GIFT OF 
 
MODERN POLAND 
 
 LUDWIK EHRLICH 
 
 [Reprint from tiie UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE, Vol. XIX, No. 2) 
 
MODERN POLAND* 
 
 LUDWIK EHRLICH 
 
 Like every one of you, I have, since the earliest days of 
 childhood, cherished a great number of wishes and desires, 
 some of which perhaps appear at the present moment very 
 childish, while others are more sublime. One of the 
 earliest wishes that I remember was the wish to grow up. 
 The wish that followed next was to be a street-car conduc- 
 tor, and after that to be a drayman. In quick succession I 
 wanted to be a corporal, and from that it was only one 
 step to wishing to be a general. Then I started dreaming 
 of more important things. There was a time when I was 
 dreaming of beautiful girls, there was a time when I wanted 
 to improve the world and do away with sin and crime and 
 poverty. And there was a time wjpn I wanted to do research 
 work and to be a scholar. But at all times ever since I 
 remember, there has been one wish cherished as earnestly 
 as any more than any. It was the wish to serve Poland. 
 However little I might do in that service, I wanted to serve 
 her. And although you will realize that during the life of a 
 Pole there are not many moments of real happiness, yet this 
 is such a moment. For after having addressed during this 
 war several audiences in different parts of England on the 
 subject of Poland, and after having had the privilege 
 of lecturing before the University of Oxford on the 
 
 * An address delivered at the University of California on March 
 5, 1917. 
 
 3610^ 
 
history of Poland, I am now fortunate enough to address 
 this university, one of the foremost universities in 
 America, on what is so dear to my heart. And to ad- 
 dress you on the subject, to try to inform you about Poland, 
 is to try to serve Poland, because the very thing that Poland 
 wants is that people should know more about her. Since 
 Poland was divided, was cut into pieces, at the end of the 
 eighteenth century, ever so many calumnies have been 
 spread about her. If you met anyone outside of Poland 
 who had heard about her, as likely as not he would have 
 heard things which on mere consideration would prove to 
 be false. 1 But still those are the things you have heard. 
 To call your attention to Poland is to serve her, and to 
 be allowed to address an audience like this is an oppor- 
 tunity. I am obliged to you, Professor Noyes, for giving 
 me this opportunity, and I am obliged to this audience for 
 having come to hear me. 
 
 The Polish question is a very curious one. You may 
 know, or perhaps you may not know, that people have 
 asserted again and again that the Polish question did not 
 exist. Fifty years ago that great charlatan, Thomas Car- 
 lyle, said that the Polish question was "a thing dead and 
 buried. ' ' And today Carlyle 's teaching is dead and buried, 
 and the Polish question is as much alive as ever. Not many 
 years ago, Prince von Builw, sometime Chancellor of Ger- 
 many (until 1908), after having resigned that position 
 wrote a book, which has been translated into English under 
 the title Imperial Germany. He is reported to be play- 
 ing an important diplomatic role even during the present 
 war, and hence his words are all the more characteristic of 
 the German attitude. He said in his book: 
 
 (The) object ... of our policy ... is a fight for German nation- 
 ality The task of solving this problem would probably have been 
 
 easier for the Prussians and for the Poles if the artificial and un- 
 tenable Grand Duchy of Warsaw, created by Napoleon, had not 
 
 i Many old falsehoods are disproved in Dr. Lord 's brilliant book 
 on the Second Partition of Poland (Harvard University Press, 1915), 
 based on the deepest research. 
 
roused in the Poles the vain hope that in the course of European 
 complications it might be possible to re-establish Polish indepen- 
 dence. The Poles would very likely have been spared painful experi- 
 ences on our side as well as on the other side of the frontier in 1830, 
 1848, and 1863, if the memory of the ephemeral creation of a state by 
 the first Napoleon had not lived in their hearts. The thought that 
 the partition of the Polish Eepublic among the Eastern Powers from 
 1793 to 1807 had only been temporary, naturally made it harder for 
 the Poles ... to regard the accomplished facts as final.2 
 
 Yes, we did regard the accomplished facts as not final. 
 As much as we could, we did stick to our belief, expressed 
 in the song to which no Pole ever listens sitting, the song, 
 " Poland Is Not Yet Lost." 
 
