Martha Walker Cook

“ No idea could be more erroneous, for the struggle in Poland was to restore legitimate authority to its rightful holders, to a government truly liberal, representative, and Polish; while our revolted States sought to wrest authority from the legallyelected rulers, the Congress of the United States. The resurrection in Poland meant union, life; the rebellion, division and destruction. The one sought to bring about general emancipation, the other to prolong slavery.
But in the hands of Russia all facts are wax, which her political artists mould to serve their own purposes. ”

“ Liberty, justice, equality before the law, and self-government, are the normal dogmas of our political creed; to renounce them were to stultify ourselves. They are cornerstones in the temple we are building for the refuge of men ”

“ If an assassin can obtain the friendship and recommendation of a powerful friend of known honor and magnanimity, his nefarious schemes against the innocent may be pursued in comparative safety. Much has been said on the unbridled license of an untrammeled Press, but as great a danger lies in its purchased silence. Falsehood and exaggeration o’erleap their aims, destroy themselves, and perish in the light of liberty ”

“ Because the victim is not dead, and there is vast moral power in the force of public opinion. Because the American mission is the actualization everywhere of not merely nominal, but real freedom, founded upon justice and eternal truth. But chiefly it is done in the present relation, because it is our ardent desire that the Polish poet should be understood in all his sublime patriotism by American readers, and to show that his deepest hues are not so dark as the truth they depict ”

“ A Christian Poet teaching only forgiveness, patience, and self-abnegation,—the possession of whose works in his native land was Siberia or death, and who, to shield those dear to him from the vengeance of the oppressor, was forced to publish anonymously,—has so influenced the action of a brave, injured, and fiery people, that only in his poems can be found the clue to deeds which puzzled the despot and astonished the world! ”

“ Material aid being utterly impossible, and in every aspect impolitic, yet in the higher world of justice the moral sympathy of the triumphant with the wronged and murdered Nation must be deep and true ”

“ Let him first ascertain if the proposed work be one of general human interest, calculated to increase the moral worth of the people to whom it is to be offered, to express the influential conceptions of an original mind, open a new literature, throw light upon the hidden history of an epoch, or develop the characteristics of a nation;—if any one of the above conditions be met, then is the translator justified in transplanting the quickening germs into the mental being of his own countrymen, to bloom in wider consciousness, in fairer actions. ”

“ Yet this is precisely what Russia did, in order to assimilate the insurrection of Poland with our own rebellion, representing it as originating in the desire to support feudalism, in the very face of the first words promulgated by the Polish Committee, January 22, 1863: “All the sons of Poland, without any distinction of faith or race, descent or station, are free and equal citizens of the country.”
Strong and startling are the contrasts between the United States and Poland. ”

“ When Russia possesses Constantinople, two years later she will be in Konigsberg; young America bend her spotless brow as the bandage is wound round her flashing eyes, that she may not see the pool of blood surrounding the Autocrat;—the Polish Eagle does not quail ”

“ It is certainly the duty of a translator to be thoroughly convinced of the intrinsic merit of any work he may propose to translate, for he will be in a measure responsible for its influence upon the minds of those to whom he may introduce it. No hope of sudden success should dazzle him into unworthy labor. ”