is to the western United States, all that the St. Lawrence is
to eastern Canada. And Danzig is to the Vistula all that New
Orleans is to the Mississippi, all that Montreal is to the St. Law-
rence. It is the city at the mouth of the Polish Vistula, and the
distributor of the grain and produce of all the Vistula tributaries.
Poland would see this Gdansk restored, and all the other terri-
tories snatched from her by the Second Partition restored with it.
Americans who know their history can sympathize with this. Fc
soon after our independence was accomplished Spain forbade us t
navigate the Mississippi. She could control that stream throug
its upper reaches because she held New Orleans.
1
RISES IN SPIRIT OF AMERICAN REPUBLICS
61
It was only when New Orleans passed to France, and we se-
cured it in 1803 by the Louisiana purchase, that we really con-
trolled the Mississippi.
The Old Freedom
of Danzig
B
UT WOULD Poland oppress Danzig, as the Prussians op-
pressed Danzig and all other Polish cities stolen in the First
and Second and Third Partitions?
Such oppression by Poland would be impossible. The Polish
Republic has gained recognition from the Allies by its pledge of
democracy. Democracy in Danzig means the government of that
city by itself, as a city in one of the states of the United States of
Poland.
And Poland can point to records in the history of Danzig
itself to show that this is her policy. This city of Gdansk has a
thousand years of history, and a thousand years of municipal
liberty. It belonged of old to the league of trading cities known
as the Hansa towns, powerful and free. It came under the sway
of Poland by its own act, when it sought the shelter of the Polish
Kingdom-Republic as protection against Teutonic tyranny.
And under Polish rule in those old centuries, Danzig was never
a subjugated town. It always preserved local autonomy. The
loss of the freedom of Poland was the loss of the liberties of Dan-
zig, and the restoration of the Polish republic will give the city
again its lost Polish freedom.
States,
Not Provinces
TH
HIS IS the plan of Polish patriotism for all the districts to
be included in the New Poland. These are not to be prov-
inces, but states. They are to be ruled by the consent of the
governed. The Polish statesmen of today believe this the real
path of greatness, the real pledge of Poland's continuing power.
And only a powerful Poland can perform real and mighty works.
for the cause of world-democracy:
62
'
"UNITED STATES OF POLAND""
Let Danzig turn back her records to the free days of Polish
rule. Let Danzig then add to these records all that modern states-
men know of modern liberty.
Then she can see that the Danzig of the future will be a "Free
City." She will be freer than all the towns of the Hansa league.
She will be freer than any Prussian metropolis that has had to
obey the petty town of Potsdam.
What Danzig will be, all Poland will be. Though the name
will be Poland, the country will be a union of states. Of this let
more be told in a later article.
Religious Liberty in Poland Assured by
Toleration of Ancient Constitution
"I
AM NOT king of your consciences!" declared King Sigismund
Augustus to the people of Poland, after he had mounted the
throne of the Jagellons in 1548.
One year before King Sigismund Augustus was crowned Henry
VIII of England had died. Henry VIII indeed claimed to be king
of his people's consciences. No monarch of England or any other
Christian land save Russia ever claimed such sway over the faith
of his subjects.
Yet in that century King Sigismund Augustus of Poland was
a greater monarch than King Henry of England. The Polish mon-
arch was the most powerful of his line, one of the most powerful
of his time.
Hẹ saw realms added to his realm. Under his sway the union
with Lithuania was finally made complete. Livonia came freely.
into the unity of the Polish state before his death. If ever a king
seemed to have power to control his people and enforce his will,
that king was Sigismund Augustus.
And he did control his people, and enforce his will, but not by
trying to override religious liberty. He saw instead an intense
demand among his people for religious liberty. He saw also how
other European realms were splitting and burning with religious
hatreds.
Sigismund Augustus himself was a Christian prince, a man
of faith and conscience. As such, he issued a proclamation, now
350 years old, but which would be worthy of King George V or
King Victor Emanuel in the twentieth century. When so many
princely hearts were burning with religious intolerance, this king
of Poland proclaimed:
"Considering the great calamities to which the largest and most
flourishing Christian countries have recently been exposed, because
their kings and princes have tried to suppress the different reli-
gious opinions which have arisen in our time, we have resolved to
prevent these dangers from disturbing the peace and security of
our realms, and from causing such excitement of the minds of
Ang
64
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN POLAND ASSURED
people as would produce a civil war, particularly as we have be-
come convinced, by the example of other countries in which so
much Christian blood has been shed, that such severities are not
only useless, but even most injurious."
This was the doctrine of a church-going king of Poland in the
century before our American religious liberty was established by
the Catholics of Maryland, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the
Baptists of Rhode Island.
The People
and the King
T
HE KING of Poland was in this merely a representative of
the thought of his people. In those centuries Poland saw
both Catholics and Protestants in high places. But she did
not see laws to compel uniform faith, or persecution for conscience
sake.
When Protestantism became a noticeable movement in Poland,
in the time of Sigismund Augustus, some striking incidents showed
the attitude of the people. For example, those who became Prot-
estants refused to pay any tithes to the older church. They found
that in this attitude they were warmly supported by the power of
the Catholic nobility.
Then the Catholic and Protestant members of the Diet, meet-
ing in Piotrkow in 1552, worked with the king to provide the ut-
most liberty of thought and worship.
The result of this Diet was the establishment of a system like
that in existence today in all civilized countries. The different
church bodies had authority over their ecclesiastical relations to
their own members, and there the ecclesiastical power ended.
The Contrasts
of the Ages
W
E WOULD take this for granted now in any country,
civilized or uncivilized. We know that today the force
of modern opinion is strong enough to compel religious
toleration, as it has compelled toleration in China under the dow-
ager empress, and in Russia under the czars.
+
65
BY TOLERATION OF ANCIENT CONSTITUTION
But in the time of Sigismund the king could have issued very
different edicts, if he had been disposed to persecute. The nobles
at the Diet of Piotrkow might have passed Test Acts or other
acts to take away the rights of the members of the minority faith,
whatever the minority faith might prove to be.
But one sentiment prevailed among Catholics and Protestants,
at the very time when the issues were burning in every other land.
When the Catholics of that period were in power they pro-
tected the Protestants. Then came a time when Protestantism
had a wide sweep in Poland, temporarily winning to its doctrine
many of the most ancient and eminent families. And these Prot-
estant families, while they were building Protestant churches and
printing Protestant Bibles, did not neglect to protect their Catholic
fellow-countrymen.
Poland thus stands out in shining contrast to many lands of
that age. She stands out in shining contrast to Prussia and Russia
even in the last 100 years.
Even in cities which had rejoiced at the Toleration Edicts of
Sigismund in the sixteenth century, Catholics were persecuted in
the nineteenth by the Kulturkampf madness of von Bismarck. In
other cities Lithuanian Greek Catholics were forced into member-
ship in the Russian church. Thus modern Russia and Prussia fell
behind the Catholics and Protestants of an earlier century.
The Land
of Faith
TH
HIS ANCIENT tolerance is not the tolerance of people in-
different to religion. Indeed, we find that some of the Polish
kings felt that they were naturally preachers and spiritual
advisers. Some of them even chide and admonish the bringers-in
of new doctrines, and urge them paternally to rejoin the ancient
church.
For these Polish kings, especially the greatest of them, were
religious men. Many of them have been canonized as saints. But
their religion was one of principle, not of intolerance.
So under Catholic kings Protestants were found, now and then,
as presidents of the Polish Diet, as judges of courts, holding offices.
of honor and offices of trust.
66
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN POLAND ASSURED
The mingling of zeal and tolerance was beautifully uttered in
a declaration by Jan Zamoyski, Crown Chancellor, showing what
breadth of vision had made a Land of Liberty out of the Land of
Faith. He declared to a group of separated friends:
"If I could lead you back to Catholicism I would gladly give
up half my life—and with the other half I should live rejoicing in
the union.