 And when this war broke out, within a few weeks we 
 had a declaration from the Russian commander-in-chief, 
 a declaration that the partition of Poland had been a great 
 wrong. And now you see all the three powers declaring 
 that each one of them is going to give Poland happiness, to 
 restore Poland. The Polish question is not dead; it is not 
 buried. 
 
 "t"Tf you speak of Poland today, you may mean any one 
 of four things. First of all, you may mean the old empire, 
 the empire as it existed in 1772, the empire which had been 
 created by the union between the Kingdom of Poland and 
 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania^ In 1772 Poland extended 
 from a point near Berlin almost to Kief, and reached very 
 close to the Black Sea. 
 
 Secondly, you may mean by Poland, not the whole of 
 Poland, but only what is usually called the Congress-king- 
 dom, that is, the kingdom created by the Congress of 
 Vienna in 1815, the part which is now usually referred to 
 as Russian Poland. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 took 
 away from Prussia part of what had been assigned to her 
 in 1795 and formed this into what is now called Poland, 
 that is to say, Russian Poland. 
 
 2 Von Biilow, Imperial Germany, trans. Lewenz, 7th impression, 
 1914, 252-253. 
 
BALTIC 
 
 RUSSIA 
 
 aj 
 
 2J TO AUSTRIA 
 
 2. \ JoPWSSJA 
 
 Partitions of Poland, 1772-1795. 
 
 Poland, 1914. 
 
Thirdly, Poland might perhaps mean ethnographic 
 Poland that is, Poland as mentioned in the proclamation 
 of Grand Duke Nicholas, in August, 1914. He promised to 
 Poland freedom of language and religion and self-govern- 
 ment. He meant, it was afterward explained, not the en- 
 tire Poland of 1772, but only ethnographic Poland, only 
 those regions in which the Poles formed the real majority, 
 that territory corresponding with the ancient Kingdom of 
 Poland, comprising Silesia, but distinguished from the 
 Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 
 
 And fourthly, Poland may mean not a territory, but 
 the Poland which is found in the hearts of the Polish 
 people. There are at present something like twenty-three 
 million of Poles. Of that number, not quite twenty mil- 
 lion live on their own territory. The rest are dispersed; 
 some of them were forced to leave their country, some have 
 left it voluntarily, waiting for better times. There are in 
 Prussia three or four million Poles. In Berlin alone, there 
 are one hundred thousand; in Austria, nearly five million; 
 in Russian Poland, over nine million Poles; and in other 
 parts of Russia over two million. 3 
 
 As to religion there are many Roman Catholics, but the 
 Poles are by no means exclusively Roman Catholic. There 
 are numerous Protestants, some of whom have attained to 
 very high positions. For instance, in recent years the 
 president of the Polish party in the Viennese Parliament 
 was- the president of the City of Cracow, a Protestant, and 
 another Protestant, Professor Buzek, has been the repre- 
 sentative of the most patriotic district of the City of Lwow 
 (Lemberg). You find among the Poles a good many Jews. 
 Now, some Jews do not consider themselves Poles. Some 
 do, and in certain cases they have given such good proofs 
 of being good Poles that they are considered in the fight 
 for Polish freedom as important as any other Poles. It 
 only depends upon the way in which they behave to the 
 Poles. You find among the Poles even Mohammedans, who 
 
 Millions of Poles live abroad, mostly in America. 
 
have not given up their religion, but still are very good 
 Poles indeed. 
 
 These are some bald preliminary remarks about Poland. 
 I shall now speak of the conditions of life. Poland is so 
 vast that you can find any number of different landscapes. 
 You find fertile plains in the southeast, the part from 
 which I come, in Western and Central Poland. You find 
 very rich coal mines in Silesia, in Galicia, and in Russian 
 Poland; very rich oil fields in Galicia; you find very pic- 
 turesque and beautiful mountains. The port of Dantzig 
 is the old Polish port of Gdansk; the shore of the Baltic 
 is very rich in vegetation. And there would be everything 
 to make people happy if it were not for the political con- 
 ditions. 
 
