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YALE UNIVERSITY
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POLITICAL LIFE IN
POLAND

BEING A LECTURE DELIVERED IN PARIS AT THE
"ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES SOCIALES"

BY

STANISLAW POSNER

Beprinted from " The Polish Beview."

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
POLAND AS AN ECONOMIC UNIT
With an Introduction by SIDNEY WEBB
Published for the Polish Information Committee by
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LIMITED, LONDON. 1916
LA POLOGNE D'HIER ET DE DEMAIN
Avec une Introduction de GEORGES RENARD
Professor au College de France
PARIS : FELIX ALCAN. 1917

(All rights reserved.)

^

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND

BEING A LECTURE DELIVERED IN PARIS AT THE
"ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES SOCIALES "
Theee is a well-known saying of Seneca, "The wise man
understands causes and not the phantasies of fate." That
is why, in speaking of the political life of Poland, I confine
myself all the time to accredited history, This political
life of Poland, divided up among three different States,
having each of them its distinctive political life, its
different political constitution, its divers manners and cast
of mind, has created a number of problems, situations, and
difficulties of such intricate complexity that the Poles
themselves often miss their way among them " in wander
ing mazes lost." What attention, then, do they not demand
from strangers, however favourably predisposed to the
Polish cause?
Within this vast complexus of events embracing the
political life of a people of twenty million souls, I shall
select some distinctive problems in order to deal with them
in a slightly more detailed fashion. Before our eyes, at
all these parts of the arena of politics, the tragedy of the
nation will unveil itself.
Compelled to fling themselves into the combat, the
Polish people have endured and will still endure. Adver
sity has only doubled the measure of their endurance.
They are like Antaeus, who, when he had reached his
mother earth, sprang up again stronger than ever. Their
enemies have evicted them from their estates, but they
still maintain themselves within their ancient boundaries,

/

4 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
They have become thrifty and far-seeing ; not having suf
ficient money to contend against an antagonist so strong
as the State of Bismarck and William II, they have set sail
for the New World. They have spread themselves over
both hemispheres, only to send back from their new lands
sufficient money to render their own kith and kin better
equipped by the acquisition of the technical methods
of their oppressors.
Their enemies have declared war against their language
and their faith. But they still remain faithful to the
Church of their fathers, and never a day passes but they
murmur prayers in the language which the Polish mother
croons in the nursery over her little child. They learn to
read and think accurately in this national tongue. They
become citizens in the untranslatable sense of the Polish
word " obywatel" a word which sums up the affection, the
duty, the love that is ready to endure every hardship, of
citizens of the Polish Commonwealth.
How many of these citizens were there when the Polish
ship of State foundered on the rocks? A mere handful,
a few thousands ! In their hour of supreme anguish the
patriots of that day — Kollontay, Potocki, Kosciuszko —
vowed to keep together. They cried out, "Never give in."
After a hundred years of endeavour the Polish people, a
people abreast of the age like other Western nations, can
reply to this impassioned call, " We never will give in."
You know the problems I want to consider with you.
Many times in the reviews and in the papers of specialists
friendly writers have put them forcibly before you. I can
plunge at once in medias res, to tell you how the Polish
peasant saves his land in Posen, how he administers a
State in Galicia, and how he succeeds in retaining his
Polish education in Bussian Poland.
On the 15th May 1815 Frederick William III addressed
the following appeal to the people of the Grand Duchy of
Posen : —
You have become part of the monarchy and you are under
no obligation to forswear your nationality. You will receive a

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 5
provincial constitution. Your religion will be respected. Your
personal liberties and your property will be placed under the
protection of the law. You will be able to speak your native
language on all public occasions as freely as you make use of
German. Public offices in the Grand Duchy will be open to
every Pole of the requisite ability.

The history of Prussian Poland during the whole century
since that date is the most convincing evidence of the
fashion in which these promises have been fulfilled.
The Prussians began by giving to the country a former
lieutenant of the Polish king, Prince Badziwill. Then
came Flotwell on the scene with a complete scheme of
Germanization. He even founded churches to popularize
the use of the German language, and he bought Polish
estates in order to sell them again to Germans.
In 1848, under the influence of the French Bevolution
of that year, there broke out in Posen a great movement
of protest. The Poles asked only for the fulfilment of
the promises of 1815. Their demands were drowned in
blood. It was then that there was revealed the implacable wrath
of the Iron Chancellor. In the month of March 1848
the King received with uncovered head a Polish deputation
of political prisoners liberated by the people of Berlin,
and promised to see that the question of the reorganiza
tion of Posen received attention from his advisers. In
the opinion of Bismarck, who was then an unknown
hobereau of Pomerania, the politics of the King were
marked by the most regrettable quixotism that a State
had ever manifested for its own ruin. In his Recollections
may be read the words : " The necessity of beginning to
fight with the Eoman Catholic Church — the Kulturkampf
— was imposed on me from consideration of the problem
of Poland." The surest way of Germanizing Poland, so
the Prussians calculated, was to forbid in her schools
the use of that mother-tongue by which her spirit was
manifested and preserved. He who wins the schools wins
the youth, and he who wins the youth is master of the
future.