"But if anyone should try to compel you, then I would give up
all my life, rather than be obliged to witness this compulsion."
The Land
of Refuge
T
HE FAME of Poland's liberty went like spreading light
through the dark regions where religious strife was raging.
The result was that many tolerated sectarian leaders of
that age found their way to the -Vistula, just as friends of human
liberty had always sought the way to Poland.
The Test
of the Ages
Here were to be found, under the equal protection of the laws,
the different schools of opinion which that era produced: Hussites,
Lutherans, Calvinists, Arians, Secinians and others.
鑒
​N
O NATION better stood the test of those times than Poland.
And Poland, if she were asked what her pledge of religious
liberty will be, could pledge much by merely turning to her
history.
But of course. Poland can show more than that. Her sons and
daughters have been scattered throughout the world. They have
shared proudly in the achievements of liberty in every land. At
the same time, her sons in Poland have suffered under the perse-
cution of Prussia on one side, and the persecution of Russia on
the other.
ه
When Poland and Lithuania were united, the Lithuanians were
divided from western Christendom. This was before the Ref-
ormation, before the day of modern religious problems. But Po-
land preserved the religious liberties of the Lithuanians as she pre-
served their political liberties. And there came a time when the
BY TOLERATION OF ANCIENT CONSTITUTION
67
Lithuanians voluntarily united themselves with the western
churches. The Christian charity of their Polish brethren accom-
plished what persecution would never have accomplished.
As late as 1874 the Russian czar's church made efforts to force
the Lithuanians into the Russian church organization. But it was
found impossible to break the ties which tolerance had bound be-
tween Lithuania and western Christendom. Whether Lithuania
forms one government with Poland or not, she will always preserve
the spirit of religious liberty which Poland secured for her in
earlier centuries.
The Shrine
of Freedom
A
N EARLIER article in this series cited the recent request
of Jewish communities in Poland for their own courts and
the recognition of their own language. It was remarked in
that article that these liberties were actually possessed by Jews in
the days of Poland's independence.
The Jews were expelled from England by Edward I in the
year 1290.
But in the year 1264 King Boleslaw the Pious (the name should
be noted) had issued to the Jews of Poland proper a Charter of
Liberties. Within the next century Casimir the Great extended
this to all lands under the Polish dominion.
For 500 years the charters of Boleslaw and Casimir were con-
firmed by all the kings of Poland. The confirmation of the charter
came as surely as the coronation itself, while from many western
lands the Jews were barred by barbarous laws, and in others they
endured continual rapine and persecution.
The charter gave to the Jewish dwellers in Poland complete
freedom of trade and transactions, and of travel. There was no
"Jewish pale" as in modern Russia under the czars.
The Jews, when accused, were tried by separate courts, and could
not be brought before ordinary municipal or ecclesiastical courts.
Indeed, the Jewish elders themselves tried all minor cases. Other
cases were tried before officials known as "Jewish judges." These
were never allowed to convict a Jew on exclusively Gentile testi-
mony, and their verdicts had to be approved by the Jewish elders.
68
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN POLAND ASSURED
These were the laws of the land, just as the laws for toleration
among Christian sects were laws of the land.
There are elements in every nation who are opposed to religious
liberty. We know individuals in our own America who are utterly
intolerant. And Poland also was cursed at times with the pres-
ence of individuals who were not worthy of the grand spirit of
her leaders. But in Poland, as in America, those were the excep-
tions. The main volume of Polish history is unstained by the blood
of religious massacre, unmarred by cruel statutes or intolerance.
The Future
Freedoms
HE POLAND of the future will turn for her inspiration to
the grandest and highest things of her past, and to the noblest
principles of the present age.
>
If all other lands had forgotten religious tolerance, Poland
could restore it from the records of her old laws. But since all
countries do now profess and proclaim religious liberty, Poland
has only to pledge that she will maintain the present and the past
freedom of soul of her people.
Great is Poland. She is great because of moral greatness,
spiritual grandeur, mightiness of soul. These qualities belong to
the nation because it is a nation of freemen, men independent in
spirit however oppressed by foreign rule. And therefore she will
maintain that independence of spirit for every soul within her
borders, when once the foreign rule is forever loosed.
She will be a land of liberty,. welcoming to her all sons of lib-
erty, pledging freedom to all. She will not live in the past, but in
the present. But let her past be taken as a pledge that she is able
to fulfill the promises of the future.
History of Polish Womanhood Shines With
Noble Patriotic Achievements
N
EW YORK has seen grand efforts for the cause of Poland
championed by Mme. Marcella Sembrich.
Mme. Marcella Sembrich was born in the war-battered
city of Lemberg. She was born with the irresistible impulse of
the musical génius, for she played the piano and violin at four,
and supported her family with her music when only 12. Now for
30 years all the honor and adulation that are showered upon great
operatic sopranos have been hers-Athens, Dresden, London, Paris,
Rome, Milan, New York have bowed down before her.
This might make any vocalist a mere queen of song. But all
her successes have only developed the womanhood of Mme. Sem-
brich. And now, after a lifetime of honors won in other lands,
after dwelling a long time in New York, among people of English
speech, she is found devoting strength and genius to the cause of
her beloved Poland.
All the prestige Mme. Sembrich has won in her long career in
music has gone to help in raising relief funds for the battle-ridden
peasantry of her suffering country.
All these years the people of her own blood have rejoiced in
her fame. The Poles are a musical nation. The humblest Polish
settlement in the United States has its singing society and its or-
chestra devoted to classical music. So these people know and
appreciate the high level of art which Mme. Sembrich has reached.
But perhaps she has never won, in a lifetime of kindness, so
much of the love of her own kindred as in these years when
Poland was in bitter need, and Mme. Sembrich was found devot-
edly toiling for the people of the homeland.
At the
Sorbonne
P
ARIS knows only one woman who was ever made a pro-
fessor at the Sorbonne, that university which for 700 years
has exerted tremendous influence over the public mind of
France.
70
HISTORY OF POLÍSH WOMANHOOD SHINES
!
This woman is Mme. Marie Sklodowska-Curie, daughter of a
professor in Warsaw, born in Warsaw, but the woman who won
enduring fame in Paris by the discovery of radium.
Mme. Curie has won international honors in science as great
as those won by Mme. Sembrich in music. But when the war
burst upon the world, and upon Poland, she showed the filial loyalty
of her heart, and became one of the first and most earnest workers
for the relief of her suffering people.
Many have said that art is international, and science is inter-
national. But these women have shown that the internationalism
of life work will not destroy patriotism or humanity or sympathy
for the land of one's birth.
These two feminine world-figures, before whom all civilization
has done homage in the spheres of learning and of song, are found
to be, after all, women of Poland as well as women of the whole
world.
The First
Ambassador
TH
HE whole world knows how the greatest of piano virtuosi,
Ignace Jan Paderewski, was ruined by the war.
The whole world knows how he toured the Allied lands,
as he said, "not to entertain, but to plead for Poland." America
has recognized the honor given her when the Polish Committee
in Paris named M. Paderewski as its first diplomatic representa-
tive in America.
+
▼
Thus the master-musician came to us in a new role, as the first
ambassador of the resurrected Polish Republic. All that is known,
as well as the memorable eloquence with which M. Paderewski
pleaded the cause he desired to plead.
With M. Paderewski on his old time concert tours Mme. Pader-
ewski often traveled. She shared the honors that came to him,
and the glory of his applause.
Then, when M. Paderewski appeared in his new role, as a
worker and a toiler in the hard affairs of a formative state-as
an advocate for a prostrated and humiliated people-Mme. Pader-
ewski was found sharing his labor and his new anxieties, and
serving Poland with the same zeal.
