# Poland: A Study of the Land People and Literature/Part 1/Chapter 5

V
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. In these later days, Austrian Poland has become the centre about which the others cluster, since the Poles in Galicia have a parliament, where their language may be spoken, besides two national universities, and whole towns where many things may be printed, which the Russian censor would forbid.
And like the provinces, so all the religious sects are merged in the national unity.
Poland was once an exclusively Roman Catholic land. Now mixed marriages are of frequent occurrence in Warsaw. In the two homes with which I was most familiar, in one the husband was a Protestant and the wife a Catholic; in the other the husband was a Catholic and the wife a Protestant. It must be added that in neither of these homes did the religious faith play an important part.
As to the Jews, who are so numerous in Poland, because the kingdom of Poland offered them an asylum during their long persecution, that form of hatred of the Jews, which has been decorated with the affected name of Antisemitism, and which certain sections of Danish society with their inclinations to cultivate German reaction and German rudeness have imported, has not struck root at all in Russian Poland. Of course the far-reaching mutual aversion of Jews and ​Russians, dating from a thousand years back, persists even here. The peasants have no dealings with the Jews, and it is only recently that the Jews have been placed on the same footing as the other citizens. Nevertheless, even in 1794, when despair armed Warsaw against Russia, they took part in the national defence; a regiment of Jewish volunteers fought under Kosciusko's banners, led by the Jewish Colonel Berko, who in 1809 fell fighting against the Austrians. In 1830 the same prejudiced and irresolute national government, which rejected the aid of the peasants, and would have nothing to do with the revolt in the old Polish provinces, rejected the applications of the Jews to be allowed to enter the army instead of paying for exemption as formerly. When the rebellion was suppressed, Nicholas punished them for this application by incorporating them with his own army, and that was not enough. Since the Jews had also asked the national government for permission to share in the higher and lower general instruction of the people, the Tzar declared that for the future he would take care of their education. He caused 36,000 Jewish families to be taken across the frontier, "in order to remove the temptation to smuggle," as it was said, and ordered them to settle on the steppes of Southern Russia and cultivate the soil there. The Cossacks came with the order of expulsion. All furniture was thrown out into the street, old men, women, small children, exhausted and famished, were obliged to drag themselves away to the place of destination. If a woman sank down fainting by the way, the husband had to go on notwithstanding. And at the new place of abode the exiles were crushed by the most severe of punishments: child-conscription. In the great raids of 1842 all the small boys of six years and upwards were seized and sent under Cossack guards to Archangel to be brought up as sailors. Of course they died like flies on the way.
Common misfortune has united the Polish Jews to their Christian fellow-countrymen. For the other Poles have also been compelled to endure the loss of their children. An order from Prince Paskiewicz of March 24, 1832, which was executed, began thus: "It has pleased his Majesty the ​Tzar to command, that all strolling, orphan, or poor boys in Poland shall be admitted into the militia battalions, and subsequently be sent away in a body to Minsk, when decision will be made about them according to the regulations of his Majesty's general staff." And the execution of this order is not any exceptional incident. Six years later—April 13, 1838—the following communication from the council of the government appeared in the Warsaw newspapers: "On the 8th of this month, in the Town Hall, there will be a public offer of contracts for the transport to St. Petersburg and Ural of some thousands of the sons of Polish noblemen." From this time forth Jewish and Christian Poles have felt, not indeed as a community, but as a nation. The fraternising of the people with the Jews in Warsaw in 1860 solved the question as the equality of the latter, and when in February 1861, in the square before the castle, and in another larger square, shots were fired upon the kneeling crowd, who with the mouths of the Russian cannon before their eyes, gave utterance to a national hymn, and besought God to send to the Poles freedom and a fatherland, the Jews felt impelled to manifest their national disposition by an unmistakable demonstration. In great numbers they accompanied their Rabbis into the Catholic churches, just as the Christians in great numbers went into the synagogues to sing the same hymn.
