Roman Stanisław Dmowski

“ Those men led Poland through the Napoleonic era, and they ruled her in the Duchy of Warsaw founded by Napoleon, and in the Kingdom of Poland established by the Congress of Vienna—which kingdom, in spite of its difficult conditions, was one of the best governed and most rapidly progressing countries in Europe. The first decades of the nineteenth century are a period of the greatest upheaval, not only as regards Polish political efforts, but also in the intellectual life of the nation. ”

“ On the contrary, the ruling class of landed nobles favoured the new settlers, who, unlike the Polish middle class which had never reconciled itself totally to the new order of things, did not struggle against the exclusive rule of the country by the nobility. Poland had had Jews since the Middle Ages, but their numbers were no larger than in other European countries. ”

“ In the country of Polish civilisation, that Russian civilisation which is such a great progressive force in the east—it is sufficient to mention its work in the Caucasus and Central Asia—has no constructive power. Therefore, if the country is to be saved from German conquest, if Poland is destined to present a barrier against German progress, Polish civilisation must be given freedom to develop, and that this civilisation is able to fight against German aggression is proved by the struggle of the German Poles. ”

“ Russia is a great agricultural country and Russian grain competes the more easily with that of the country even on the Polish market, as it is favoured by special tariffs. With respect to the education of the masses, on the other hand, Russian Poland is the most backward of all the three parts of the country. Even to-day nearly half the population of the country is illiterate. But in Russian Poland also it is the rule that with the progress of education the peasant becomes an ardent Pole attached to the national cause and ready to struggle in its defence. ”

“ In this way the Kingdom produced a very numerous and well-to-do middle class—recruited from remains of the ancient town populations, from the gentry, and from the peasantry—which to-day is already the foremost social force in the country. ”

“ In German and Russian Poland particularly the reformers were inspired by the political purpose of breaking the power of the Polish landed nobility, which in the eyes of the governments represented the Polish national tendencies and which could not be reconciled with foreign rule. The ignorant peasant had no national aspirations, and it was hoped that, satisfied with his economic condition, he would prove a loyal subject and might even be employed against other sections of the nation. In a sense, therefore, the reform was carried out in a manner very favourable to the peasants ”

“ Its second great period came in the nineteenth century, after the partitions, when Poland, in the period of Romanticism, produced a poetry which ranks with the greatest in history, but which is unfortunately little known in the West of Europe where only a very few people learn Polish. In spite of most unfavourable conditions this Polish civilisation lives and progresses at the present moment, and contemporary Polish literature and Polish art can by no means be classed with the poorest of Europe. ”

“ The power of Germany comes not from the west but from the east, from Prussia, from the country built nearly on the Slavonic side, and every progress in the east means a new increase of the German power, and the first thing for Europe to do in the future if she wants to have Germany less dangerous is to stop the progress of Germanism in the east. ”

“ But, on the other hand, being the poorest part of Poland, with the densest agricultural population, it found itself in very difficult economic conditions, had no chance of industrial development, and was exploited by other more advanced countries of the Hapsburg monarchy. Nevertheless, the existence of national institutions and Polish schools raised the level of intellectual life and strengthened the national spirit. Galicia has in the most recent times been less and less Austrian, and Polish ideals have dominated the political life of that province more and more. ”

“ In the economic respect, German Poland is an agricultural country. Polish Silesia, however, which possesses the richest coal-fields on the European continent, is one of the most important mining and industrial districts in the German Empire. It is the country of the richest coal-fields in Europe, and produces coal to the amount of fifty-one million tons per annum. Those industries are wholly in German hands, the Poles supplying only the labour. ”

“ Latterly it began to develop industrially notwithstanding the fact that it has a very dense and poor rural population and that the country had to struggle not only against the competition of other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy but also against the policy of the Austrian Government, which in the past destroyed the country's industry and which even at present hinders its industrial development by means of taxation and differential tariffs on transport.
Industries have the most favourable conditions in the Kingdom of Poland, which has an open market for its industries in Russia and in Asia. ”

“ The rapid development of German industries attracted a large portion of the emigrants from German Poland to the German mines and factories in the west of the Empire, particularly in Westphalia, where in some localities the Polish population to-day forms a majority.
Recent decades have developed a system of temporary emigration. Polish peasants go for a time to the States, to Germany and even to Denmark, England and France. Many of them buy land in Poland with their savings and become farmers. ”