גי
WITH NOBLE PATRIOTIC ACHIEVEMENTS
71
•
The New Poland owes much to valiant men, generals, states-
men, professors, advocates, and men of religion. But she owes
much also to her women, to these three and to others like them in
high or humble spheres.
Poland would be ungrateful indeed if she did not recognize
these women and their work. But the world asks, What was the
inspiration of their efforts? Does this mean that Polish women
feel the force of the Modern Age? Is this merely modern Fem-
inism, or have the Poles in other ages known the great help of
'great women?
4.
The Girls
of America
GEN
W
E HAVE all seen in America, and all our Red Cross and
Liberty Loan and War-Saving Stamp campaigns can re-
port, how zealously the teams of Polish women have aided
in these works.
But in America we expect great results from the American
Girl, whatever her ancestry. Whether her grandmother's girlhood
was spent in the long winters of Russia or under the sun of Spain,
we expect from the American girl life and fire and initiative..
These things have been shown indeed in the American Girl
of Polish descent. She has done more than her share in all the~
activities of the war. She has also done her extra share for the
Polish Army fighting in France, and all the special relief work
undertaken for Poland itself.
For in our Polish-American communities two armies were
raised for this war. The young men eligible to service under our
American flag poured into the recruiting stations for that service.
At the same time thousands of young men, not citizens, or too
young for the American army, or too old for the American army,
volunteered for service in the Polish army.
Behind both these Polish armies stood and worked the Amer-
ican women of Polish blood, from the grandmothers knitting socks
in memory and hope, to the flower-like little children passing coin
baskets at a bazaar. The Polish women of America did their
quota and more for all the American relief causes.
72
HISTORY OF POLISH WOMANHOOD SHINES
They also sustained this second army, of kindred spirits, bound
to fight in France under the White Eagle of the Polish Republic.
So the Polish communities of our American cities knew of two
kinds of farewells, for soldiers.
They saw their volunteers and draft men depart for the Amer-
ican camps with other youths of many nationalities. They saw
the same scenes that other nationalities witnessed on these occa-
sions.
They also saw the departure of volunteers for the Polish army:
They saw the young troopers gather and march solemnly to church,
according to the antique custom of Poland in her days of glory.
They witnessed in church the unusual ceremony of the Itinera-
rium for departing warriors. Then these young men went on to
the special training camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, to don the blue
uniform of the Polish Army.
And neither American army men nor Polish army men ever
knew their kinswomen to fail them in comfort and cheer. They
hesitated at no toil, and shrank from no weariness.
The young
American girl of Polish descent, with her liveliness and her love
of laughter and music, went in one spirit with her knitting grand-
mother, or with the lofty spirit of Mme. Sembrich.
The High
Inheritance
T
HIS spirit is not one "created by the war." It is not the
spirit of today only.
The truth is, discernible in all the history of the past, that
Polish womanhood has always had its share in the country's life
work. The fire of patriotism, the devotion to the country's wel-
fare, the cares of state, have never been matters only for the men
of Poland, for the noblemen and the princes.
The reason for this is the foundation of Polish society. It has
been previously emphasized in these articles that the whole Polish
nation was based upon the freeman and the individual home. In
that individual home the women had their place and work-and
hence in the larger fields of the state women might have their
place and work, if there were things which only women could do,
WITH NOBLE PATRIOTIC ACHIEVEMENTS
73
St. Hedwig, the
Twice-Crowned
THE
HE great Polish women of history have not been women
forcing their way into public posts. They have been found
chiefly in the calmer and quieter spheres. But when the call
came to them to assume heavier and harder burdens they did not
shrink.
Some European kingdoms have barred women from the throne
by the famous Salic law. This law caused bloody wars between
France and England. But in Great Britain the right of women
to the throne was recognized, ever since Queen Boadicea rallied
the Briton tribes against the soldiers of Nero.
So in the Slavic realm of Russia the power of women to rule
was established by the early but able reign of Queen Olga in Kiev.
And Poland found in the reign of Queen Hedwig, the Saint Jad-
wiga of the Polish church, an era of advancement and greatness.
A Medieval
Ideal
T
HIS queen has been honored by the patriotism and the piety
of her people for four centuries. And yet-just as Napoleon
of France was not French but Corsican-just as King Richard
I of England was not English but French-so Queen Hedwig of
Poland was by birth not Polish but Hungarian.
The year 1384 saw an extraordinary event in Poland. When
Casimir the Great was dying, he wished that his nephew, Louis of
Hungary, should be chosen king. This was done. Then Louis
asked that his daughter Hedwig be chosen queen after his death.
And in 1384 this Princess Hedwig was crowned with all the state
and honor of the ancient royalty.
This was in the midst of the Hundred Years' War between
France and England over the Salic law. And this queen, chosen
to the throne of a storm-girt land, was not even a grown woman.
She was just 13 years old when, of their own free will and choice,
the nobility of Poland called her to the throne.
Those voting nobles were unhampered by determination to sub-
jugate women. Their action is in every way remarkable, for Po-
74
HISTORY OF POLISH WOMANHOOD SHINES
land had never had a queen as sovereign. Yet all succeeding gen-
erations of Poles have rejoiced in their extraordinary decision.
C
For under Queen Hedwig took place the first union with
Lithuania, which was the beginning of Poland's greatest era. She
was married to Jagiello of Lithuania, and won him to the Christian.
faith. From them were descended the Jagellon dynasty of Polish
kings-the crowned presidents of the old Polish republic. And
when Queen Hedwig died her consort succeeded to the throne.
Then took place the decisive struggle of that age with the Teutonic
Knights, in which the Prussian menace of the Middle Ages was
destroyed by the great battle of Tannenberg.
Poland would have been far less in Europe than she became,
if her noblès had not freely crowned this Hedwig. Partly of
Polish blood she was, but wholly of Hungarian birth and training.
Yet her acceptance of high responsibility, her worth and zeal for
her people, are a cherished tradition to Pole and Lithuanian today,
just as her renowned beauty is an inspiration to Polish artists.
True successors of St. Hedwig the Queen are the great Polish
women of our time, the ardent American patriot girls of Polish
descent among us.
They could point back to other grand examples, such as the
Countess Zyberk-Plater, who led one revolutionary uprising in
Lithuania in the days of oppression. The countess, like the queen,
was a lover of home and peace, but did not shrink when called
to heavier tasks.
Such are the records of Polish Womanhood, utterly womanly,
utterly devoted, and triumphant in faithfulness.
New Freedom in Poland Means Security for
Large and Small Neighbor Nations
APOLEON THE GREAT was an inspired prophet.
It was Napoleon who said, "Europe will become either
Cossack or Republican."
N
He meant that European nations would come to submit to wide
autocracy like that of the Czars of Russia, or would unite all na-
tions to preserve Democracy.
This was like foretelling the issues of the Great War.
Another saying of Napoleon has come back to the memory of
statesmen since the Great War burst upon the world.
He said: "The Polish Question is the key to the European
vault."
Į
True when Napoleon reigned, as it had been true centuries
before his birth-this is true now, and will be true for our children.
What Shall
"Poland" Mean?
L
ET us first understand what we shall mean by Poland—what
character of nation the New Poland will be.
It will be the nation that produced Chopin, Copernicus,
Sienkiewicz, and thus is proved capable of men of the foremost
order. But they are not all geniuses of art or letters or science.
They are a body of 30,000,000 people, stålwart, sterling, modest,
worthy.
}
Their government will represent definite principles, thus laid
down plainly and clearly before all the world by. Ignace Jan Pader-
ewski, their representative:
"Poland will be free and so will her inhabitants, as in this
majestic and mighty Republic of the United States.
