Greater Poland

“ In the places of many of the old Polish cities, it is said, that dense forests have now sprung up; that the traveller, as he makes his way through their interminable shades, finds the pavement of streets and the relics of deserted towns in the midst of a lifeless solitude. And now, that the sum of evils may be full, the nation of the Poles seems destined to a fall, from which there will be to them no further resurrection.
Yet the former history of Poland hardly palliates the position which the sovereigns and states of Europe have assumed towards her. ”

“ At the end of the storms of the French Revolution, and of the Empire, in which the Poles had taken part with all their warlike humour, and during which, by the timid, ephemeral, and incomplete creation of a Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, they had for an instant believed that their country was reborn, the Congress of Vienna, after allowing hope to shine before the eyes of Poland, let her fall again under the triple yoke, and consecrated her dismemberment as an accomplished fact. ”

“ Home rule for Poland had long been a favorite plan with the Czar. Now he promised, not only to give Russian Poland home rule, but to add to it the Polish peoples in Austria and Germany. This meant that Austria and Germany would have to give up Galicia on the one hand, and Prussian Poland on the other, if they should lose the war. In the old days Poland had been one of the greatest kingdoms in Europe, with a proud nobility and high civilization. ”

“ Dismembered as she is, every new generation must amalgamate her more and more completely with the three powers who have appropriated her territory and divided the control of her people among them. We continue to speak of Poland as a distinct country, though the name is all that remains of its ancient independence. The map of Europe has long since been reconstructed in this region,—Austria, Germany, and Russia coolly absorbing the six millions of Poles, and Warsaw being the capital of Russian Poland. ”

“ They are unfit for the modern economic world for want of education and for Western society because of their habits and want of cleanliness. They are devoted to their strange old religion but as they grow rich their piety, as the Chief Rabbi told Capt. Wright, is destroyed by wealth and they take too little interest in their poorer brethren. No one who knows Poland can be surprised at the Polish attitude or the desire of the Poles to be rid of this corrupting influence. ”

“ The area of Polish speech alone intervenes as a buffer product of the basin of the middle Vistula. The region is a silt-covered lowland, the bed of a former glacial lake. It has been peopled by Slavs for over a thousand years. Upon its open stretches there was no lack of food and no reason therefore for migration. The development of Poland rests primarily on this physical foundation. Added advantages of good land and water communication with the rest of the continent contributed powerfully to the spread of Polish power, which at one time extended from Baltic shores to the Black sea. ”

“ We find a free town, the last remaining image of former independence. We find the name of one common country consecrated by treaty, and resting upon the kingdom newly called into being. We see our right to a nationality made superior to all territorial demarcations. We read, in the first place, of the autonomy of the different provinces that have been dealt out to new masters, and that the map of old Poland is to be adopted and acted upon in material life; and we have a sort of Zollverein of commerce and navigation, serving as the sketch for a confederacy. ”

“ A moment’s reflection will convince its readers that there is no European country in which so great a change is being effected, and of which they hear so little, as Russian Poland. Yet the events which have recently agitated Poland [Pg vii] are events of historical interest, and they are not in themselves unimportant to Western Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is hard to conceive that Poland was at one time perhaps the most powerful kingdom of Europe, with a population numbering twenty millions and extending from the Baltic to the Carpathians and the Black Sea, including in its territory the basins of the Warta, Vistula, Dwina, Dnieper and Upper Dniester, and that it had under its dominion besides Poles proper and the Baltic Slavs, the Lithuanians, the White Russians and the Little Russians or Ruthenians. ”

“ There is no question that the sufferings of the people of Poland have been very great, and when the history of Poland during the war comes to be written the world will stand aghast at the story of her sufferings. ”

“ At all events, for the time being the Poles are again in possession of a larger part of their ancient heritage, of the Poland that existed before the [Pg 197] Partitions. They are in possession of territories which, taken together, must contain a population of over thirty millions. And whatever fluctuations may still take place in her frontiers, Poland is likely to remain the largest and in many respects the most important of the new states produced by the war, the sixth most populous state in Europe. ”

“ For over a hundred years Poland had been a dismembered kingdom, part of which belonged to the Tsar, part to the German, part to the Austrian Empire, and yet the course of the war has caused all the allied countries in turn to demand and to reiterate their demand for the independence of Poland. ”

“ The northern frontier hem of East Prussia lying between the River Niemen and the political line of demarcation is quite as much Lithuanian as German, while German stock dots the whole surface of the Baltic provinces of Russia as far as St. Petersburg, The eastern rim of the Kaiser's empire as far south as the Carpathians presents a broad band of the Polish race, averaging about fifty kilometers (30 miles) in width, sparsely sprinkled with German settlements; these are found farther east also as an ethnic archipelago dotting the wide Slav area of Poland. ”