 What are these conditions? Let us first take Austria. 
 From the time when Galicia first came under Austrian rule 
 till 1867, there was much oppression. There were attempts 
 to Germanize the country, to incite fratricidal struggles 
 between the peasants and the other classes. There were 
 actual cases, in 1846, when Austrian officials paid peasants 
 to do violence to the persons of Polish landlords. 4 Galicia 
 was swamped with foreign officials who did not understand 
 the language of the inhabitants. None of them cared for 
 the country. They wanted only to take advantage of the 
 people. Things have changed since 1867. They changed, 
 because in the wars of 1859 and 1866 the old administration 
 of Austria broke down and the government had to com- 
 promise. They compromised, first of all, with a very strong 
 party the Polish party. Thereafter, in Galicia, the Poles 
 were allowed, not privileges, but a measure of self-govern- 
 ment. In certain things and in a measure only. However, 
 taking advantage of this change, we have established 
 schools at a rate which I think must seem astonishing to 
 all outsiders. I have read, for instance, the report of an 
 English official, sent about ten or fifteen years ago to in- 
 vestigate our system of schools. He could not find words 
 
 4 Treitschke, DeutscJie Geschichte, ed. 5, v. 545. 
 
to express his admiration for the way in which Galician 
 schools, especially those at Lwow, were administered. 
 Within fifty years the number of school children had risen 
 from something like 180,000 I am quoting these figures 
 from memory in the 'sixties, to over a million. The 
 Polish and the Ruthenian languages were recognized as 
 languages which might be used in offices and schools. Of 
 course, German has retained its privileges. It is still one 
 of the official languages, 5 even if no Germans live in the 
 district in question. 
 
 The chief difficulty has been, apart from the general 
 incompetence of Austrian administration, the economic 
 handicap, because the government has done everything it 
 could to prevent the economic development of the country. 
 Railroads can be established only by permission of the cen- 
 tral government and that permission can be granted or 
 refused at will. The same is true of the establishment of 
 banks. There has been a customs line between Austrian 
 Poland, Russian Poland, and German Poland. 6 There has 
 been no customs line between Galicia, the German parts of 
 Austria, and Hungary. Consequently, the Poles in Galicia 
 had to pay more if they wanted to buy Polish products 
 coming from Warsaw, than they would for those coming, 
 for instance, from Vienna or Budapest. 
 
 But the great thing is that in the last few decades it- 
 has at least been possible to found economic and even poli- 
 tical organizations. These organizations, which had for- 
 merly been forbidden, have changed the whole life of the 
 country. There developed a system of co-operative societies 
 which has brought to the consciousness of every one the 
 fact that economic co-operation is one of the ways to a bet- 
 ter future for Poland. It has also been brought to the con- 
 
 s You may address a public official in German and he must replv 
 in the same language. The language of command in all regiments, 
 the "interior" language of the railroads, etc., is still German. 
 
 e This is contrary, in a sense, to Art. xiv of the treaty of Vienna, 
 which stipulates free circulation between the different Polish prov- 
 inces of products of the soil and of industry. 
 
10 
 
 sciousness of every peasant, of every inhabitant of small 
 cities, that only by some form of political organization will 
 the Poles be able to secure any rights whatever. I am not 
 able now to tell you about the way in which those organ- 
 izations have come into existence and how they now act, 
 but it is a subject admittedly worth studying. It has been 
 studied very thoroughly by the Germans. Men are begin- 
 ning to study it in England. I hope very much that some 
 people in this country may wish to study it, too. 
 
 Since this war broke out I was especially asked to 
 speak about the changes occasioned by the war Galicia 
 has been promised 7 autonomy "so far as is consistent with 
 the fact that Galicia forms part of" the Hapsburg empire. 
 Therefore the promise extends, not to a union of Galicia 
 with the other parts of Poland, but to autonomy while 
 Galicia remains part of Austria. Before that proclama- 
 tion, by the way, the Austrian censor had been cutting 
 out all references to Polish independence. I have seen a 
 good many Polish papers coming from Austrian Poland 
 and Russian Poland and in the Austrian papers all refer- 
 ences to independence were carefully cut out. Just what 
 value the promise has and what is meant by autonomy 
 seems to remain a mystery. 
 