"The democratic Constitution of Poland will assure liberty and
equality as to race, religion, or political opinion.
"Catholics, Protestants and Jews will all enjoy equal rights as
they will all fulfil equal duties.
"There was, there is, and there will be no oppression of any.
kind in Poland!"
76
NEW FREEDOM IN POLAND MEANS SECURITY
How Poland
Won Her Place
TH
HE nation that upholds this standard in middle Europe can
indeed be "the key to the European vault."
If the Czars could have Russianized Poland they would
have conquered Germany and ruled the Rhine from Petrograd.
If the Kaisers could have Prussianized Poland they would have
conquered Russia and ruled the Neva from Berlin.
Here was the Key which Russian and Prussian tyrants sought
to master, and which would have unlocked the vaults of treasure
and power.
But no Czar could turn the key, and no Kaiser could move the
key. Poland remained, barring both their doors.
The humble, downtrodden, meek and sad Polish people, by
merely resisting, by merely keeping the faith, has outlived the
imperial ambitions and the imperial houses of Romanoff and
Hohenzollern.
It is not by accident that Poland now stands restored among
free peoples. It is not because of mere historical sentiment.
Poland, during all these years of eclipse, has earned her place.
*
She raised the standard of Liberty against Autocracy while
Napoleon was still a lieutenant of artillery. She raised it again
and again, long before Europe knew that the principles for which
Poland fought were world-principles.
Now she can give a truer pledge of maintaining those prin-
ciples in the future, because she has held them firm for all these
centuries. She can call her very oppressors from their graves to
witness for her. And the free nations, with whom she has fought
to the overthrowing of Kaiserism, will add their witness.
The Eternal
Bulwark
T
HE farsighted Allies can see that Poland's future has a mean-
ing for them.
The Allies look on and smile while Gen. Haller takes hold
in Danzig, and Paderewski enters Posen.
FOR LARGE AND SMALL NEIGHBOR NATIONS
77
These cities have been under Prussianism for generations.
They contributed mightily to the strength of Prussia. They would
contribute in the future to that strength, especially if a revived
Poland sends heavy shipments down the Vistula to Danzig, and
Danzig is still Prussian.
But the world knows what a strong Prussia has meant. And
what the world wants instead is a strong Poland.
Here would be a nation between Prussia and Russia. It would
represent neither Czarism nor Kaiserism but would stand opposed
to both. It would represent neither Bolshevism nor the Prussian.
spirit of domination but would stand opposed to both.
❤
On the other hand, if Russia needed help from a strong and
kindly neighbor, Poland would be her helper as she was in former
centuries. And if Prussia needed guidance in the unwonted path-
ways of democracy, Poland could be her leader as she was in
former centuries.
D
At the same time, if either Russia or Prussia submitted to re-
action, and became again the old time autocracies, Poland would
not fall back. She would keep the faith as in former centuries.
Poland, enthroned in her people, would represent in eastern
Europe the ideals of Great Britian and France and the United
States. She would be the friend of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia,
Ukraina, Finland, Greater Italy, Greater Greece, and of any other
nation self-determined on independent action.
She would be indeed the key to Europe. She would be rather
like the gate of the Temple of Janus in Rome, which was shut in
time of peace.
She could hold fast the doors on all wars that
threatened democracy.
The Vaster
Future
TH
HE Poles predict an early unity of the old boundaries of the
Kingdom of Poland, with 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 inhabi-
tants.
But some of them have formed already a grand dream for the
future, based on the self-determination of peoples.
They hope for a time in the future when the Republic of Poland-
will include all of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was
78
NEW FREEDOM IN POLAND MEANS SECURITY
united to Poland under the Jagellon dynasty, and remained united
to her until the destruction of Polish liberties.
They have hopes also for a share of their old, old territories
in Silesia and Pomerania.
J
They do not expect these additions by force and arms, but by
self-determination of peoples.
The Lithuanians, for example, are disturbed by a movement for
an entirely independent Lithuania. At the same time this Gen.
Pilsudski, Polish military dictator at Warsaw, is a Lithuanian,
as was also the renowned Kosciuszko. Thus there is already a
strong Lithuanian movement for unity.
The Poles declare for self-determination. If the Lithuanians,
the Letts, the people of Courland and Esthonia and other lands,
wish to establish separate republics, the Polish Republic will greet
them gladly. But the Polish Republic expects that in time these
republics will add themselves to her, as Texas and Hawaii added
themselves to the United States of America.
There are other Slavic prophets who foresee an even wider and
greater union of states. They look to the east, and see the vast
territories inhabited by Ukrainians and Ruthenians joining them-
selves freely to the future Great Republic.
For in many of these provinces Polish is known everywhere,
and spoken everywhere, and Polish music and poetry are enjoyed
by all these nationalities. The Poles point back to former centuries
when these different races were federated, and point to the future
with exalted hopes.
The Key and
the Door
TH
HE peace table will look on these questions far differently
from the way peace congresses usually look on territorial
issues.
At all previous peace tables it was to the interest of each gov-
ernment to keep the other governments as weak as possible.
This was the principle which governed even the settlement of
the Balkan war by the Congress of London. The determination to
repress the growing power of dangerous nations was the whole
FOR LARGE AND SMALL NEIGHBOR NATIONS
79
cause of the coalitions against Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great,
and Napoleon.
If the peace table were to consider making empires or kingdoms
stronger in their royal dominion, the conference would wrangle
forever.
But this peace table has a very different duty. Its work is not
to add to autocracies, but to democracies. And therefore it is to
the interests of the world's peace to make each free people as
powerful in freedom as possible.
Living
Again
T
HEREFORE no one fears that the peace conference will
draw the map and cast the charter for a Weak Poland.
It will be a Great Poland again. It will be the Poland
which dwelt peaceable among her rivers long before any of the
latter dynasties of Europe were enthroned. It will be the Poland
which has seen the downfall of all the royalties that oppressed her,
and which bears witness to the truth that a Free People never dies.
The Keys
of Liberty
G
REAT Poland has learned many lessons since the conspiring
tyrants rent her fair dominion to pieces.
She has learned from her own past that she needs unity
and co-operation. Indeed, the nobility of the old time learned
when it was too late that their great privileges had endangered
the freedom of their country. Therefore the nobility themselves.
were the first to propose, as far back as 1791, that in the Poland
of the future their privileges should be curtailed.
•
Today, it is the nobility, even the descendants of the old kingly
families, who join with the sons of peasants to proclaim a universal
democracy in Poland. This Gen. Pilsudski, raised to a general-
ship because he was a political leader of a workingmen's party.
came of a princely line.
And what Poland has learned best is that her own service in
80
NEW FREEDOM IN POLAND MEANS SECURITY
F
this war is due to her democracy. The service of every nation that
served humanity was due to their democracy.
If the Poles had not remained freemen, of independent souls,
the Russian Poles would have unitedly obeyed the Czar, and the
Prussian Poles would have fought for the Kaiser, and all the Aus-
trians Poles for Vienna. Not one would have fought for Poland.
Not one would have fought. for democracy.
And Poland can look about her and realize that it was the
democracy of Czecho-Slovakia that made the Czecho-Slovaks an
Allied Nation even in the middle of Teutonic empires. It was
the spirit of democracy in Serbia that enabled her to resist the
guns of Franz-Josef.
Turkey bowed to the lowering Teuton lords, and Turkey is
gone-Arabia resisted, and Arabia is free.
So Poland knows it was Democracy that saved her. Democracy
alone can maintain her. She will keep the faith.
"Peace
on Earth"
F
OR the first time since King Frederick the Great of Prussia
meditated the Great Conspiracy of the First Partition the
bells of Christmas rang a real message of peace from Dan-
zig to Wilna, and from Cracow to Warsaw, and from Lemberg
to Kiev.