6 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
The introduction of German teachers into the Polish
schools of Posen was a blow against Borne, but it was
also a blow against Poland. In 1873 it was decided that
German only should be spoken in the schools — with this
exception, that religious instruction need only be given
in that tongue to pupils who were sufficiently advanced
to speak German freely. Yet once the principle was
admitted, it received an interpretation which practically
made the use of German obligatory in religious instruc
tion. The child was compelled to pray in German. The
child protested. The parents joined in the protest. The
famous Polish novelist, M. Ladislas Eeymont, has depicted
the sorrows of Polish children in a Prussian school.
The teacher at the opening of the school desires to
compel his pupils to say their prayers in German. Ten
times he repeats the words " Our Father, which art in
heaven," and ten times not the faintest echo of a child's
voice reverberates through the room. After a while the
big Prussian gets exasperated at an obstinacy which yields
neither to his direct menace nor to the remembrance of
his punishment of the day before. Once again he pre
pares to punish the young rebels. He is red with rage
and boiling over with wrath.
The children, however, are in no way intimidated.
They answer boldly when their names are called, with an
exultation that becomes almost joyous, murmuring under
their breath in Polish that Lord's Prayer which they had
refused to repeat in the tongue of the enemy. Finally
the teacher, overcome by his pupils' heroism and his own
wrath, bids them return to their places and remain seated.
Panting with fatigue, he sinks back again on his seat
and angrily he scans the stubborn faces of the children.
Some still show marks of the punishment which they have
received. But before he has quite recovered, a child of
seven or eight years on one of the farther benches, a little
girl with rosy lips and eyes blue as the dome of heaven,
steps up to the master with timorous gravity, puts out first
one and then the other of her little hands, and murmurs
faintly, almost with a sob, " Please, sir, you haven't beaten
me yet."

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 7
Here is the description of a French writer, Dr. Nicaise :
In Posen can be seen children weeping and crying,
beaten and bruised by their German teachers. The mothers
are full of sorrow when their dear ones come home from school
marked by the cane and covered with blood. The children
protested against the German teaching. They ceased to
attend the schools. The State cherished the design of
bringing them back again by force. They were kicked and
pinched. Their masters applied the whip, the cane, and the
stick. They tried to overcome resistance by all these com
pulsory methods. To these even others were added. The
children were sent to reformatories. The students were
restricted or forbidden the advantages of special courses of
training.
But all these methods were of no avail. Dr. Nicaise
tells us how in one village the son of a poor gardener,
having received from his teacher forty strokes of the cane,
was so badly wounded and bruised that he could hardly
creep home. That very same evening the village squire,
seeing a light in a grange which belonged to him, and
fearing danger from fire, went out in the dusk to see what
was the matter. Arriving at the door he heard the voices
of children, and on entering he recognized some little ones
of the village who were singing the historic songs of their
own Polish lands. Amongst them the gardener's little son,
who had been so badly treated that ihe could not sit, was
leaning against the wall and leading the singing. " When,"
asks the French writer who gives the description, " will the
men who govern a country comprehend that you can do
nothing against the power of the Idea?"
Article 12 of the Law of Associations is the last of this
series of attempts to suppress the Polish language. Where-
ever in any district, so this law enacts, the Germans form
more than 40 per cent, of the whole population, all the
proceedings in any public gathering must be conducted in
German. Even when such public gatherings were held
in the capital city of Posen itself, it was henceforth
criminal to use the Polish tongue.
This educational conflict was the means of stimulating

8 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
and organizing the great mass of the peasants who had
hitherto been careless of their material interests. The
State accordingly attacked them on this side as well.
To keep well under control the national sentiment of
Germany and Prussia, it was necessary for Bismarck and
his successors to be able to point out some permanent
national peril to the Fatherland. Alsatians, Danes, and
Poles, they must all be frightened into submission. On
one occasion the Government compelled all the Poles who
were not Prussian subjects — both Prussians and Austrians
— to leave certain lands immediately. Several thousands
of Poles, including families established for many years in
Posen, were compelled to give up their ancient homes.
At another time a high official, called Von Tiedemann,
addressed a report to Bismarck, in which he contended
that the Prussian Government might profit from the
deplorable condition of Polish landed estates. He asked
10,000,000 marks for the purchase of properties. " The
State," wrote he, " can divide up these lands and settle
German smallholders on them, and thus ensure a decided
preponderance of German elements in the population."
The State gave him 100,000,000 marks in order, so
Bismarck] wrote, to prevent the German element from
being driven back out of Posen. His agents bought
land suitable for small holdings. They organized settle
ments. They built schools and churches and arranged
some elementary agricultural instruction in the German
tongue. Such a law was evidently meant to take away
all big estates from the control of the Poles, the reason
being that Bismarck was of opinion that the big Polish
landowners were at the head of the National movement.
If only these big estates could be split up the people of
Posen might be completely Germanized. In twenty years
385,000 hectares were bought and a Protestant German
population of 100,000 was established on 12,000 small
holdings. How did the Polish people meet this bitter provocation ?
In a manner worthy of the very highest praise. They
established a perfect network of societies, social, economic
financial, and political. Some united the small proprietors.

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 9
Others grouped their resources through the agency of a
central committee or of a people's bank. Their activities
were diverse, but their action and their aims were one.
Dr. Marcinkowski founded a society, thanks to which
10,000 destitute people were able to qualify as doctors,
engineers, and architects. Jackowski, an old veteran of
1863, dedicated himself entirely to the cause of the
peasants and became an untiring organizer of co-opera
tive establishments. In 1873 there were only eleven
peasant societies in Posen. In 1886 there were 120. In
1905 their number had risen to 300.
Every spring these various societies had a congress.
To this congress each sent the president and another
additional delegate ; and it was summoned during the
same week in which the big landed proprietors held their
annual meeting. So it came about that at this particular
time Posen saw a demonstration of several thousand men
pass along its streets — a result of his policy which Bis
marck certainly did not anticipate. The different in
dustries of Posen had likewise their particular unions.
These felt it their duty to boycott German goods and to
make it impossible for the Germans to continue the sole and
necessary middlemen. Twenty thousand Polish workmen
migrated and invaded the industrial establishments of
the Ehenish Provinces and Westphalia to gather the
price of a little plot of ground. They lived apart and
mingled in no way with the German population. In
Silesia a population of about a million proclaimed them
selves Polish.
The financial organization gave particular power to
this movement of association. The unions were federated
and represented on a central committee by seven delegates.
These proceeded to elect a chairman, who was the real
Finance Minister of the Duchy of Posen. For twenty
years a distinguished clergyman, the Eev. Wawrzyniak
(1849-1910), the son of a peasant, exercised this important
influence. To the attacks of the Prussian Government he
only replied : " Far from us are all thoughts of revenge,
for revenge is only a pagan vice." His perfect tact and
rare cleverness made him victorious over every kind of