 Now as to Russian Poland: As I have mentioned be- 
 fore, Russian Poland was established in 1815 as^ a king- 
 dom, united with Russia by the person of the ruler, but 
 declared to be a state by itself, with an administration of 
 its own, and so on. 8 The promises were broken, and there 
 ensued the Polish revolution in 1831, 9 which aroused a 
 great deal of sympathy throughout Europe sympathy 
 only. The revolution was put down, with the help of 
 Prussia, and part of the Polish privileges were taken 
 
 7 In a letter addressed by the late Emperor Franz Joseph to the 
 Austrian Prime Minister. 
 
 s Treaty of Vienna, June 3, 1815, Art. I. 
 
 sAskenazy, "Poland and the Polish Bevolution," Cambridge 
 Modern History, x. 
 
11 
 
 away. There came another revolution in 1863. Again it 
 was put down, thanks to the help which Russia receive^, 
 from Prussia. 10 Despite the protests of the western powers, 
 France and England, the rest of the Polish rights were 
 taken away. And perhaps I need not remind you of the old 
 stories which are well known in this country and all over 
 Europe, the stories of Siberia, stories of the general who 
 was sent to extinguish the Polish revolution, and who sent 
 a telegram, "Warsaw is quiet." I need not tell you how 
 people were sent away for "colonization," that is, were 
 sent away, ordered to live in some remote place, to marry 
 women there, and never to leave that place, never to go 
 back to their homes. I need not tell you of all the other 
 cruelties which you must have heard about. 
 
 Since 1905 there has been a certain degree of improve- 
 ment. We have been at least allowed to send* our children, 
 if we had the money, to private schools in which they could 
 be taught in Polish. In 1914* at the outbreak of the 
 war, the Poles had the great satisfaction of seeing, in the 
 Grand Duke's proclamation, a confession that the partition 
 of Poland had been a wrong, that it was the "living body 
 of Poland" that had been torn in pieces those were the 
 words actually used. It was a satisfaction to those who 
 had been told again and again that the Polish question 
 was dead and buried. Satisfaction is not much, but still 
 there were opened to us prospects of a brighter future. 
 Now, as the war has gone on, more and more promises have 
 been made. It has been recognized throughout Russia that 
 the Polish problem ought to be considered very seriously. 
 Whether to give Poland independence or no that was a 
 question to be debated; but it has at least been permitted 
 to debate it openly/ in the press, for instance. The liber- 
 ation of Prussian and Austrian Poland could not be so 
 discussed in Prussia or Austria. 11 
 
 10 Die Politischen Eeden des Filrsten BismarcTc, I, 111 ff., 114 ff . 
 
 11 Since this lecture was delivered the recent revolution in Rus- 
 sia has removed the old chains from that country, and it seems that 
 Poland's prospects, too, will become all the brighter. 
 
12 
 
 VPrussia had had assigned to her, in 1815, at the Con- 
 .gress of Vienna, a large part of the original Poland. A 
 manifesto was issued by the King of Prussia. He assured 
 his new subjects that they "need not give up their nation- 
 ality"; but the promise was soon broken. The position 
 of the Poles grew worse and worse. Yet in 1831, dur- 
 ing the Polish revolution against Russia, some Germans at 
 least could see a romantic spell in Polish patriotism, and 
 German poets, like Lenau, sang the glory of Poland. In 
 1848 the Poles were as responsible for, as active in, the 
 general fight for freedom in Prussia, as any other people. 
 Soon Prussia took again upon herself the task of doing 
 away with Polish aspirations. Bismarck inaugurated a 
 policy of extermination, the gist of which you will find in 
 his political speeches. Take one of his statements in 1885 : 
 "The creation of a kingdom of Poland, the tearing away 
 from Prussia of the Polish-speaking provinces is indeed 
 only possible after a war unfortunate for Prussia." 12 
 
 This, ladies and gentlemen, is perfectly true. 
 