Great sorrows and great wars have followed in the wake of that
great crime. The past unveils to us the mournful sight of cities
in flames under the ravages of Suwarrow, of Napoleon retreating
from Moscow on the long road that led finally to Waterloo. Now
at last, with the slowness with which humanity learns its great.
lessons, we come to understand the words of the American poet:
"A question is never settled.
Until it is settled right."
Now that is is settled right, it is settled forever. Self-deter-
mination will solve all the questions which wars have created-
All crimes shall cease, and ancient Fraud shall fail,
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale-
Peace o'er the world its olive wand extend,
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend!
Why
Great Statesmen of Past and Present Agreed
on Meaning of Polish Problem
UCH has been said by the wisest statesmen of our day in
behalf of justice for Poland.
Poland's enemies might say that this is a sentiment
shaped in the fires of war, that it is not cool judgment but the
passionate wrath of the democracies against the autocracy of
Prussia.
M
But the past illuminates this as it illuminates many other phases
of the problem of Poland.
The wise men of our day are merely repeating for us what
the wise men of former times have said. The statesmen of today
speak to ready audiences, while the far-sighted ones of a former
generation spoke to deaf ears and hardened hearts.
-
Great Was
Talleyrand
N
OW rises before us a strange and portentous figure, called
Talleyrand, whose name was Charles Maurice de Talley-
rand-Perigord.
Almost superhumanly great was this man.
Far from admir-
able in soul, he was incredibly wise in the things of statecraft.
Wherever he served he shone. Wherever honors were bestowed
he won them.
He first was in the church as a French abbé, then became
Bishop of Autun, in the days before the French Revolution. In
that Revolution he was elected a deputy to the states-general. He
followed a course marked by brilliant ability, but was excom-
municated from the church. Then under the Revolution, under
the Directorate, under Napoleon, under Louis XVIII, Charles X,
Louis Phillippe, he served in the highest and most responsible
posts.
He negotiated the chief treaties of Napoleon's days of glory-
yet he saw the danger of Napoleon's Russian and Spanish cam-
paigns, and opposed them. He established the German Confed-
82
GREAT STATESMEN OF PAST AND PRESENT
eration of the Rhine, and helped to frame the Concordat between
the Vatican and France. He brought back the Bourbon kings to
France when Napoleon fell, and at the Congress of Vienna in
1815 he succeeded in keeping France intact though some of Napo-
leon's conquerers hoped to despoil her.
Under many governments, under three dynasties, he was min-
ister of foreign affairs and a foreign ambassador. In his own day
everyone recognized his supreme sagacity.
Great was Tallyrand. But he said no wiser, no truer thing,
than when he rose from the Peace Table of the Congress of
Vienna in 1815, and said:
"The Poles no longer have a common country. But they have
a common language. They will remain, then, united by the strong-
est and most durable of all bonds. They will arrive, under for-
eign domination, to the age of manhood. And the moment they
reach that age will not be far from that in which, emancipated,
they will all be attached once more to one center."
Wisdom
Unheeded
T
ALLEYRAND was not heard when he warned Napoleon not
to invade Spain, not to invade Russia. Napoleon lived to
declare that the invasion of Spain was the blunder of his
career. Historians have agreed that the retreat from Moscow
marked the irredeemable decline of Napoleon's glory.
❤
So the great powers which ruled over Poland, which had con-
quered Napoleon, did not heed Talleyrand's words on the pros-
trate kingdom.
Prussia proposed to Prussianize Poland, Russia to Russianize,
Austria to Austrianize.
But Talleyrand expressed in 1815 all that the historian of
present-day Poland could write in 1918.
He saw, as we now see, that Poland would not stifle under
these alien masters. She would grow! Today we can say that
she has grown! Her people are at the full stature of modern
democracy. And they are still "united by the strongest and most
durable of all bonds," the language of the statutes of Casimir, the
AGREED ON MEANING OF POLISH PROBLEM
83
language of the battlecries of Sobieski, of the poems of Mickie-
wicz.
What the great statesman, the great cold-hearted statesman of
1815 predicted, the warm-blooded statesmen of democracy in 1918
have affirmed.
The Wickedest
Folly
TH
HE despoilers of Poland might have expected sympathy or
praise from the minister of the conquering Napoleon, the
man' who planned the Peace of. Tilsit between Napoleon and
the czar.
Talleyrand was born when Poland was an unbroken unity.
When he died Poland was a mere memory of suffering and wrong
and blood. Here was a conquest indeed, was it not? But Talley-
rand said, at that same Congress of Vienna:
"The partition of Poland was worse than a crime—it was a
folly."
We know, of course, that no folly can be worse than a crime.
But Tallyrand judged things by their wisdom. He saw through
all the apparent triumph of the conspirators over Poland. At the
completest hour of triumph for Poland's enemies, he said, "It is a
folly."
•
Maria
Theresa
We would say today that it was first of all a crime. But we
know also that all crime is folly. We say of any captured burglar,
any doomed murderer, that he was foolish. But Talleyrand said
this of great kings and emperors when they were fresh from loot
and rich with booty.
L
ET us now cite another witness, one of the old school of
Divine Right of Monarchs. Let us think of the words of
Maria Theresa, who ruled for 40 years over Austria, Hun-
gary and Bohemia. It is recorded against her that she took part
in the First Partition of Poland in 1772.
84
GREAT STATESMEN OF PAST AND PRESENT
Did she then rejoice in her increased dominion? Did she par-
don herself by some argument that Poland was verging toward
anarchy, as some defenders of Frederick the Great have asserted?
She was wiser than most queens or most kings, was Maria Theresa,
and her words must have weight.
"When I have long been dead," she declared, "the consequences
of this violation of all that until now has been deemed holy and
just, will be experienced."
Maria Theresa saw at last the wickedness of that conspiracy.
She also saw the inevitable consequences. She had held her throne
by the free rallying of her people to her support, particularly the
nobles of Hungary. She could see that the time would come when
these Poles would not rally to the support of the Hapsburg ruler.
Perhaps she imagined a time when a revolted Polish general of
the Austrian forces would be in Danzig, and another in Cracow-
as at the present moment!
·
A Distant
View
TH
HUS spoke the arch-diplomat. Thus lamented the guilty
queen. Now let us turn to a more distant figure, a Scottish
philosopher who became a judge in the courts of Bombay,
India.
From a far distance, and with a judicial and philosophical
mind, Sir James Mackintosh made a study of the partitions of
Poland. He died in 1832. His words could do nothing to stop
the fatal trespass of the czars and kaisers. But he could bring
them to the general bar of human justice, and foreshadow their
doom.
This is the decision of the Philosopher judge, which reads.
strangely like a document which might have been written in 1918,
when the world is more aroused to justice:
"Till the first partition, the sacredness of ancient possessions,
the right of the people to their own soil, were universally regarded
as the guardian principles of European independence."
What is this but the self-determination of peoples?
Sir James continues:
AGREED ON MEANING OF POLISH PROBLEM
85
+
"These principles gained through strength from that progress
of civilization which they protected and secured; and the viola-
tion of them seemed to be effectually precluded by the jealousies
of great states and the wise co-operation of the smaller commun-
ities.
"But in the case of Poland, a nation was robbed of its ancient
territory without the pretense of any wrong which could justify
war, without even those forms of war which could bestow on the
acquisition the name of conquest. It was not an attack on the bal-
ance. It was an attack on national independence itself.
"No single cause has contributed so much as the partition of
Poland to alienate mankind from ancient institutions and loosen
their respect for established governments.
Philip II and
Louis XIV often violated the law of nations; but the spoilers of
Poland overthrew it."