10 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
difficulty. Credit banks, co-operative societies for buying
and selling, and smallholders' societies covered the face
of the country. There was a network of banks, one
hundred of them small, twenty intermediate, and seven
big banks, with one great central bank which supplied
the capital necessary for their continuance. After twenty
years the capital of this central bank was raised to three
millions, and the deposits rose from fifteen to one hundred
and seven millions.
The big landed proprietors had also their Agricultural
Union. They were harassed by the Government, and
they established banks and societies to regulate the breaking
up of the land. The Government Commission had indeed
set about its work methodically. It bought lands in such
a position as to hem in the little towns which were the
strongholds of Polish nationalism. But then it received
a check. After 1898 there were no more Polish lands on
the market. The only offers to sell came from German
proprietors. The cause was not far to seek. The speculators of
the Commission had inflated the price of land. A hectare
was worth, in 1886, 586 marks ; in 1901, 801 marks ; and
in 1912, 1,400 marks.
The German then forced his land on the Commission
by threatening, if they refused it, to sell it to the Poles.
In 1907 Prince von Billow deplored in the Prussian Diet
the sad lack of patriotism shown by his fellow-countrymen
in the Duchy of Posen. During twenty years, out of a
total of 385,000 hectares bought by the Colonization Com
mission, no less than 274,546 hectares were sold by Ger
mans and only 110,714 by Poles.
This primitive plan had, in fact, failed, and other more
forcible methods were accordingly attempted. In 1908 the
Poles were forbidden to build upon the land of which they
became possessors. Then the Government proceeded to
another extreme measure — the Law of Expropriation.
The Union of the Eastern Marshes (founded by three
landed proprietors : Hannemann, Kenneman, and Tiede-
mann, who were also financiers) comprised 429 branches
and a total membership of 50,000, and it always manifested.

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 11
very great activity. It loudly called on the Government to
elaborate a law of expropriation. " We shall only be the
masters," declared Tiedemann, with massive simplicity,
" when we become the owners of the soil."
Prince Billow, then Chancellor, spoke as follows : —
Do not let us make any mistake. The question is whether
our eastern frontier shall be German or Polish. The Polish
agitators have formed a State within a State. Can we con
sent to lose two provinces, of which one lies not far off
from Berlin ? We cannot, and that is why we are obliged
to expropriate the Poles. It is simply a measure of legitimate
self-defence. . . Our proposals are not really contrary to the
constitution. According to Article 4 all the citizens of Prussia
are equal before the law, but the Poles are rebels in the eyes of
the law. . . . Article 9 lays down that the State must protect
property, but how can it protect property if it cannot protect
itself ?
The Law of Expropriation was passed in February 1908.
It was applied for the first time in the month of March
1913. In 1913 the Diet voted 230 millions extra money
for expenses incidental to its application.

Politics in Galicia
The Empress Maria Theresa and the Emperor Joseph II
established in Galicia a regime of Germanization and of
colonization. They established in the country 3,000 German
and Protestant families. The idea underlying the methods
of the Vienna bureaucracy was divide et impera. Isolate
as far as possible the different social classes. The officials
were German or Czech. German was the language used
in administration, the schools, the courts of law, and the
University of Lwow. The Diet of Lwow met only when
the Austrian Government wanted funds or desired fresh
recruits for the Army, and when it did meet, its discussions
did not last longer than a single day.
Life was sad and mournful. Free speech rendered a
citizen liable to prosecution. Any one a little different
from the ordinary became a marked man. Yet there was

12 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
no lack of patriots who consented thus to be marked. And
what was most remarkable of all, there were amongst them
some Austrians, the sons of the enemy, who had been
assimilated by that power which the Poles have always had
of infecting with their own spirit the most alien elements.
The poet Wincenty Pol, son of a German official, the great
national historian Szaynocha, the son of a Tcheque official,
Count Fredro, and several others likeminded had also ex
perience of the " sweet consolation "of an Austrian prison.
In 1843 there was discovered a secret organization, of
which Smolka and Ziemialkowski were the chiefs. Both
were condemned to death and then pardoned. The one
later on became . . . Life President of the Parliament of
Vienna, the other Austrian Minister for Galicia.
"Most nations," once said a French thinker, "have
entered the land of political freedom through the narrow
gate of defeat." They have sought compensation in internal
reform for their failure in the hour of battle. They
have tried to make liberty avenge misfortune. That
was at any rate the case with Austria. It was only in
the hard school of adversity, after having lost her Italian
provinces and having submitted to defeat in the war with
Prussia in 1866, that the monarchy of the Habsburgs
learned to appreciate the political value of equity and
moderation and respect for the spirit of nationality.
Especially after Sadowa Austria understood that only by
trusting to her people could she escape a final catastrophe :
and it was further brought home to her that she could
only obtain that trust if she showed respect for their
natural rights.
In 1866 a Pole was appointed the Emperor's lieu
tenant in Galicia. Teaching was given in Polish. The
same language, along with Euthenian, was used in the
Courts of Law. Lwow received many Euthenian chairs
and the whole teaching was dominated by the Poles. In
1873 there was founded at Cracow an Academy of Sciences
and of Letters. Other societies were soon established,
scientific, literary, and philosophical. An Academy of
Fine Arts owes its inception to the admirable work of
Jan Mateyko. The Exhibition held at Lwow in 1894