 Bismarck was pursuing his policy in 1886 when he began 
 to use public funds, to which Poles had also contributed 
 by their taxes, to send Germans to the Polish provinces as 
 colonists. After Bismarck's retreat there began' the perse- 
 cution of Polish school-children. In 1902, for instance, in 
 Wrzesnia, some of them were beaten until their fingers were 
 swollen for refusing to say their prayers in German. There 
 came about a ' ' strike ' ' of Polish school-children. The num- 
 ber of strikers grew and grew until it reached a hundred 
 thousand. Cruel means were used by the government to 
 put down the strike. Then, in 1908, a statute was passed 
 which forbade the use in any public meeting, except inter- 
 national congresses and election meetings, of any language 
 but German. Exemption for twenty years was allowed 
 to those districts in which the non-German population 
 has always formed at least 60 per cent. The exception did 
 not apply, therefore, to Polish meetings in Westphalia, 
 
 12 Die Politisclien Eeden des Fiirsten Bismarck, xi, 128. 
 
for instance, or even in Polish districts in which German 
 colonization had been artificially fostered to a considerable 
 extent. Even this concession is to last only until 1928. 13 
 
 In the same year a bill was passed allowing the semi- 
 official Settlement Commission to expropriate people in the 
 Polish provinces in order to promote the Germanization of 
 those parts. Since that time Poles have actually been 
 expropriated in order to give way to German colonization. 
 The only weapon that could be taken up against all this 
 oppression was, not revolution that was impossible, since 
 one machine gun would have done away with hundreds of 
 men but to form economic and to a limited extent political 
 organizations. And these have been formed, by men such 
 as Father Wawrzyniak and men of his school, such as 
 Father Zimmermann, while other men promoted self-help 
 among Polish landowners, as the Polish patriot^ Marek 
 Biedermann. You do not hear about them, bu^ those 
 people over in Europe who are interested in the Polish 
 problem know very well that the Poles, although they have 
 not been talking very much about themselves, have been 
 able to withstand all the aggression of Poland's enemies. 
 We have proved that, without foreign help, practically in 
 the teeth of Europe, we have been able to maintain our 
 power, to withstand hostile legislative action and an organ- 
 ^ization even as strong as is the Prussian. 
 
 A "promise of independence" has been recently ex- 
 tended by Germany. It relates only to the formation of 
 a state /'out of the districts 'conquered from Russia," and 
 even in this promise there is the provision that the "exact 
 frontiers of the new kingdom" shall be outlined later. 14 
 
 Let me say a word or two about Polish intellectual 
 activities, beginning with literature and art. More than 
 once you may have heard it said that, after all, Poland's 
 people are only Slavic barbarians. Have we not been told 
 
 is Vereinsgesetz (1908), sec. 12^ 
 
 i* This ' ' promise ' ' should be read in the light of the statements 
 of Prince von Bulow, cited above. 
 
14 
 
 over and over again that the best thing the Poles could do 
 would be to give up their nationality as soon as they could, 
 and assimilate themselves with their neighbors? I should 
 not wish to encroach upon the province of Professor Noyes, 
 but I may say that Polish literature was already well de- 
 veloped in the sixteenth century we call that the Golden 
 Age of Polish literature. For instance, I doubt very much 
 whether there was at that time in Germany a poet as great 
 as the Polish poet Kochanowski. In the seventeenth cen- 
 ,tury, in the midst of all the wars that befell Europe, we 
 find in Poland not only a good many writers on all subjects, 
 not only poets, but even poetesses. Some of their works 
 were, if you take the period into consideration, quite good. 
 In the eighteenth century there was a new development of 
 Polish literature, and in the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century we had our three greatest poets, Mickiewicz, 
 Krasinski, and Slowacki. Some of their works have been 
 translated into English, many more into German, and I 
 understand that Professor Noyes is busy preparing new 
 editions of some of the masterpieces. The number of Polish 
 poets who have written since then is large. The books 
 of Monica Gardner on Polish poets should be studied 
 carefully by all those who want to know about Polish 
 poetry and Polish feeling. Modern Poland has a great 
 host of first-class poets and novelists. In this country you 
 seem to know more about Sienkiewicz than about any other 
 Polish writer, but in Poland opinion is by no means unani- 
 mous, as to whether Sienkiewicz, who died recently, was 
 really the best Polish writer of his generation. In any 
 case we have several other writers who, in their respective 
 lines, may be considered at least almost equal to him. Per- 
 sonally I agree that he was the greatest modern Polish 
 novelist and one of the greatest in the world. 
 