When Justice
Returns
H
OW natural it is that Poland shall be restored at a time
when the world is discussing a League of Nations, to unite
all powers in certain principles of action.
The law of Nations would have been ruined forever by the
kaiser. The triumph of democracy restores that law. Then the
democratic nations naturally look. back into the past. to find all
other crimes which the House of Hohenzollern has committed
against this law of nations. Inevitably, Poland secures restitution
as a part of the punishment of the criminal.
The Past
Informs Us
see
HE history of Poland, as has been said before, is a History
Interrupted. We see the nation picking up the broken threads
of its life. We see the nation resuming its old, old post of
honor and responsibility as a champion of democracy.
And likewise, we see the statesmen of Poland and other na-
tions discuss her once more as a nation. They also resume the
discussion as it was interrupted,
<
86
GREAT STATESMEN OF PAST AND PRESENT
The statesmanship and wisdom of former years, which the
three emperors would not follow, no longer asks the emperors
to follow. The emperors are dethroned, and Justice makes known
her will in the form of commands.
•
There are many opinions on some disputed issues of history,
and one can select the opinion that pleases him. But there is only
one opinion about the wrongs of Poland, and that opinion is here
cited from a French diplomat, from an Austrian archduchess, and
a British jurist. This would also be the opinion of every other
lover of justice.
The Simple
Task
T
HIS will do much to make easy the labor of reconstructing
Poland. The statesmen are not planning an arbitrary, ar-
tificial task. They propose a simple work of fundamental
human justice.
They know just what should be done. If they did not, they
could learn by looking over the records of the past.
Bath
It does not matter what the statesmen read. They may read
the apologies and explanations offered by defenders of the con-
spirators. They may read attacks on Poland by agents of her
oppressors and persecutors. Or they may read the impartial words
of outsiders. All point plainly to a simple task. It is a task which
will almost perform itself, when once the people of the Vistula
have been called upon to determine their own destiny.
America's Millions of Polish Descent Take
Pride in Four Centuries of Noblest Service
J
AN KOLNOSKI is not a name blazoned in the chronicles of
Polish historians. This name is not recorded by the writers
of America's story. Another distant land glories in the tra-
dition of his achievements, and a different tongue records the
cloudy rumors of his career.
The history of warlike Denmark rings with the name of the
mighty Christian the First, of the Fifteenth century. King Chris-
tian was the founder of the royal line of Oldenburg, and reigned
at one time over Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Schleswig, Hol-
stein.
In the year 1476, according to some Danish and Dutch books,
one John of Kolno, a native of the Masovia district in Poland,
sailed under the Danish flag from the Polish port of Dantzig. He
crossed the Atlantic and rounded the frowning coast of Labrador.
This was in 1476, while Columbus was dwelling in Portugal
with his young bride and their infant son Diego. It was 15 years
before the glorious Genoese was to make the final triumphant dis-
covery of America.
No one seems assured as to just what activity Columbus showed
in those years. There are some who say he made voyages to the
coast of Africa, others who relate that he visited Iceland. And
none can be sure how real was the reported voyage of this John
of Kolno, though Denmark was then an adventurous nation under
a king of masterful enterprise.
Yet the tradition of John of Kolno remains, thrilling with dis-
tant fascination. For it links our American history from a time
just before the dawn, with the history of the chivalrous medieval
Kingdom-Republic of Poland. Though the tradition is only a tra-
dition, it draws a new chord of sympathy between the living Amer-
ican Republic and the Republic which was slain, but now has been
restored to life and action.
The Poland of 1476 was the Poland of King Casimir IV, who
gained control of Prussia after a fourteen years' war with the
Teutonic Knights. Thus he possessed Danzig, even as the new
Republic of Poland will include that fair free city.
➡
88
AMERICA'S MILLIONS OF POLISH DESCENT TAKE
The Poles of
Colonial Days
T
HOUGH Jan Kolnoski is a shadowy figure, the first brave
settlements of white men on the Atlantic coast included Po-
lish pioneers who were not shadows. Yet they are found,
like John of Kolno, and like their 4,000,000 successors in America.
today, engaged in service.
In the seventeenth century another link is found to unite Amer-
ica and Poland. Old Poland took pride that her nation formed
the first national commission on education in the world, and is en-
riched by some of the oldest universities in Europe. In the year
1659 Dutch pioneers on Manhattan island employed a school.
teacher, and that teacher was a Pole.
·
Three years later there came to New Jersey one Albert Zabo-
rowski. He was a man trusted by whites and natives, and his
name is entered as that of an official interpreter. He inherited
some fine talents, for in his veins was the blood of King John
Sobieski of Poland, the deliverer of Europe.
From this Albert Zaborowski came descendants worthy of his
illustrous ancestry, worthy of the old republic of Poland and the
new republic of the United States. Chancellor Zabriskie of New
Jersey, Dean. George Gray of Harvard are descendants of this
Polish freeman. And there are strains of the same fine blood,
according to Miss Emily Green Balch of Wellesley, in the Amer-
ican families of Astor, Bayard, Jay, Morrison and Gouverneur
Morris.
Advance Posts
of Liberty
VT
TIRGINIA, New Jersey and other states have colonial Polish
records.
The whole of our middle west, in the days of Queen
Anne's war, is touched by the memory of the Sodowski family.
A descendant, James Sodowski, made one of the first settlements.
in Kentucky in 1774. His brother, Jacob Sodowski, was the first
pioneer, after the French explorers, to go down the Ohio and
Mississippi to New Orleans.
PRIDE IN FOUR CENTURIES OF NOBLEST SERVICE
89
Some say Sandusky in Ohio is named after the Sodowskis.
Their lives bring us close to the eve of the Revolution. This re-
calls again the valiant figures of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, and the
historian Niemcewicz, who wrote a Polish life of Washington as
an inspiration to the lovers of liberty in Poland.
The Earliest
Refugees
TH
HUS Poland in her days of freedom and in her days of par-
tial freedom sent her sons to serve this land.
From the first days until now the Poles have never been
exploiters, nor great amassers of wealth. Ignace Jan Paderewski
was able to make the startling statement that among 4,000,000
Poles in America there is not one millionaire.
The sons of Free Poland or Imperial Poland crossed the ocean
to serve us. But after Poland lost her liberty came a new type of
men, asking a shelter, illustrious refugees from the Revolution
of 1831.
These early pioneers endured privation. Men of noble birth
or professional life worked as street laborers in New York. At
last Congress granted them lands in the west, not wholly unlike
their lost land of rivers and farms. There they merged one by
one into the American Nation.
•
All Faiths
in Harmony
S
OME illuminating facts shine out in the early records. In the
fifties the first Poles settled in Texas, and a few years after-
ward in Wisconsin and Michigan.
In 1863, subscriptions were raised in New York for the Revo-
lution then raging. Among the subscribers, according to a Polish
newspaper of that early day, were Poles of the faith of John
Sobieski, and "Poles of the faith of Moses."
These men "of the faith of Moses" were thought of as Poles as
well as Jews. The Polish people do not forget to this day. the
noble share the Jews of their country have had in the struggles
for liberty.
90
AMERICA'S MILLIONS OF POLISH DESCENT TAKE
Polish patriots of all faiths honor the memory of Colonel Berek
Joselowicz, who raised a Jewish regiment under Kosciuszko, a
regiment which fully shared the glory of that valiant struggle.
To this day Polish-Americans recognize and offer honors to
all men of true Polish-American feeling. On the board of direc-
tors of the Polish National Alliance, the strongest of American
Polish organizations, sits Mr. N. Zlotnicki, a Polish American citi-
zen of the Jewish faith.
These ancient and modern facts demonstrate the harmony which.
the historic liberty of Poland makes possible between all faiths.
This the New Poland pledges herself to establish between faith-
ful men of all religions.