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 13
was held to commemorate the insurrection of Kosciuszko,
and it was at the same time a notable Polish demonstration
— the solemn act of a people affirming its indestructible
vitality in the face of the whole world. At the same
time the exhibition was a proof of the benefits and the
progress which Galicia had achieved as the result of
her reconquered liberty. Her land and economic resources
had been exploited. Her educational activities had in
creased. In twenty-five years she had seen 6,000 kilo
metres of new roads and 2,500 kilometres of railways.
The number of elementary schools had increased by
1,450. The number of pupils in the secondary schools
mounted from 8,000 to 14,000.
In 1908-9, according to the official record of the National
Council of Education, Galicia possessed 105 secondary
schools with 41,548 pupils. She also possessed 7 industrial
schools. Galicia possessed in 1912, 53 savings banks with
a reserve capital of 16 million francs, and deposit funds
amounting to 336 million crowns. In the schools as well
special savings banks were organized by the teachers. In
1873 there were sixteen Schulze-Delizsch Societies of
mutual credit; whereas in 1912 this number had risen
to 238 with 350,000 members, 130 million crowns of
deposits. Eeiffeisen banks were founded in 1912 to the
number of 1,334. Connected with them were 27 dairy
men's societies and 8 organizations for selling peat, 330,000
members were on the books of the banks and they dis
pensed funds amounting to 3 millions. At the time the
Union of Co-operative Societies counted 334 branches,
362,368 members, and dispensed a capital of 53 million
crowns. For a long time Galicia was governed by the Con
servative Party, which chiefly represented the big landed
proprietors. They had gained this commanding influence
because of their loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty. They
had other advantages as well. Since 1867 there have
been about twenty Polish Ministers at Vienna, and in the
Foreign Office at one particular time there were about
fifty Polish officials.
Bismarck said on one occasion, in a contemptuous tone,

14 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
"Poland only consists of nobles and clergy." He would
not presume — even this man who could presume more
than most — to repeat such a sentiment nowadays. Bather
he would now be obliged to agree with a recent utterance
of a Prussian investigator, Professor Bernhardt of Berlin,
who called the Prussian provinces " the peasant republic
of Posen." Nor could Bismarck's taunt be made applicable to the
Galicia of to-day. Since the electoral reforms of 1907,
one has only to attend a meeting of the Polish Parlia
mentary Club at Vienna to say, with only the slightest
spice of exaggeration, " Poland is everything except only
nobles and clergy." It is true that when the class
system was the rule in Austria, a deputy of the first
class (the big proprietors) represented 110 electors at
Vienna, a deputy of the second class (the Chamber of
Commerce) 30 electors, a town deputy 3,139 electors, a
country deputy 20,000 electors, and a deputy elected by
universal suffrage 86,000 electors.
But from the time when the people began to realize
their rights, they never ceased to demand universal
suffrage. The struggle went on for about twenty years,
and developed by successive stages of piecemeal reform
to the sweeping suffrage enactment of 1907. At the same
time, however, the Euthenian problem became more
intricate and pressing. Adroit agents took it under
their charge, and revived with all the energy they
had at their command the old maxim of Metternich,
"Divide et impera." In the hands of these triflers the
question proved very suitable to envenom for some time the
political life of the country. Foreign observers felt that
the atmosphere was surcharged with electricity. In 386
communes of Euthenia agricultural strikes suddenly broke
out in 1902, and led in some cases even to sanguinary
reprisals. In the South of France and in Italy there were
similar strikes that same year, but those in Galicia had
a political aspect as well. The Norwegian writer Bjornson,
who knew little of Poland and had certainly never visited
Galicia, published on this subject a letter in German
which had a very wide circulation. Education only made

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 15
deeper the lines of cleavage. Out of 2,739 elementary
Polish schools there were, in 1908-9, no less than 269
which were Euthenian. The Euthenians besides have
five secondary schools and several professional chairs at
the University of Lwow. Electoral reform became every
day more urgent. It was just about to be carried into
practice when the war broke out.
Politics in Eussian Poland
Let us now, however, turn our thoughts to Eussian
Poland. Sad were the years that followed 1863. In
Lithuania, Mouravyeff made a special levy on all the
Polish landowners. Later on the levy was made a per
manent tax (10 per cent, on income) and was called the
tax payable by the Polish proprietors. Poles were for
bidden to acquire any fresh property by way of purchase.
No Pole could hold any important public office. They
could not even be employed as clerks in the Agricultural
Bank of Kieff. In 1894, the Minister of Communications
traced a line of demarcation from the Gulf of Finland to
the Black Sea by Petersburg, Pskow, Dynaburg, Smolensk,
and the Dnieper. To the west of this line the rule was
that no Catholic could be employed ! The Polish tongue
was forbidden in Courts of Law. At Wilno it was not
allowed in public meetings, in churches, public places, or
public entertainments, in restaurants or in shops. Teachers
could not employ it, chemists dared not use it in their
prescriptions. Merchants could not speak in it ^vhen
addressing their customers or their clerks. Polish books
must not be conspicuous on the shelves of public
libraries. Catholic churches were turned into shrines of the
Orthodox faith. New churches could not be built, and
old ones must not be restored. The bell could not be
rung. The Host could not be carried in procession.
Priests could not distribute medals or crosses. The efforts
to introduce the Eussian language into the Catholic
churches were multiplied. The Government of Wilno
proposed in 1885 to limit by 20 or 30 per cent, the number