 As to art, Poland has had several excellent painters I 
 may mention for instance Grottger, with his wonderful 
 series, "Lithuania," "War," and so forth; also Siemi- 
 radzki and Matejko, whose pictures are well known in the 
 
15 
 
 capitals of our conquerors. It is perhaps unnecessary to 
 mention Polish music, especially the names^ familiar to 
 most of you, of Chopin, Wieniawski, Paderewski. 
 
 Again, as to learning, it may interest you to know that 
 the University of Cracow, founded in 1364, reorganized in 
 1400, was, after the Bohemian University of Prague, the 
 oldest university of central Europe. All the German uni- 
 versities were created after it. One of its most brilliant 
 students at the end of the fifteenth century was young 
 Copernicus, who later on became famous as astronomer and 
 whose earliest teacher in astronomy was Wojciech Bru- 
 dzewski, at that time professor at Cracow. In the centuries 
 following, the University of Wilno was founded in 1578, 
 Zamosc in 1595, and Lwow in 1661. I just mention all this 
 to you in order to show that we had some development 
 before our neighbors "took care" of us. 
 
 At the outbreak of the present war there were only two 
 Polish universities in existence, Cracow and Lwow. I 
 should like to tell you much about them, but you would 
 have, in any case, to take my word for it, so I had better 
 just say briefly that I think among their faculties there is 
 a great number of first-class scholars who, if they wished 
 to discard their own language and write, for instance, in 
 German, would long ago have become famous all over the 
 world. 
 
 There are many learned Poles outside of Poland. Those 
 of you who know anything about chemistry have heard of 
 Madame Curie-Sklodowska, who discovered radium. She 
 named one of the elements discovered by her, polonium, 
 in honor of her own nation, to which she has ever remained 
 faithful. 
 
 Many other Poles living abroad are famous in different 
 fields, for instance, Ostrogorski, in political science; in 
 anthropology (I want to pay homage here to a friend of 
 mine) Miss Czaplicka, a young Polish girl who went some 
 three years ago to northeastern Siberia as the head of an 
 expedition and later published a very interesting and much- 
 
16 
 
 appreciated book on the subject. She is being greatly 
 honored in England and is the first woman to act as lec- 
 turer in the University of Oxford. 
 
 As to politics, you have probably heard a great deal 
 of discussion on the vices of the ancient Poles and their 
 want of organization. I have not time now to discuss Polish 
 history, but as to modern organization I will just mention 
 that the Polish economic and political associations in Prus- 
 sian Poland, as well as in the other parts, have been the 
 subject of much detailed study, research and I am glad 
 to say appreciation on the part of people who are by no 
 means friends of Poland and who describe those things 
 only to enable the Prussian government to fight the Poles 
 more fiercely. 15 I may say also that, so far as statesmanship 
 is concerned, some of the best statesmen in Austria in the 
 second half of the nineteenth century were Poles who were 
 admitted to the Austrian government. Several Austrian 
 ministers of finance from the second half of the nineteenth 
 century to the beginning of the present war were Poles: 
 Dunajewski, Bilinski, Korytowski, Zaleski ; other Poles have 
 served as Austrian ministers, e.g. Goluchowski, minister of 
 foreign affairs, and Glabinski, minister of railroads, etc. 
 
 To sum up: If you think of it, the life of Poland is 
 very curious in one respect. It is a nation without a state. 
 In other countries the government promotes national activ- 
 ities. To Poland the governments are more or less hostile. 
 If you want to preserve your nationality, you must have an 
 organization, a national organization, which will work, so 
 to speak, against the wishes of the governments. And yet, 
 despite all the difficulties, the Polish nation has been con- 
 stantly developing. 
 
 And this leads us to what I should call the spirit of 
 Poland. You have heard a great deal about nationality, a 
 thing which people are very fond, of discussing just now. 
 They say sometimes that nationality is, after all, only the 
 
 is deinow, Zukunft Polens; Bernhard, Das polnische Gemein- 
 wesen im preussiclien Staate; and numerous others. 
 
