Evening star., 1925-04-14
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL y. COLLINS.

Hope for a season bade the world farewell
AND Freedom shrieked-as kosciusko fell !!
Is there a Kosciusko today who will
rise to cry anew for the freedom
which that great patriot lost?
Warsaw's last champion from her height
Wide DER her fields. a waste of ruin laid ::
20 Heaven" he cried, my bleeding country
Is there no, hand on high to shield the
braye?"
Last week Russian bolsheviks to
the number of 400, 900 assembled in
Leningrad to denounce the murder in
Poland of two Observation-Disclosures
who were being conducted to the bor-
der to be exchanged for two Polish
prisoners in the hands of the Soviet
authorities. Four hundred thousand
in one mob crying for revenge and
blood! Can any one imagine that the
mob was interested only in the lives of
two lost Russians? Russia has al
ready fought one war with Poland
since the World War. There is un-
dying hate between the two neigh
boring nations. Less exciting Incl
dents than the murder or execution
of two possibly escaping prisoners
have provoked war, when the rulers
were alert to find a preteXt of con-
quest. The circumstances of the kill
ing of the two Russians have not yet
been published; perhaps it will never
be known whether the prisoners were
attempting to escape and were shot
down by their guard, but there will
! be less confusion of facts if now the
Russians carry out their threats of
executing in revenge the two Poles
who were to have been exchanged.
Deliberate revenge is demanded by
| the 400, 900 in the mob-a menacing
spirit-which may be famed into a
war of aggression upon Poland's east
front.
! On the west of Poland lies Ger
many, which was forced by the Yer.
sailles treaty to concede a corridor of
territory for Poland, connecting that
country with the sea, but dividing
East Prussia from the rest of Ger
many.
1t was that very corridor which led
| Frederick the Great, King of Prussia,
| in 1872, to conspire with Russia and
Austria for the partition of Poland,
by which the Car took White Rus
sia," Frederick the Corridor, thereby
| uniting East and West Prussia, and
Austria came in for her share of the
conquest by taking Galicia, known as
Red Russia, together with certain
other territory. France was not then
allied with Poland as she is today,
while Russia, Prussia and Austria
| were continuing their schemes of
! conquest. France was occupied in
| her own struggle against Bourbon
| tyranny, with her revolution and
| a Ia
| X 4 x x
| But. worse than the lack of out
| side alliances which might have pro-
| tected Poland, she had her own fee
bleness within, which betrayed her.
| Her government was that OF an cleo
/ tive monarchy, with diet, or con-
gress, which might have excited
| tremendous protest from its vice
president. This Diet met in 1888 and
| was in continuous session four years,
! for not only was there no limit on
| debate, but any member had the un-
| limited power to prevent any action
| by simply saying, II object" 1t was
| not a rule of a majority, but always
| of uninimity, like that now prevailing
| in the Council of the League of Ma
| tions. They called it, in Poland, a
| "liberum veto"
| In 1893 all that was left of Poland
was absorbed by the three ''aggressor
nations"-Russia, Prussia and Aus
tria-and there was no more Poland
until the World War and it's treaty
| of Versailles.
| y y x x
| What a difference there is between
| conditions of empire in the days when
| Poland was dying and the. conditions
| of today! Poland had been "parti
| toned" some Is years, but there were
millions of Poles still ranking under
| the pain of their country's betrayal
when two men met upon a raft ir