Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-05-21


lomats should assemble in congress at
Vienna to establish the
Conors.s basis of a durable peace in
Europe. Prince Talleyrand
VI AoA1' wrote to Prince Metternich
a letter. a paragraph of which still has
vivid reality:
"Of all the questions which should be
treated in the congress at Vienna the
King of France might consider as the
first, the greatest, the most eminently
European, that of Poland If it was
possible to hope as much as he desired.
that a people worthy of the interest of
all the otherssby its age, value. services
rendered formerly to Europe and by its
misfortune could be given back its
ancient and complete independence.
The partition which struck it off the
list of nations was the prelude, in part
the cause and perhaps to a certain
point the excuse for the upheavals to
which Europe has been a prey"
That which Talleyrand wrote in 1914
is still true in 1916, for the crime OF
partition remains and the upheavals
that have succeeded, even the present
war, are due to this colossal injustice
and act of inanity. To this political
crime there is now added crime of in
humanity. sequence. for Poland has
been desolated by the armies of the ma
tions that had despoiled her. and Po-
land in the agony of her distress-her
starvation-haS appealed for help to
civilized nations. The names Of Sohieski,
who delivered Vienna from the Turks
in 1888: of kosciuzko and Pulaski in
the war for American independence. of
Cen Skrznecki, instructor of the Bel
NHian army in 1892: of MieroSlowSki,
generalissimo of the armies of the
Chrzanowski, commander Of the Italian
army at Novarra: OF Boenf. commander
of the Hungarian armies against Aus
tria in 1918; of Gen. Zamoyski. COM
mander of the Polish legion with the
Franco-English armies in the Crimea.
entitle Poland to the sympathetic at
tention of the old and new world alike.
A patriotic Pole. Count Charles Potu-
licki. president of the committee PRO
Polonia, in an arti-
Sudden Reversal Gle Poland Yester-
day and Tomor-
motives of the sudden reversal Of pub
lie opinion in Europe in favor of Po-
land:
First of these motives is the necessity
of consolidating future peace in Great
ing a barrier between pam Slavism and
-Germanism.
Second, the conviction which is appar-
ent to statesmen at the head of the
copartitionerS that it is better that
Poles. refusing all assimilation, unite
themselves in one neutral state rather
30 f<.v
eign elements, the more hostile that the
war had ended in receptions.
Third. the fear of augmenting the
forces of the enemy-enemy which is
perhaps the ally of today-in yielding
to him or in leasing to him Polish pos
sessions.
POLAND is the keystone of the arch
of Europe" said Napoleon l at st. Hell
ena in regretting perhaps that he had
not acted upon that conviction when he
could have done so. Poland is the ped
estal of the interests of Europe which
the statesmen of Europe will be obliged
to recognize in establishing the plan
for a durable peace.
Placed between Russia and Prussia,
these two incarnations of nationalist,
expansive and aggressive policy, the
Poles have always been and will re-
main refractory as well to the solicita-
tions of pan-Slavism as to the menaces
and intrigues of pan-Germanism.
I Poland Is passionately enamored with
the finesse of high occidental culture.
of Latin culture which the grand hu-
manists professed at the Polish Univer-
sity of Cracovia or sought at its sources
in France and Italy. Poles are strong
Catholics and deeply attached to the
Church of Rome. but without sectarian
intolerance they could well have agreed
with the Russians and the Russian soul.
but never with pan Russianism. That
governmental conception of pan-Slav-
ism imposed on Europe by Peter the
Great and imposed on Russia by his
successors has always been odious to
Poles.