“ To a superficial observer, the story of the Polish nation may appear to be, on the whole, a history of national failure, but as in Ireland, so in Poland, the people have really triumphed. For their spirit has never been broken. The strength of the three great military powers has not been equal to the indomitable resistance of a poverty-stricken, disarmed, dismembered race. The Polish people were determined to live, and as a result they are stronger to-day than they were a hundred years ago. Poland is to-day more than a dream, more than a pious aspiration. ”

“ No kingdom in Europe has been subjected to so many Calamities of Poland. misfortunes and changes, considering its former greatness, as the Polish monarchy. Most of the European states have retained their ancient limits, for several centuries, without material changes, but Poland has been conquered, dismembered, and plundered. Its ancient constitution has been completely subverted, and its extensive provinces are now annexed to the territories of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. ”

“ For the doors of the country being once opened by the misguided people themselves to the influence of ambition, partiality, and passion, and shut against the old tenure of a settled succession, foreign powers were always ready to step in, with the gold or the sword; and Poland necessarily became a vassal adjunct to whatever neighboring country furnished the new sovereign. ”

“ Such a tribute as this would of itself be sufficient to turn the heart expectantly towards Poland, to say nothing of the interest her history has for the brain. The history of Poland is one long struggle for home and country. The Pole is a patriot by inheritance. His patriotism, goes deeper than his love.
His country comes first in his soul, and for that reason the Poles have in me an enthusiastic ally, an ardent admirer, and a sympathetic friend. ”

“ Nor can one who has not the foolish, romantic, nervous, high-strung, artistic temperament understand from within Poland’s national history. For that reason one is apt to find famous places in Europe which have only an historical significance somewhat disappointing. ”

“ What makes these new events so important, is that [Pg 218] they form part of a European situation, at the same time that they are the outward and visible signs of a profound and inward work, of which Russian Poland is the centre (most active and most prominent at present) , but which has also revealed, in the Grand Duchy of Posen, in Galicia, in short, everywhere, that, in spite of treaties and congresses, Polish feeling, the last and indestructible tie of a riven country, still lives. This question of Poland has its roots deep in the past, and I am not ignorant that it is so. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The practical exclusion of the Poles from the Russian army and administration threw back the abler and more ambitious of the upper classes among them on other employment, and strengthened this middle class and brought a new influence to bear on national life in Congress Poland. Hence practical economic reform improvement became the order of the day and the habit of theorizing on the subject of political independence fell into the background. ”

“ The only course that remains to a reconstituted Poland is the elaboration, establishment, and preservation of the most correct method of political relations with neighbours to whom Poland’s existence is bound to be a humiliation and an offence. Calmly considered it is an appalling task, yet one may put one’s trust in that national temperament which is so completely free from aggressiveness and revenge. ”

“ One thing is certain: they would protest, and rightly, against actual incorporation into the new Poland.
The 125,000 square kilometers and 12,000,000 inhabitants of Russian Poland, lying around Warsaw, would constitute the nucleus of reconstructed Poland. ”

“ Still, the Poles, split up as they are amongst three great Powers, with their well-known national aspirations, have not up till now become reconciled to their fate, and the internal pacification and administration of Poland will doubtless prove one of the problems of this century. ”

“ That vast plain, of which no hill relieves the melancholy uniformity, is the once mighty Kingdom of Poland. It is true that neither the name of the country nor that of the people appears on any map of Europe, but then it is often the most important maps that are ignored by the cartographer. ”

“ The miracle of the armistice raised Poland from death, and now we have Warsaw as capital of a large new State. The maps of Poland in the streets, Poland as she is plus Poland as she believes she will be, show a country considerably larger than Germany. ”

“ Poland was a country of feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status of the land in which they lived. ”

“ Poland is a symbol—a symbol of all which the best of the human race have loved, and for which they have fought. In Poland everything is concentrated, all that is most hateful and despicable, all that is most lovable and most brilliant; here the contrasts of human life are found in bold relief ”

“ That pressure from the outside, however, which has probably done more for the good of nations than most of their virtuous and patriotic qualities, was wanting. In proverbial prodigality and pleasure-seeking, the nobility of Poland spent the intervals of war on their neglected estates, leaving the great sea commerce to the German patricians of Danzig, the internal trade to the Jews, what little industry there was to the German burgesses, and the schools to the priests. ”

“ Now that Poland has been made free as a result of the Great War, it may be that the Pole's inherited indifference will give way to national aspirations and that, in the resurrection of his historic hope of freedom, he will find an animating stimulant. ”

“ Full liberty of trading, of transit, and of navigation, is established in all and between all the divisions of ‘ancient Poland;’ and it must be noted that care was taken constantly to recall the old frontiers of 1772 as the natural frame for all combinations. The quality of ‘a mixed subject’ is recognised in those who have possessions in all the three provinces, and who, escaping all classification, remain, in spite of everything, Poles, as their civil individuality cannot be divided under three heads. ”

“ Districts lying contiguous to each other and to the once-Russian Kingdom of Poland will be united to form this free and reconstructed realm, which will have in round figures a purely Polish population of about twenty-one million people. ”