17 
 
 result of economic tendencies. Others say that it is in a 
 sen$e just a religion, that people feel about nationality just 
 as they feel about the principles of this or that church. 
 From my experience, from what I have seen, I think that 
 neither one of these views is correct. Polish patriotism 
 shared by the broad masses, is certainly not due to the 
 desire for economic advantages. Every Pole would be 
 much better off economically if he gave up his nationality 
 and consented to become a German, for instance. 
 
 How many thousands of mothers, both rich and poor, 
 have taught their children to read and write Polish in a 
 most characteristic way : they would sit with their knitting 
 on their knees, and a book on their knitting: when the 
 police came the hostile governments have done a good deal 
 of searching after such "criminals" the knitting would 
 lie on the book and the police might not discover what had 
 been happening: was that a case of hunting after eco- 
 nomic advantages? Or was it a question of "religious 
 nationality"? No question of superhuman reward was 
 involved, people have been doing and are doing those things 
 only in order to serve what they love their own country, 
 their fellow Poles. 
 
 I have often been told by my mother how they used to 
 go out into the fields and walk about; if there were no 
 constables around, they would sing Polish patriotic songs. 
 I do not know if in this country you can appreciate what 
 there is in a patriotic song. I do not know if you can real- 
 ize how much inspiration, how much consolation, one can 
 get from a song. People have been punished for merely 
 singing patriotic tunes. There was, for instance, a very in- 
 teresting case in Prussian Poland not many years ago. An 
 organization had got up a picnic. During the picnic a 
 certain song was sung. Thereupon the president of the 
 organization was prosecuted. The public prosecutor ad- 
 mitted that the words were harmless, but said that the 
 melody was likely to promote a breach of peace. The de- 
 
18 
 
 fendant was convicted. Yet, in spite of all these prose- 
 cutions, of which I can but give you an example, these 
 things can not be stopped. I do not know if you can 
 realize what a Polish patriotic celebration is. You listen 
 to speeches, then you hear songs when everyone gets up, 
 and you see tears in the eyes of old men and young chil- 
 dren. I do not know if you can realize what it means to 
 celebrate a national anniversary in a graveyard, with 
 torches around you: you hear one of those thrilling songs 
 which remind you of your duty to your country your own 
 country, not your conquerors' songs which live in your 
 ears forever. 
 
 There is something very interesting about the discipline 
 of the Polish people. For instance, after the statutes of 
 1908, which I mentioned to you, there was organized in 
 Poland a boycott of Prussian goods, of German goods gen- 
 erally and of Austrian goods. There is such a boycott at 
 present in England. But there you have courts which 
 punish you if you contravene the Trading with the Enemy 
 Acts. In Poland there were no courts to convict you for 
 a breach of the boycott. Eather, you would be convicted 
 by the conquerors' courts for boycotting the Germans. 
 And yet how those boycotting organizations developed! 
 You could see little school girls going around the cities, from 
 one shop to another, to find out whether or no the stores 
 were selling German goods, such as German stationery. 
 If they were, the children would ' ' write to the paper about 
 it." In Russian Poland a boycott of the University was 
 organized some years ago, because the government refused 
 to restore to the University its Polish character. You could 
 find people who would risk any sacrifices, would go abroad, 
 would live away from their families, would lose their live- 
 lihood perhaps, would put their own families in danger, 
 rather than go through the University which the Polish 
 youth had declared under boycott. In such cases discipline 
 is enforced simply by national conscience. A great deal of 
 
19 
 
 that is due to the rcle of women. It might interest you to 
 know that Bismarck considered Polish women especially 
 dangerous. For instance, in 1885, when there was a discus- 
 sion of the bill relating to the Settlement Commission, he 
 made a point of stating that those people who would go 
 to the eastern provinces as German colonists were to under- 
 take not to marry Polish women, because Polish women 
 usually make good Poles out of their husbands. 16 
 