i6 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
of Polish nobles who might gain access to the Catholic
seminaries. The inspectors who presided at the examina
tions of the candidates were instructed to refuse all those
who had distinguished themselves by their intelligence
and grasp. "It is not in the interest of the Eussian
Government," wrote the Minister of the Interior, "to
help in raising the level of the Catholic priests. The
more they are raised in intelligence, the more they will
be qualified to contend successfully against the priests of
the Orthodox faith." " Pray explain to Mgr. Hryniewiecki,"
wrote the same Minister in 1884 to the Governor- General
of Wilno, " that it is not the Government, as he imagines,
that must give way to the behests of a foreign faith,
which, like that of the Eomish Church, is only tolerated
in the Eussian Empire. Quite the contrary. It is the
teachings of the faith that must adapt themselves to the
exigencies of our laws, since their only justification is
their conformity to our enactments."
One evening in the month of November 1894 an anxious
crowd flocked into the church of Kroze (government of
Kovno). The story had been noised abroad that its closing
was contemplated, and the people hurried there to prevent
this. While they were singing a band of Cossacks burst
into the sacred building, and pitilessly struck every un
fortunate person who happened to stand in their way. They
treated with contumely the crosses and the images of the
saints". They eventually carried out of the bloodstained
temple the wounded and the dead. The women and
children were left untouched in the church, but the next
day they were flogged by order of General Klingenberg,
the Governor of Kovno.
After the Church, the school. In 1868 the Polish
language was removed from the curricula of the secondary
schools and from higher education generally. The Uni
versity of Warsaw was employed as an instrument of
denationalization. Eussian was henceforth to be the sole
language of education in primary schools. M. Witte, the
Director of Education in the kingdom, who sought with
intense zeal the denationalization of Poland, made the
following significant statement on his arrival at Warsaw:

Political life ltf Poland 17
"In three years you will hear the Polish mothers speaking
Eussian to their children." He forced the Catholic clergy
from the schools and put in their place teachers of the
Orthodox faith. Yet the Polish mothers have never ceased
to speak Polish to their children.
In fact, the politics of implacable hate only produced one
result : the schools were forsaken by the Polish population.
That did not mean, however, that there were no means of
spreading education among the peasants and the workmen.
But it engendered a hatred of Eussia which, as was written
fifteen years ago by the French Professor Ch. Dupuis, is
" the blended result of all those evil persecutions inflicted
on the very people, amongst whom, thirty years ago, the
bureaucrats of Petersburg had dreamed of finding their
support." The predictions of M. Witte have not been realized, and
his successor, the famous M. Apouchtine, announced, in
taking up his office, that in ten years the Polish nurses would
rock their infants to sleep with Eussian lullabies. Polish
was again strictly forbidden at the schools. Inspectors
paraded the corridors, in silent shoes, to take unawares a,ny
child that might speak Polish after the lesson or in the
playground. The French historian, M. E. Denis, remarks in
his valuable work on Bohemia that, though it is perhaps a
misfortune to be born a Pole, it has not yet become a crime.
M. Apouchtine did not share this opinion of the eminent
French historian. To him it was a crime to speak Polish,
a crime to read a Polish book, a crime even to collect a few
friends at your private residence. Police officers made
domiciliary visits, and showed great satisfaction when they
laid hold of a small volume of Polish history or literature,
a volume of Mickiewicz or of Slowacki. Young people who
were guilty of the crime of harbouring books like these were
visited with most serious penalties.
In the rural elementary schools books printed in
Eussian characters were used for teaching the Catechism.
The peasant had no wish to frequent such a school.
"What good does it do me?" he asked. "At the end
of three years my child cannot read my service book
which is written in Polish."

is Political life in Poland
What have been the final results of this educational
policy? The number of illiterates was 75 per cent, in
the country and 60 per cent, in Warsaw. Governor
Podgorodnikoff said, in an official report of 1904, that
nobody could expect efficient work from an elementary
school since the Catholic religion was taught there by
teachers of the Greek Church, who had no practical
acquaintance with its tenets. In another official report
of Prince Imeretynski, addressed to the Emperor Nicholas
II in January 1898, these words can be found : " The
schools are less and less numerously attended. There is
nothing astonishing in the fact. In 1882 there were
127,000 pupils, in 1892 124,000." The Prince further
emphasized his opinion by citing a secret report of his
predecessor, General Hourko:1 "At school the Polish
child is treated in a hostile spirit. It is there a reproach
to be a Pole and an offence to cherish patriotic feelings.
His religion even is despised. His mother-tongue is
looked upon as the least desirable of languages. When
he gets home at night he tells his parents how he is
treated and how the Eussian child enjoys a preferential
position. . . . This mode of administration can have
only one consequence. The Polish child learns from his
earliest youth to hate all the Eussian habits of mind which
have inflicted so much injury on himself and caused him
such agony and bitter tears."
How the Poles met Peesecution
What could Polish public opinion do in the face of this
educational policy ? Between 1856 and 1862, when the
persecution grew somewhat weaker, the Polish leaders,
from funds privately provided, founded 600 schools.
Libraries, creches, benefit clubs, and continuation classes,
were all organized and opened. After 1863 all this had
to be done without the cognizance of the authorities.
Yet an itinerant university was brought into being and
the most eminent Polish professors lectured on art and
1 In some strange fashion this report has been procured and published
in London.