•
Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Trinitarians and
Unitarians, are found in all the great records of Poland's past.
They are found together in all her sad and bloody pages of
battle.
They are found together in the councils of New Poland.
They were found together even among the American pioneers
-Polish Catholics and Polish Jews in New York. and a colony of
Polish Protestants along the Raritan River.
The Great
Migration
TH
HIS same spirit was voiced by John F. Smulski of Chicago,
president of the National Polish department, in an address
in 1918, when he said:
"Our cause is too great for petty dissensions. It is too
SACRED by reason of the blood shed by the boys in the Polish
and the American armies in France!"
Mr. Smulski speaks today not for a few people of Polish
descent, the children of the few lonely pioneers of the early Amer-
ican centuries. For today we stand on the other side of the Great
Polish Migration, which saw thousands of Polish men and women
issuing forth from 1870 to 1910, to many lands throughout the
world.
why
And when the all Polish convention of America met in Detroit
in August, Ignace Jan Paderewski was able to declare: "The
PRIDE IN FOUR CENTURIES OF NOBLEST SERVICE
9.1
Poles in America are more numerous than the Norwegians in Nor-
way, the Danes in Denmark, the Swedes in Sweden, the Serbs in
Serbia, or the Belgians in Belgium!"
Then M. Paderewski showed how still the spirit of service to
this country reigns in the hearts of these Four Million. Polish
miners in Philadelphia subscribed $11,000,000 to one Liberty Loan.
The Polish casualty lists are three times the proportion of the na-
tionality in the country, because the Polish volunteers outnumbered
all others and their exemption pleas under the draft law were the
fewest in proportion.
The blood and treasure of these 4,000,000 Poles have been
poured out like water. It is their pride that the first American to
die in France was a Polish-American. It was their glory to see
the representative Polish-Americans on the side of the Allies even
before Germany forced this nation into the war. But in the great
record of the 350,000 Polish-Americans in the army and navy, in
the great record of the home support for the Liberty Loan and
the Red Cross. and all other war activities, the 4,000,000 Americans.
of Polish blood have merely fulfilled the purpose of their lives, a
purpose of service to their country, the United States.
New Books
for Old
OOKS on the new immigration, written before the war, dis-
cussed the future Americanism of different European na-
tionalities as "a problem." It has long been remarked that
Polish-Americans now inhabit great farm sections of classic New
England, as well
well as Pennsylvania mountain regions, Texas
prairies, and both farms and great cities in the Middle West.
There are perhaps one thousand cities and villages in the United
States which are inhabited chiefly by Americans of Polish blood.
These also were discussed as "a problem."
But there is no longer a problem. The war has proved it. Not
even in the days of 1776 was there a more thrilling response of
patriotism through the New England farmlands than came from
the Polish-Americans of New England in 1917.
Pennsylvania saw no greater patriotism in the days of Inde-
pendence Hall and the Declaration of Independence than her Po-
lish communities showed.
92
AMERICA'S MILLIONS OF POLISH DESCENT TAKE
Texas knows red-blooded Americanism from the fiery days of
Gen. Houston, and she saw it again in the descendants of the Polish
pioneers of the fifties.
Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and other old fortress towns,
scarred by Indian wars, saw her Polish-Americans rally to the
trumpet call as the old blockhouse defenders rallied when the sav-
ages were at the doors.
Every Polish community in the United States was another
fortress of strength for this republic. Every Polish community
poured forth beloved sons and brothers, poured out treasure of
hard-earned savings.
As the Fathers
Fought
T
HIS they did for America. These young inheritors of de-
1830 exiles fought in the Civil war, as their brothers fought
mocracy marched forth to fight as the descendants of the
in the Spanish war.
They marched forth to strengthen America, to strengthen De-
mocracy, to die if need be that America and Democracy might
live. And by strengthening America and France and Great Britain.
and all Democracy, they accomplished the holy dream of their
fathers, and strengthened the Polish Democracy to cast off all the
nightmare of prolonged oppression!
Americanism
in Action
T
HE spirit of the American soldiers of every nationality is
still the spirit of all patriots. And the spirit of all patriotism
is what moved the National Polish Department in all its work
for the New Poland, the Free Poland.
The American National Polish Department consists of Amer-
icans, working as Americans. They have no divided loyalty, but
are true to America and humanity. They realize that the up-
building of a strong Democracy in Eastern Europe is a great aid
to America, and the extension of American ideals of freedom
throughout the world.
Q
PRIDE IN FOUR CENTURIES OF NOBLEST SERVICE
93
:
These Americans of Polish blood, represented in the Polish
National Department and all loyal organizations of Polish democ-
racy, see no strange and alien land yonder. They see a grand soil
for the replanting of these American ideals of liberty. They see
a new, noble, powerful nation arising as a new guardian of the
human race, a new guarantor of world co-operation.
Poland's past glories cannot be fully told in many books. Her
present needs cannot be recounted in many words.
We see the Polish-American organizations, before the burden
of war was lifted, pledging themselves to raise $10,000,000 for the
aid of the Polish Republic.
}
We hear now new appeals from Poland, the Great Land of
Suffering and Need, the greatest and the least-relieved sufferer
from the war's ravages. And we see Americans of Polish descent
rushing to this work as if they had not already toiled for four
years for the Allies.
Į
But they do all these things, for Poland and for humanity, as
Americans. It has been the grand and pathetic destiny of the
Poles to serve and to suffer. It is the grand destiny of America
to serve and to triumph. The descendants of many generations
of suffering servants of humanity now share rejoicingly in the
Service Triumphant.
New Poland Pledges Her Record of Honor to
Maintain World-Liberty Safe Forever
T
ODAY the Sister Democracies of the world are gazing toward
the Future with eager and expectant eyes.
They see new advances of Liberty, coming swiftly like
a tropical dawn.
Each one of the Free Nations, from the vast and powerful
United States to the tiny and true republic of San Marino in Italy,
rejoices in hopes for the future.
*
And each one has also made some pledges to the future of
humanity, from imperial Great Britain in the midst of the oceans
to Free Arabia in the midst of the desert.
Before the Peace Congress adjourns we shall know all that each
nation asks for its future.
We shall know of ancient freeholds that must be restored to
robbed republics, as Alsace-Lorraine must be restored to France.
We shall know of nations, divided by tyrants' swords, who must
be reunited, as the divided races of Czecho-Slovakia.
But we shall also hear what each free nation promises her
Sister Democracies. What pledge will each make for the future
of peace and of liberty?
C
Each in its own tongue will naturally pledge individual free-
dom, and religious liberty, and education, and faithfulness to
treaties. Each will show that it is prepared for a new rivalry
among nations, a rivalry of Enlightenment.
Among those Sister Democracies Poland will appear, like a
country released from prison, delivered from slavery.
Poland, too, will ask many things from the united powers of
democracy. She will claim long-delayed justice. She has suffered
every wrong, every robbery. She has not lost her national life-
but she has been left as one dead.
So Poland will make her claims. But she, too, will make her
pledges.
She will promise what she will do for her own people, those of
Polish and alien blood, those of all races and all faiths who may
take residence within her liberated borders.
96
NEW POLAND PLEDGES HER RECORD OF HONOR
D
T
HE United States of Poland can first of all claim the right
to be believed. Though she has been almost a dead nation,
she has never been a dishonored one. Though she had great
victories and great defeats, she has been neither´a tyrant nor a
poltroon.
"
The Untarnished
Honor
2
She must point back behind the cloud of 130 years of oppres-
sion, and say, "I will maintain the ideals I then maintained, and
will uphold all the enlightenment which these 130 years have
brought to humanity!”,
She does not have to turn back and explain any violated treaties,
for she did not violate "treaties. Her people can therefore look to
have the confidence of the free peoples of the earth.