But the feeling of unity was already strong in Poland's greatest poet, Mickiewicz; his work, Pan Tadeusz (of 1834), which has become the Polish national epic, ends with the playing of Poland's celebrated national song for Dombrowski and his soldiers by a Jew. "The great Master," as the poem calls him, by his cymbal music alone, in great enthusiasm, evokes the whole history of Poland from 1791 for his audience. The impetuous polonaise of May 3rd is the starting point, then follows the false chord, the sound of the traitor-note, which calls to mind Targovice, then march, attack, battle, storming and shot, groans of the children, wailings of the mothers; the blood-bath of Praga rises before the eyes dim with tears. Then the key changes to the wailing melody of the old popular ​ballads, to the story of the exiled warrior, who wanders through woods and many a time is ready to perish in agony and starvation, until at last he sinks down at the feet of his faithful little horse, which digs his grave with its hoof. Closely gathered about the master, the soldiers listen to the well-known melody and recall the better days when they sang this ballad at the grave of their fatherland.
"They raised their heads, for how entirely different, how much lighter it sounded now—louder, in another time, carrying another message. And again the master let his glance glide over the strings, folding his hands together, and struck a blow with both staves, so fully, so powerfully, that the strings resounded like a brazen trumpet, and this renowned melody born of the holiest hope, this triumphal march flew towards heaven: 'It is not yet all over with Poland! not so long as we live! Up, Dombrowski! To Poland!' and all clapped their hands, and 'Up, Dombrowski!' pealed through the hall. And as if he himself were startled at the effect, the master trembled. . . ."
And covering his face, while a torrent of tears burst out through his fingers, he says to Dombrowski: "Yes, General, thou art he, whom the singer's mouth has heralded," and the poet adds: "Thus he spoke, the brave Jew, he loved his native country as a Pole."
Yet though there is now no religious division in Russian Poland, of late years a party division of another kind has arisen—namely, that between the youth with positive tendencies, who are disposed to make the liberation of the intellect the highest aim, and the Catholic patriots, or those working with them.
The Catholic religion has long seemed to be indissolubly bound up in the national cause. Without the influence of the Catholic clergy it would have been impossible to keep the larger part of the population, which is excluded from the higher culture, firmly united as a nationality. Now this difficulty has arisen, that those possessing the highest culture no longer believe in the Catholic faith, and that the leaders of youth believe the only possibility for intellectual advance to lie in opposing modern views of life to the tradition of ​the past. They have asked themselves with anxiety if Polish culture, by maintaining its relations with Catholicism, as, for instance, do the great poets of the romantic school, Mickiewicz and Krasinski, will not come to be antiquated and outstripped in the general work of Europe, and some eminent men, among them first and foremost Svientochovski, have felt obliged to express themselves on the religious question in a manner which has wounded some, and caused anxiety to more. Recently so distinguished an author as Sienkiewicz, who commenced his career as a radical, and whose opinions were long radical, has been seen from prudential reasons to ally himself with the conservative party. It is much to be regretted, however, that by receiving a considerable annual sum for holding a sinecure as nominal editor of a clerical newspaper, he has complicated his situation and lost a great part of his prestige.
There is a dilemma here, which troubles the Polish intelligence more than anything else. Many of the best people dare not say what they think, lest they should injure the cause, which is to them the holiest, or rather the only holy cause: the cause of Poland. Other eminent men are led to the reflection, which under common conditions would be unquestionable, but which in this case does not suffice, that there are ideas which have greater weight and importance than the idea of nationality. The question becomes practically a question of expedience, toleration, and tact.
My purely personal relation to the question was this: those on the progressive side in Warsaw were inclined to appropriate me, while isolated men, who although entirely liberal, desired for political reasons to avoid a breach between the patriots and the "Young Poland" party, earnestly desired my presence in Warsaw, because they thought it possible that a foreigner, who had friends in both camps, might effect a reconciliation. They sought, therefore, to make use of my stay in Warsaw to bring this about, and it was said to me on a certain occasion that, that evening for the first time in fifteen years, representatives of the different parties were assembled in the same room. What I personally saw in Warsaw could but give me a lofty idea of the harmony of the Poles as a people; ​the attitude of the conservative party especially surprised me. More than one Catholic priest received me heartily, and the greatest festivity to which I was invited during my visit in Warsaw was given by the leader of the conservative party, the owner of the newspaper Slovo (The Word), Count Przezdziecki. (He is the son of the man who published the complete works of the Polish historian, Johanes Dlugosz, in fourteen large quarto volumes, at great personal expense, and a near relative of the Countess Przezdziecka, who is Merimeé's "Second Unknown" (Autre Inconnue).)