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 19
the sciences. That was the door by which the younger
generation of the Poles entered the halls of learning.
When the Eusso-Japanese War supervened, followed as
it was by a significant revolution (1904-1906), something
more like the air of freedom again suffused the land.
The itinerant university became a free seat of learning.
The materials were already there — professors and pupils.
In spite of a law forbidding private teaching under pain
of imprisonment and a fine of £50, elementary teaching
continued to be given to the people. Five thousand
Warsaw children, according to some statistics of 1903,
were in this fashion taught to read and to write. For a
long time there have been no more illiterates in our
country of Poland.
At the first opportunity given in 1906, the National
Education Society was founded, and, though barely toler
ated by the Government, it yet covered the whole country
during the first twelve months of its existence. 141
schools, 317 creches, 505 libraries and lecture halls were
connected with it. There were 63,000 children in these
schools, 14,000 little ones in the creches and 400,000
people took advantage of the libraries. After having been
in existence for a year and a half all the work was brought
to an end. The officials of the Warsaw- Vienna Eailway
organized in 1907 their own mutual society for education,
with an annual expenditure of £6,000. 2,752 children
attended 107 elementary schools in connection with this
beneficent work. There were 107 teachers, male and
female, while 111 students went on to a continuation
course of secondary instruction.
In this way the Poles secured their active participation
in the achievements of Western civilization. In every
way and by every kind of device they founded institutions
of public utility for the study of social questions. No one
will ever know what time and labour, how much money
and how many clever devices, were needed to make these
societies possible in face of the authorities.
Already in 1803 Warsaw could boast of a Society of
the Friends of Science, the precursor of a regular Academy
of Science. From 1821 it possessed a School of Medicine.

20 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
The Academy was closed in 1832, and was only reopened
in 1906. In the latter year it seemed to awake from a
long sleep — a sleep that had lasted three-quarters of a
century. Already in 1841 a cry was raised for Land Banks
in the towns, but it needed thirty long years of agitation
to make them an accomplished fact. It was the Crimean
War which enlightened administrative despots and con
founded to some extent the schemes of the Eussian
bureaucrats. Then the Poles began to breathe a little
more freely. New institutions came into being. Amongst
these were the Agricultural Society (1857) and the Society
for the Study of the Fine Arts. Land Banks were
allowed in 1870 for Warsaw, in 1873 for Lodz, in
1885 for Kalisz and in 1898 for Eadom. In 1870 the
Musical Society was formed, in 1875 a Museum of
Arts and Crafts, in 1883 a Society for the Belief of Men
of Science and Letters. During the governorship of
Hourko it was not possible to open a People's Bank, the
reason being, according to the Governor of Plotzk, that
" such a bank would act as a centre or organization for
movements of insurrection."
In the country the families of the lords of the manors
look upon it as their duty to teach their labourers just
as if they were young pupils. A magazine Polak {The
Pole) was published at Cracow and conveyed secretly
all over the kingdom. The magazine exercised a
splendid influence, and was the cause which chiefly led to
the awakening of national sentiment among the peasants.
The rural officials were troubled. Soon the Government,
too, began to publish a magazine in Polish which they
called Instruction. The mayors got the order to become
subscribers. Every week they distributed copies of the
review to the officials of every village. To make it
eertain that the recipient did not put it into the waste-
paper basket, it was necessary to show the last number
before one could receive its successor. Nevertheless it
was brought back without having been read or even cut.
The authorities made trouble, but they recoiled before
the unanswerable logic of facts. " The peasants will
destroy the magazine if they are compelled to read it,

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 21
and they will not hesitate to go to gaol for having thus
destroyed it. It will be as well in such circumstances
to give up the idea of giving them the paper." Very
soon after this sage advice was given the magazine
Instruction disappeared.
The men who circulated such papers as Polak tried
also to organize the peasants. They were sent to Siberia
for their pains. How many heroes could be found in
those secret societies, men of superior mind who learned
patience through suffering! It was the same in the
working-class movement.
Poland to-day is a country completely in the main
current of progress. It has its industry and its working-
class. It has seen socialism and the labour movement
flourish in its midst. Prince Imeretynski said, in the
report which has already been cited, that the Polish
workman has no resemblance to his Eussian compeer.
His affinities are all with the workmen of the West.
This report dates from 1898 and the Socialist movement
in Poland dates from 1877. In 1881 fifty-two socialists
were sentenced to deportation. In 1887 the number had
risen to 120. In 1888 there was a strike at Zyrardow,
involving 6,000 workmen, and the soldiers fired on the
crowd. In 1886 four socialists were sentenced to death.
The work, however, still went on. Polish socialist publi
cations appeared at Geneva and Paris. In 1892 the
Polish Socialist Party (the P.P.S.) was founded at Paris.
It put in the forefront of its programme the question
of the independence of Poland, and it insisted on the fact
that this was a question of international importance. Two
years later, however, there was founded the Social Demo
cratic Party, which substituted for the cry of an indepen
dent Poland the agitation for a constitution common to
the whole Eussian Empire. The Polish workmen saw
what was the upshot of this in 1905-6. As has been
shown above, this workman of the towns is the last result
of social evolution, and he, like all the other classes which
have disappeared before him, bishop and monk, noble
and peasant, has used up the best of his energies in the
service of his country.