Poland has not had to explain any history of protracted reli-
gious persecutions, because she was not guilty of them.
Poland has not had to explain any oppression of weaker na-
tions, for she added new provinces to herself as provinces of free-
men.
>
She can answer today any enemy that might arise, whether it
were the Russian. Czar or the German Kaiser or the Austrian
Kaiser. She can meet any attack from discomfited enemies by
pointing calmly to her record of centuries.
In ages of oppression, when Poland was victorious, she did not
oppress. Then no land will be freer than Poland in an age when
all the world is free.
Keeping
the Faith
W
In ages of persecution, when religious controversies arose,
Poland did not persecute. Then no land will have larger liberty
of thought and opinion in the days when all the world is a world of
liberty.
HEN Poland had power and wealth, so that emperors
courted her kings, and kings sought the friendship even of
Poland's noblemen, Poland led in the march of liberty.
When Poland had great armies they marched to free oppressed
TO MAINTAIN WORLD-LIBERTY SAFE FOREVER
97
•
cities from the Teutonic Knights. Or they marched to save Russia
from Tartar tyrants, Or they hastened to deliver Vienna from
the almost-triumphant Turk. She fought for liberty for a thou-
sand years.
And after Poland was dismembered, her sons still rallied armies.
-to fight again for liberty.
Through all these generations of sorrow the whole nation,
silently or in armed ranks, has been fighting for liberty. Fighting
with prayers, fighting with books, fighting with political organiza-
tions, they battled up to the breaking out of the Great War and
all through the Great War for the ideals of their fathers.
A nation that has kept the faith of democracy like this will
keep it forever. A people which has remained a people of free-
dom under the blighting reign of Czars and Kaisers will teach
more freedom to the world under her own President.
It is a New Republic that now forms yonder-but an Old Na-
tion. It is the same nation of freemen that dwelt serenely upon
the Vistula centuries before the German settled near Berlin, and
many centuries before the foundations of Petrograd were laid in
the swamps of the Neva.
And now she is free-for what? Free merely to realize the
ideals that have kept her alive. Free merely to fulfill the old lib-
erties of Poland, and enrich them with all the new freedom of
the Golden Age of Democracy.
What Poland
Will Give
W
E KNOW that the Great Britain of the future will build
on her ancient freedom a nobler edifice of human liberty.
We know that the United States is like a nation re-born
to gigantic strength, determined to realize with grander enterprise
all that the future has for a fearless and chainless people.
So it will be with France, and Italy, and Brazil, and Palestine,
and all the others, each in its own sphere. So will it be with the
United States of Poland.
Poland is today the Land of Thanksgiving-the Land of Grati-
tude the Land of Loyalty. She will indeed repay all Humanity
98
NEW POLAND PLEDGES HER RECORD OF HONOR
for what the nations which saved Humanity have done for Po-
land.
We shall see a Poland full of schools, inheriting and again be-
queathing the cream of the ancient Polish culture, with all that
world-culture which is shared today by enlightened peoples.
Poland, in distant centuries, before the telescope was invented,
produced a Copernicus, the founder of modern astronomy, who
discovered the great secrets of the solar system. Then, in the
future, when Poland has her own system of universal education,
what great world-minds of coming ages will have their first nur-
ture in those schools? ·
Poland, under the blighting rule of Russia, produced in our
own time a Mme. Curie in science, a Paderewski in music, a Sien-
kiewicz in letters.
When Poland is free, when her own ancient universities are
untrammeled and her sons of genius need not flee abroad, what
wonderful men and women will such a people produce!
$
Poland
Delivered
G
The greater and better world of the future cannot have too
much music, and art, and literature, too much of the lofty and
ideal. Poland has furnished these to the world in centuries of
sorrow. She will give the world untold treasures in centuries of
joy.
1
P
OLAND is not living in the past. But the greatness of her
past sustains her.
She asks of her Sister Democracies co-operation and
unity of spirit. She gives them co-operation and unity of spirit.
Every enlightenment gained by any nation will be recognized
by the New Poland, and every advance she makes in the march of
humanity will be used to help all humanity forward..
She must ask of more powerful and more fortunate states the
support of their strength. This is for the cause of all humanity.
For if Poland is not sustained, new autocracies led by Czars or
Kaisers or Anarchists, may again rise up in Eastern Europe.
And in return Poland pledges to all humanity-Service. For
if Humanity is not served constantly by every Free Nation, if all
TO MAINTAIN WORLD-LIBERTY SAFE FOREVER
99
PAG
*
The Victory
of the Ages
the Free Nations do not forever faithfully serve one another,
Freedom itself may perish.
H
OW America rejoiced that the war of 20 months was won!
How Britain and France rejoiced that the war of more
than four years was won! And how these nations have
pledged themselves to greater liberty and larger achievements!
But Poland can rejoice that a struggle for liberty of nearly
150 years has been won! She can rejoice, indeed, that battles be-
tween Polish freedom and Teutonic tyranny which date back for
nearly 10 centuries have finally ended in the triumph of right.
And Poland will be worthy of the victory of the ages, like
Bohemia, and Armenia, and that ancient and regenerated land of
Palestine. All these, like all these modern powers of America and
France and Britain and Italy, have suffered together, and have
gained a common treasure of deliverance.
·
Vistula to
Mississippi
T
HE future aims of Poland are only what the past aims of
her patriots have been.
❤
in all parts of the world have been fighting.
For these things the descendants of the old Polish patriots
Every generation fighting for liberty in every land has seen its
Polish volunteers joining the great cause. So in all lands of the
world Poles marched to help win the war for the new cause of
France and Belgium and America, the old cause of Poland.
This is why French citizens, though of Polish descent, could
aid Poland, and felt that in fighting for France they were fighting
for their kingdom on the Vistula. They knew that a great free
republic beyond Germany would strengthen French liberty and all
liberty.
France was and is the country of these French Poles. But
their love of liberty was Polish, and they wished to see Poland.
free as well as France, and Belgium, and distant Palestine.
100
NEW POLAND PLEDGES HER RECORD OF HONOR
And because of the deathless Polish ideals, the 4,000,000 Amer-
icans of Polish descent have helped to serve their country, the
United States, whenever they have been able to champion the cause
of Poland.
They have seen that a victory for Democracy anywhere is a
victory for this nation. They have seen that the firm establish-
ment of democracy anywhere establishes more firmly our Amer-
ican democracy. The building up of a powerful Polish republic
yonder strengthens every republic, and strengthens ours.
The Fusion of
the War
T
HE fires of the war have strangely welded the peoples into
one Federation of Humanity. There is one spirit expressed
in many tongues.
This is the result of the Common Cause, defended in a Com-
mon Peril, upheld through Common Suffering, sustained in world-
wide battles to the consummation of the Common Victory.
And now all nations of freemen face victorious the Common
Future. We are still fused into one-yet each nation is self-de-
termined, each nation chose its place.
The wide ranks and files of the Free People blend into one
across the world, as they were merged in the trenches and fleets,
Americans, British, French, Belgians, Italians, Serbians, Czechs,
Poles-and all the others. Thus in one spirit they faced war with
all its horrors. Thus in one spirit they wait the blessings of peace.
Then, if anyone asks, Where stands Poland? Poland stands
with France and Great Britain and the United States and Italy
and all the others, and advances with all the rejoicing democracies
toward the brightness of Liberty's morning. She whose sons só
often blest the nations with deliverance, now has received that
blessing back a thousand fold. And she advances toward the
brightness of Liberty's morning, with her 30,000,000 people joined
in the world-wide brotherhood of freemen, guided as ever by the
eternal Fatherhood of God.
4
BOUND
JAN 6 1926
UNIV. OF MICH
LIBRARY
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