“ In the last century the greatest danger threatened the national existence of German Poland, exposed as this country was to the direct attacks of Germanism carried out methodically by the Government with the collaboration of the German nation. ”

“ In Russian Poland the Middle Class represents all stages of wealth, from the great industrials and merchants down to the small traders and craftsmen, and includes a very numerous class of people of liberal professions. Here the Polish commercial and industrial class feels cramped, particularly because of the herding together in cities with the Jews who, driven out of Russia by anti- Jewish laws, gather in Poland. ”

“ Poland then became more similar to the west-European feudal monarchy though she lacked a feudal organisation of society and though the primitive clan system still survived. Here lies the chief source of the degeneration of her political institutions. The kings, in their struggle for power against the magnates, could not, like the sovereigns of the West, look for support to the middle class, for that class was very weak in Poland. They therefore tried to find it in the powerful class of the knighthood or gentry (szlachta) . ”

“ Situated on the borders of the Western world and containing countries of both Roman and Byzantine civilisation, with the former gradually absorbing the latter, Poland represented very different stages and types of civilised life. While in the West they lived on a more or less European level, in the south-east, on the fertile plains of Ukraina, frequently raided by the Tartars, the Poles carried on their pioneer work amidst constant warfare with the Nomads. A most adventurous, wild life, and most troublesome types of citizens developed there. ”

“ In Russian Poland the struggle was neither for a position in the Empire, because there was no chance of getting any influential position, nor for national existence, because the national existence of the Poles in Poland proper was not threatened by Russia. ”

“ The Polish community, which had been exclusively agricultural for centuries, was not prepared to profit by the new favourable conditions, and the growth of great industries and commerce was in the beginning chiefly the work of the Germans and the Jews. At first the Poles supplied only the unskilled and part of the skilled labour. Gradually, however, the progress of technical and commercial education enabled them to appear in the field of competition and they began to gain ground rapidly. ”

“ With the opening of foreign markets, large agricultural units were rapidly formed by means of clearing the forests, of internal colonisation, of the amalgamation of small units and of expansion towards the South-East to the fertile territories of the ancient Grand Duchy of Kiev, which had been depopulated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the nomads of the Steppes, and which, under the protection of Poland's military power, were now again colonised. ”

“ All this work was done by the Polish gentry, which, availing itself of its newly-won political power, grasped the entire profit made possible by the new conditions of agricultural development; they became a class of prosperous large and middle landowners. ”

“ There is no trace of feudalism in the country, the only important people in it being the king's officials who gradually accumulate wealth and give origin to a series of great families, rich and therefore powerful, which, however, remain legally on an equal footing with the mass of poor warriors. ”

“ Economic prosperity strengthened the power of the nobility: they excluded from the Diet the representatives of the cities and reduced the free husbandmen to serfdom with the object of securing labour which they needed very much in the new conditions. From this time onwards the whole of Polish history is practically the work of the Polish landed nobility. ”

“ The ruin of the cities, which are everywhere productive centres of civilisation, contributed to the general abasement. The gentry had preserved many virtues in private and family life, but they were not enlightened enough to have the right ideas concerning the needs of the State and the methods of public life. ”

“ In this respect the system of administration introduced by the Russian Government, with its extensive methods adapted to the vast and sparsely populated territories of the Russian Empire, proved most fatal when applied to an industrial country with a very dense population and situated in the centre of Europe where it is directly exposed to Western influences. ”

“ To many of them these things did not even suggest the fact that somewhere, in a distant part of Europe, there existed a national life, a civilisation, whose literary and artistic products thus reached them in fragments. ”

“ It is true that, after power and wealth had been acquired, there appeared a craving for enlightenment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries western universities, particularly those of Italy in the period of the Renascence, were crowded with young Poles who were more numerous there than other foreigners. ”

“ Their savings supply the Polish banks of the country with money. In the cultivation of land they rank with the most progressive farmers in Europe. At the same time, as education among them progressed, they became conscious members of the Polish nation, got inspired with the Polish national idea and with Polish patriotism. They became a well-organised and disciplined army of citizens struggling against aggressive Germanism for the cause of Poland. ”

“ The truth is understood by many enlightened and thoughtful men in Russia, and at their head we see the august person of the Russian Emperor, who gave his approbation to the ideas of the Grand Duke's manifesto addressed to the Poles. ”