22 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
The year 1905 was in Eussia a year of strenuous political
life. It was then that the Empire became, according
to the Almanack of Gotha, a "constitutional" monarchy
under an autocratic Czar. As a " constitutional " mon
archy it was presented, in an access of enthusiasm, with
a legislative assembly called the Duma. This Duma was
the merest embryo of a Parliament. No doubt it was
hoped that the embryo might develop normally until at
length it might evolve into a Parliament of the Western
type. All such hopes were doomed to disappointment.
The revolutionary movement was suppressed. A coup
d'dtat suppressed the last vestiges of liberty. A fancy
franchise was the only result of this immature movement
which promised so well.
Let the reader imagine what is involved in this fancy
franchise ! The members of the Duma are elected in
several stages by different electoral colleges. To take
dart in the voting of a college a man must belong to
a certain class or possess a certain property quali
fication. The members elected for a given district
must themselves live in their own district. Even the
people chosen to elect them must also reside in the
district. This is directly opposed to the usual practice
in Western politics, and prevents the would-be member
of parliament from presenting himself in the constitu
ency in which he has the most favourable chances of
election. The electors who enjoy a property qualification can
authorize others to act and vote on their behalf. This
rather unusual privilege was bestowed on them to lessen
the number of abstentions amongst such an influential
class. The property vote must never be thrown away.
The landed proprietor helps to defend the vested interests,
and he must not be allowed to efface himself. But that
is not all. Women and soldiers on service have also
the right to delegate their property qualification, even
though they themselves might not have the privilege of
voting. The same law refuses them a privilege and then
allows them to bestow the forbidden privilege on their
party. The system of election introduced in 1906 did

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 23
not give to the Government the Duma they desired, so
they began by altering the composition of the electorate
by strained interpretations of the law. Afterwards came the
dramatic development of 3rd June 1907. The Government
found a pretext for its action in a conspiracy just dis
covered, a conspiracy in which the Socialist Left were said
to have been involved. M. Stolypin asked that fifty-five
deputies should be expelled. The Moderates of the Centre,
though they had no sympathy with those who were
threatened, deemed such a course foreign to the dignity
©f a legislative assembly — not to mention that it was a
violation of all parliamentary usage. The Duma accord
ingly appointed a commission to examine the validity
of the accusations brought against its fifty-five members.
M. Stolypin waited neither for the discussion nor for the
report of the commission. The next day the members
of the Duma, returning to take up their duties, found the
doors closed, and the way to the Chamber guarded by
hbrdes of Cossacks. In the night the accused deputies
had been arrested by the police.
The Kingdom of Poland had 36 representatives in the
first and second Duma, without counting the Poles (15)
elected by the Province of Lithuania and the five elected
by Little Eussia. The law of 1907 reduced these to 14
representatives of the Kingdom. Two were to be chosen
exclusively by the Eussian inhabitants. Poland, by a
single stroke of the pen, was deprived of two-thirds of
its representatives. In the Eussian province of the Empire
there is one deputy for every 200,000 or 250,000 souls,
but in Poland the proportion works out as one to 800,000
or 900,000. " The Poles," says M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, " were
" were all the less prepared for such treatment because in
the two first Dumas their representatives had shown
themselves the most sagacious— one may even go the
length of saying the most Conservative — of all the deputies
assembled at the Taurida Palace. So much was this the
case, that, in a notorious article in the Courier Europien,
Bjornson even accuses them of being secretly in the service
of the Eussian Government. There are, of course, Badi-

24 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
cals, Progressives, Socialists and Eevolutionaries in Poland,
as in all other countries, but in this case they had boycotted
the elections and the elected persons were loyalist and
Catholic Poles, enemies of revolution and of all revolu
tionary designs.
"These men were content to secure the recognition of
their national rights by legal methods and sagacious
persuasion of the Government and their fellow-deputies
in the assembly of the Empire. Almost alone in the
first Duma they were opposed to the new agrarian laws
passed in the interests of the moujiks, while in the second
Duma they acted with the parties of the Centre. Thanks
to their entente with the Moderates, the budget was taken
seriously and its passage became absolutely certain. Most
excellent of all, they made the announcement, when con
ceding to the Government all the soldiers they asked
for, that they did this because they believed in a strong
Empire, which could defend and protect by its power all
its peoples. In this second Duma, these Poles (23rd April
1907) laid on the table a proposal for the autonomy of
their country. This was not even considered. Since
3rd June 1907 the position of the Polish representatives
in the Duma has remained a most difficult one. Deprived
of some of their representatives, numerically negligible,
they spend their energies in a conflict with that reactionary
majority which repays their antagonism with an irre
concilable hatred."
"The action of a Eussian Government" — let us now
consider the words of a moderate Frenchman, the corre
spondent of the Figaro, M. Bene Marchand — "remains
perfectly incomprehensible, and we can only explain it
by supposing that those in authority are resolved, through
a feeling of mere perversity, to give satisfaction to the
narrowest demands of a superficial nationalism."
In April 1905 an imperial rescript bestowed religious
liberty on the Empire of Eussia. To use again the words
of M. Leroy-Beaulieu, " This was the sole reform which
could come by administrative order. Had it been gene
rously and sincerely offered, it would have been almost
sufficient to recreate a new out of the old Eussia. The

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 25
first to benefit by it were the Eoman Catholics, especially
the Uniates, or Catholics with a Greek ritual. Of all the
subjects of the Czar, they had suffered most from this
regime of religious Eussification. Their cult had been
removed from the list of those suffered in the Empire.
A diocese had been suppressed by rescript under Alex
ander II, their churches had been handed over to the
Orthodox clergy, and they and their families lived under
the constant suspicion and surveillance of the Church,
the State and the administration. The police took care
that they should receive neither sacrament nor succour
from the Catholic priests. If they offered any resistance,
they were punished in the nineteenth century by the same
methods as Catholic France once used to suppress the
Huguenots. Fines, flogging, imprisonment, separation of
families, confiscations, deportations — the whole parapher
nalia of the past was in evidence under the eye of the
Grand Inquisitor, Pobedonostseff.
"Bather than receive the sacraments from hands of
priests whom they deemed schismatics, a great number
of the peasants ceased to avail themselves of the conso
lations of the Church. They preferred concubinage to a
marriage hallowed by such heretical sanctities. Others
hastily crossed the forests of the frontier in the dead of
night to get secretly married by a Galician priest. But
this did not prevent their children from being stigmatized
as illegitimate in the Eussian law. If the police only
discovered a former Uniate on his knees in a Catholic
church, or even in conversation with a priest of the
same faith, they at once got orders that the church
should be closed and the priest deported." Scenes like
this have been portrayed in an admirable book, The Apostle
of the Knout in Poland, by the famous Polish novelist
M. Ladislas Eeymont. " This is a poignant book,"
observes a well-known French litterateur, M. Gabriel
Sarazin, " and it goes straight to the heart. You cannot
read it without being moved through and through. It
is a book of horror and sublimity which makes us redden
and pale by turns. After reading it we weep because
humanity has given birth and being to some of the

