Poles

“ He will hear in them the cry of the White Eagle—the White Eagle of Poland—as she soars wounded and bleeding over the southern plains, or sinks dying into the marshes and forests of Lithuania. It is in these songs that we Poles listen to the very heart-beats of our outraged country. Our songs—our music—our poets—our memories:—as a nation that is all we have—except the faith in us that never dies. Hinc surrectura! Yes, she shall rise again, our Poland! Our hope is in God, and in the human heart, the human conscience, that He has made. ”

“ The Polish Eagle’s fall is big with fate to man.
Proud bird of old! Mohammed’s moon recoiled
Before thy swoop: had we been timely bold,
That swoop, still free, had stunned the Russ, and foiled
Earth’s new oppressors, as it foiled her old.
Now thy majestic eyes are shut and cold:
And colder still Polonia’s children find
The sympathetic hands, that we outhold.
But, Poles, when we are gone, the world will mind,
Ye bore the brunt of fate, and bled for humankind.
So hallowedly have ye fulfilled your part,
My pride repudiates e’en the sigh that blends
With Poland’s name—name written on my heart. ”

“ The Poles are the most individual and interesting people I have yet encountered. The men in particular are fascinating, and a man who is truly fascinating in the highest sense of the word; one whose character is worth study, and whose friendship would repay cultivating as sincerely as many of the Poles I know, is a boon to thank God for.
Before I came to Poland it always surprised me to realize that so many men and women of world-wide genius came from so small a nation. ”

“ There is no doubt whatever but that every little girl and every little boy has heard of the country of Poland, and of its inhabitants the Polacks, or Poles, as you hear them more often spoken of. But there are countless numbers of these same children, I fear, who have not the slightest idea where Poland lies, except in a most vague way; nor how the people live, what they eat, what their pleasures and enjoyments are, and how they dress. ”

“ Yes, Poles by genius and by birth. They are our children who have passed through fire; our children whom we never hoped to see in the living world. Once they were called our Lost Ones. In Poland we have a tragic phrase, much used by parting friends: 'We never meet again!' For many years that parting phrase was fate. ”

“ All that the Poles have done since then in the glorious Polish legions and all that they will still do in the future to gain their country back, sufficiently proves that albeit we, the devoted soldiers of that country, are mortal, Poland is immortal. ”

“ Because all Poles are counts—those that are not princes. But why a Pole? Well, perhaps from the convenience of vagueness, inasmuch as there is something international about a Pole—international, and yet neither equivocal nor vulgar; every one sympathizes with them, for they all possessed, once upon a time, vast estates whose loss is borne in cheerful resignation, and never so much as alluded to; they know everybody, and everybody worth knowing is related to them, by marriage or otherwise, in this or some other century ”

“ In no other country was the spirit of man so broken. Poles of high birth are called the Frenchmen of the north, and we saw fair men and women in sumptuous polonaises and long robes who appeared luxurious in their traveling carriages. But stillness and solitude brooded on the land. From Cracow to Warsaw wide reaches of forest darkened the level. ”

“ The Poles are polite and friendly; but magnificence is the foible of the nobility, and they sacrifice all things to luxury; as they seldom see any person superior to them in their own country, and treat their inferiors with an air of absolute authority, they live in all the splendor of princes. ”

“ The last moment of Poland, her supreme cause, salvation or eternal ruin and shame, personal freedom and national independence, or a terrible slavery and the groaning of millions of men ... the destruction of the Polish name, or her glorious place in the ranks of nations: these are the considerations that must take hold of the Polish nation, of you, citizens of Lithuania. ... Poles, now is the moment for the amendment of eternal errors. ”

“ POLAND A SYMBOL A weighty, and for Poland a decidedly happy, result of the foreign rule has been the welding and uniting of everything Polish. All provincial differences have vanished in this unity; the different parts of Poland, Austrian, Russian, and Prussian Poles feel that they are without exception one people. ”

“ Their poesy and romance and folly make them charming as individuals, but ridiculous as a nation. I like the Poles, but I have no patience with Poland.” How exactly the world’s verdict on the artistic temperament! ”

“ It is the revolt of Poland which is described; Valerius, one of the principal characters in the First Part, is led by his enthusiasm for liberty in general to join the Poles. The subject-matter is interesting, though here and there we have too much of the purely historical. The Poles as a people are described impartially and with a sure touch; their characteristics—the strong patriotic feeling inspiring high and low, the prejudices and tyranny of the nobility, the savagery and vigour of the lower classes—are depicted as they mirror themselves in the mind of the German volunteer. ”

“ Our million Poles outnumber all the rest of the Slavs in America, and the Poles are very clannish. When they settle in groups there is little association between them and their neighbors. "In the communities visited," reports the Industrial Commission, "farmers of German, Scandinavian, Irish, Bohemian, Belgian, Swiss, and American origin were found living in juxtaposition to Poles. ”

“ A Polish servant does not kiss his master's hand but his sleeve, and so deeply rooted is this custom of expressing gratitude or affection that I have repeatedly seen young Polish students carry to their lips the arm of a man to whom they wished to show respect.
The Poles have not become much more economical under foreign rule than before. ”