 One of the most striking examples of Polish patriotism 
 is the Society of the Popular School, usually called 
 T. S. L. in Galicia, founded some twenty-five years ago. 
 It has scores of thousands of members all over the country, 
 maintains elementary schools and public libraries in in- 
 numerable cities and villages, organizes popular lectures 
 throughout the country, and even maintains some second- 
 ary schools. The members' subscription is forty cents a 
 year. That is not much for you. But among those mem- 
 bers you find for instance teachers of provincial schools 
 whose whole salary amounts to some ten or twenty dollars 
 a month. Out of that, they must pay for their food, lodg- 
 ing, clothing, and also pay the subscription to the society, 
 for otherwise they would not be allowed to co-operate in 
 the society's work. And yet somehow or other they man- 
 age to do that and with how much enthusiasm! 
 
 What do the Poles want? The Poles want a place in 
 the sun. But this does not mean that we want colonies 
 or the right to exploit other people. We do not want the 
 right to say to other people, ''Get up because I want to sit 
 down." We only want to have the right to live free, to 
 live as a united, independent nation, without being com- 
 pelled to serve, as so many of our people are compelled to 
 serve now, one against the other, an Austrian Pole against 
 a Eussian Pole, a Russian Pole against his brother or uncle 
 in the German army, all of them serving for foreign 
 aspirations, for foreign ideals, for foreign policies, which 
 
 16 Die politisclien Eeden des Fursten Bismarck, xi, 445, 464. 
 
20 
 
 have nothing at all to do with Poland. We want to have 
 our country to ourselves, and we want to keep away from 
 other countries' struggles which do not concern us. Look 
 at the present war in Europe. All the fighting in the east- 
 ern European theatre of war, except in the Balkans, has 
 been on Polish soil. Why should our cities be razed to the 
 ground ? Why should our people be led away, turned prac- 
 tically into slaves? We want to be free, to be left to our- 
 selves. 
 
 I shall close by telling you of a little banquet in which I 
 took part some six or seven years ago. Two of our greatest 
 professors were there. One of them is dead now. He was a 
 man whose voice was heard throughout Poland. He was one 
 of those men to whom you could listen and listen and listen 
 and never get tired of listening. There were a few more 
 of us four students. We were discussing things Polish, 
 discussing them in a way that was to remain an inspiration 
 for years and years. I still remember a toast of that great 
 man, Professor Milewski. The Poles, he said, the modern 
 Poles, resembled a band of workmen digging a tunnel. The 
 Poles in whose time we lost our independence, were those 
 who first entered the tunnel. Out of light they entered into 
 darkness. Then the present generation, and the few past 
 generations were those people in the tunnel who had not 
 seen the light before they entered and were not yet allowed 
 the privilege of seeing the end of their work. Although 
 he himself would not be able to see light after the work 
 was finished, he hoped that at least we young men who 
 were there would see it, that we would come out of the 
 dark into the light and see a free Poland again. 
 
 Alas! He did not live to see the dawn of a better 
 future. But there are signs now that things may turn 
 that way. Some of you may have remarked that President 
 Wilson said in his famous speech a few weeks ago: 
 
 ' ' I take it for granted, for instance . . . that statesmen 
 everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, inde- 
 pendent, and autonomous Poland. ..." 
 
Yes, a united Poland, and an independent Poland. It- 
 is for the world as much as for us Poles to see to it that 
 we may be a generation of those coming out of the tunnel 
 into the light. 
 
 NOTE: The following books and articles may be useful for refer- 
 ence: 
 
 Swietochowski, ' ' Poland and her Role in Europe, ' ' Fortnightly 
 Review, 1915, xcvm, 502-512. 
 
 Retinger, * ' Poland and the Present War, ' ' English Review, Dec., 
 1914, xix, 78-84. 
 
 Dennis, " Immortal Poland," Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1916, 113- 
 124. 
 
 Poland's Case for Independence (a series of essays by well quali- 
 fied writers), New York, 1916. 
 
 Monica Gardner, Poland, A Study in National Idealism, London, 
 1915. 
 
 Monica Gardner, Adam Mickiewicz, The National Poet of Poland, 
 New York, 1911. 
 
 Georg Brandes, Poland, New York, 1903. 
 
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