Although, according to my idea, Polish culture at present must thus be limited to an extremely prudent and wary evolution, it is evident that the year 1863 marks an epoch in the intellectual life of Poland. The follies and horrors of this year, the frantic chaotic rebellion, with its tragic result, has made the nation sober. Too sober, it may seem to some, for while before 1863 it was the wont of the Poles to see all merits united in their own people, since that time it has become the fashion to speak sorrowfully and depreciatingly of Poland. But it is a great gain in any event to have cast off the sickly self-worship which prevailed in the thirties, at the time when the two great opponents, Mickiewicz and Slowacki, simultaneously adopted the visionary dreams of the mystic Towianski, who regarded the Poles as the Messianic race, suffering for the sins of mankind, and by suffering, working out the salvation of humanity. They have learned to look the stern reality in the face, and the hopes they cherish—and though certainly not sanguine, they are by no means without hope for the future—are not founded on dreams and fantasies.
Finally, the drastic foreign rule since 1863 has produced an intellectual condition which, however unhappy it may be, may in certain ways be called the finest and best possible to a nation, a condition which calls to mind that of primitive Christendom under the oppression of Rome, a conception of the world, pessimistic in many points, but not on that account less true.
Perhaps after all there is no condition more elevating for a race than one in which no distinguished man ever has any ​external distinction, title, or decoration, and where the official tinsel of honour is regarded as a disgrace, while on the other hand the official garb of disgrace, the political prison blouse, is regarded as honourable.
Every child who daily goes past Paskiewicz's monument, who sees the names of traitors encircled by garlands on the obelisk, is from a tender age familiar with the thought that those whom the authorities honour are not as a rule the best men, and that those whom they persecute are not as a rule the worst.
That which is the pith, the true pith of Christian teaching, a right estimate of the honours of this world, the ignominy of this world, and the justice of this world, of real greatness and real baseness—this estimate, every one here, even the least gifted, has accepted. What a school for life! Poland is the only country, I believe, where primitive Christianity still exists as a power in society, and that equally for those who are Christians and for those who are not.
The name of Poland is not found on the map of Europe. The people of Poland are not reckoned among the peoples of Europe. The freedom and welfare of its sons and daughters are in the power of foreign rulers. Its language is persecuted and suppressed.
This people has not a single friend among the mighty of the earth; on the other hand it has active, extremely active and effectual enemies, and its misfortune is that its enemies are the most absolutely powerful men in the world. On the other hand Poland has, I believe, among all the nations of the world the best and the most humane of their sons for her friends.
Poland presents the spectacle of a nation which is not only condemned to death, but which, as Cherbuliez has said, has been buried alive, and yet which continually raises the lid of its coffin, and shows that its vital power is still far from exhausted.
We meet here a people in whom every nerve is strained, because day in and day out they fight for their existence, instead of enjoying it like other races. We see here a people who are entirely absorbed in their national cause, and yet ​this national cause is nothing but the universal cause, the cause of humanity.
We love Poland, therefore, not as we love Germany or France or England, but as we love freedom. For what is it to love Poland but to love freedom, to have a deep sympathy with misfortune, and to admire courage and enthusiasm?
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; here the cosmos is concentrated as in an essence.
Everywhere in Europe where there has been any fighting for freedom in this century, the Poles have taken part in it, on all battlefields, on all the barricades. They have sometimes been mistaken in their views of the enterprises to which they lent their arms; but they believed that they were fighting for the good of humanity; they regarded themselves as the bodyguard of freedom, and still look on every one who fights for freedom as a brother.
But conversely, it may also be said that everywhere in Europe where there is any fighting for freedom, there is fighting for Poland. The future fate of Poland is wholly dependent on that of Europe; for if the idea of the right of the people to independence, and the right of every nation to full political freedom continually gains ground in the world, then the hour is drawing near when the resurrection of Poland shall be something more than a hope.