“ Such especially is the character of the Poles; they boast in the first instance of being more than they have been, but not more than they are capable of being. Poland in fact is a nation of heroes! pawning their words for exploits beyond the truth, but subsequently redeeming them with honour, in order to verify what at first was neither true nor even probable.
As to the old generals, some of them were no longer the hardy and simple warriors of the republic; honours, hard service, age, and the emperor particularly, had contributed to soften many of them down. ”

“ As the Poles in addition are now frequently called the Frenchmen of the North or East, and as they themselves believe that they are closely related to the French through their defects, which they themselves characterise as inconstancy and instability, the foreigner is constantly asked if he does not see a great and lamentable similarity between the Poles and the French. ”

“ With a country three times as large as modern France, and territorially unbroken, besides possessing a fair outlet to the sea, the Poles were in possession of many of the factors that contribute to establish a State, and to give an assured balance to its position. ”

“ We venture to invite public attention to a review of the history of Poland. The subject excites a deep but melancholy interest; we dread to hear the result of the glorious but unhappy conflict, in which that devoted country is engaged. We know, indeed, that the Poles will be faithful to their cause; we know, that they are encouraged by the sincere prayers of all who desire the permanent and extended welfare of the world ”

“ To-day there are twenty million Poles. Although they owe allegiance to three different sovereigns, they are more united than ever in their history. For their national feeling has developed in just the same way that the national feeling of Germans and Russians has developed, by education primarily, and by that remarkable tendency of industrialism, {97} which has grouped people in cities, and brought them into closer association. ”

“ His warriors fight, love, hate; they embrace each other; they laugh; they weep in each other's arms; give each other sage counsels, with a truly Homeric simplicity. They are deep-versed in stratagems of love and war, these Poles of the seventeenth century! They have their Nestor, their Agamemnon, their great Achilles sulking in his tent. Oddly enough, at times they grow very familiar to us, and in spite of their Polish titles and faces, and a certain tenderness of nature that is almost feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in them. ”

“ I am democratic and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants, Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. ”

“ The Poles are a brave, generous people, and my heart often bled for them. Their sorrows, eclipsed by those of the equally brave Belgians, and dimmed by being more remote in point of distance, are not, I think, fully realized in England; especially as they are defended by one of the largest armies in the world. ”

“ It will not be wondered at, then, if, in the midst of this bitter distress, the grand scheme for the relief of the Poles, which was turning the town mad with excitement, did not find universal favour. The workmen, in particular, persisted in cherishing all sorts of obstinate notions about it. Why should them there foreign Poles be thought of and relieved, while they were starving? Would the Polish clergy and the grand folks, over there, think of them, the Westerbury workmen, and get up a concert for 'em, and send 'em the proceeds? ”

“ Aboriginal character of the Poles,During the eight following centuries the Poles, surrounded by enemies—on the north and east by more barbarous tribes, on the south and west by a superior civilisation—were exclusively confined to the defensive and so missed those humanising influences to which a conquering nation has so often had to submit. ”

“ The story would be long to tell, of how the Poles, peasants, burghers and soldiers alike, with the inheritance of the fighting blood that runs in the veins of every son of Poland, with the fire of patriotism and of measureless devotion to the chief who led them, fought day after day the besieging army till it was beaten. The diary of the siege is the daily record of deeds of gallantry, of steadfastness, of a few carrying off the honours against many. ”

“ Wilno, the ancient capital of Lithuania, is still almost as much a Polish city as Warsaw; Polish colonies are thickly scattered about in the rural districts; and socially, intellectually, and economically, the Poles remain the most important element in the population.
It would probably be true to say that the average Pole has today, at the back of his head, the feeling that his country is not merely the modest area of ethnographic Poland, but the whole wide expanse of historic Poland—Poland as it was in 1772, just before the Partitions. ”

“ The Poles, although from a feeling of pride and patriotism naturally disposed to overrate the productions of their own literature, are far from being deficient in critical judgment or in exalted ideas on the theory of the beautiful. ”

“ In aristocratic circles Poles frequently converse with one another in French, a state of things which from the beginning of the century was promoted not only by the continual intellectual intercourse with France, and the emigration thereto, but by the need of being able to meet the Russians on neutral territory so far as language is concerned. ”

“ Their suspiciousness is perhaps the chief barrier in the way of social elevation of the Poles. That Poles can be organized is shown by the remarkable success of the Polish National Alliance and kindred societies. ”

“ The Poles fell victims to the foreign yoke just as their civilization, their culture, and their esprit were on the fairway to rival the intellectual splendours of France under Louis XIV. They were a brilliant people—mentally and intellectually refined, but physically decadent, and quite incapable of surviving their political freedom. They yielded to listless sentimentality and bewailed their52 lost greatness instead of fighting to retrieve it. You may love the Poles with your heart but never with your reason! ”

“ This forms the top soil for a nation which has put forth so much of wonder and sweetness to enrich the world, but the reason which lies deep down at the root of the matter for the soul which thrills through all this melody of song and story is in the sorrowful and tragic history of this nation.
The Poles are a race of burning patriots. To-day they are as keen over national sufferings and national wrongs as on that unfortunate clay when they went into a fiercely unwilling and resentful captivity. ”

“ The Poles are as vivacious as Southerners, but they are not a politically prudent people, educated in the school of Machiavelli, like the Italians, who understood how to make the French pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. ”

“ 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. ”