26 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
monsters who fill its pages. Yet all the same it revives
and exalts us. It reveals to us the truth that in our own
days, in the midst of that humanity which has become
partly degenerate, examples are to be found of moral
beauty and fortitude of spirit which have not even been
surpassed during the heroic and consecrated epochs of
history." Let us borrow from this book of M. Eeymont
one of its tragic pages : —
In the village of Hrudy in 1876 an order was given to take
by force from the village church the children who had not been
baptized. To deliver their loved ones from sacrilege, the
mothers carried them into a neighbouring forest and remained
there three whole weeks. The soldiers grew tired of waiting
their return and eventually left the village. Then the lost ones
returned from the forest, bent almost to the ground, leaning on
sticks, well-nigh naked, fleshless like living skeletons ; yet
nevertheless radiant like the sun and the springtime, and
victorious with the power of life itself.
A young peasant from the village of Klodno was imprisoned,
beaten, and tortured because he refused to have baptized at the
Orthodox church a boy who had been recently born to him. He
was obstinate in his resistance. " I am a Pole and a Catholic,"
were the only words that escaped his lips. They inflicted fines
on him, and he could not pay. They took all that he possessed,
even the cow that supplied the sole nutriment of his household.
He was literally stripped of the very clothes he wore — that poor
miserable — and he had only a few rags to cover his legs. He
passed the night in the porch of the church, his arms crossed,
weeping bitterly; but he would not falter nor yield. A few
days before Christmas the neighbours told him his child was
being removed to be confirmed at the Russian church. On
hearing this his spirits appeared to revive. He darted through
the village, and he visited the sick to bind up their wounds and
comfort them with the consolations of their faith. When he
met some special friend, he asked pardon for any evil he had
ever done him.
But behold, a glancing glare in the skies ! The grange of
our peasant is in flames, and the sound of a hymn comes from
the very centre of the blazing building! It comes from the
martyr who is on his knees in prayer in the very midst of the
fire which he himself has kindled — that fire which is swallow
ing him and his. Around the building the villagers are reciting
the prayer for the dying, and then, all at once, the grange

Political life in poLanD 27
vanishes from sight. Only from the very heart of the furnace
there is carried a last and terrible cry !
Then the persecution which began with the Uniates
ultimately was extended to the Eoman Catholics as well.
" One can understand," continues M. Leroy-Beaulieu,
" how the Uniates felt when the news came to their village
that henceforth they might freely conform to the ordi
nances of their faith. A certain number at once left the
official church to go to that of the Eoman Catholics,
because the rescript of the Czar did not go the length of
restoring to them the use of their old fanes. Yet they
could not submit themselves to the Eoman Catholic
supremacy without ceasing to use their old Greek liturgy.
In these circumstances Eulogius, the Orthodox Bishop
of Lublin and a member of the Duma, suggested that a
new province should be made of the eastern part of the
two governments of Lublin and Siedlce. M. Stolypin
approved of the idea. It was a new partition of Poland,
and the law finally effecting it was passed on 6th July 1912,
after a four-year period of agitation. This new govern
ment of Chelm still retained the Code Napoleon, the civil
law of Eussian Poland, but it was part of the legal
circuit of Kieff, where a Eussian Court of Appeal had to
interpret the Franco-Polish civil code."

Poland a Moeal Peesonality
It is now perfectly plain from this extended research
that all the partitions of Poland have made no difference
in her moral personality. Never was the conscience of the
nation so keen as in the hundred and fifty years after she
had been partitioned by her foes. " The soul of Poland,"
said the eminent professor of Nancy, M. Bertrand Auerbach,
" has mastered that mutilated body, which again it revives
and vivifies." Another well-known French writer once put
it to me in this way: "It is a veritable wonder," said he,
"that you, the Poles, living under three Governments,
whose mutual frontiers are jealously guarded, with three

28 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
different systems of politics and legislation, yet continue
to speak the same undivided Polish tongue."
" Would you like to know why ? " I asked in reply. And
then I told him two simple stories.
One was of a Polish landowner of Posen who happened
to be visiting one of his peasants who was ill. When he
entered the cottage three portraits hung on the walls, those
of Kosciuszko, Leo XIII, and Bismarck.
" Hullo ! " he exclaimed, " Bismarck here ! Do you put
him on the same level with the Holy Father and our
national hero ? "
"Yes, indeed," replied the peasant, "that is the man
who first revealed to me that Poland is my native land." *
The other story was a memory from my own experience.
In 1905, at a banquet of Polish lawyers, one of them, well
known at Wilno for his great ability, was complimented by
the others on the incomparable purity of his Polish speech.
"You admire my language?" he asked of his learned
friends. " I will tell you how it came to me. Every morn
ing, as I opened my window, I beheld the monument of
Mouravyeff, the hangman ! It was that sight which
educated me to believe that the Polish nation is one and
indivisible." I have now tried to recall some poignant pictures of the
life of the three Polands. Any one who has followed me
with attention can easily guess the conclusion at which I
have arrived. The Polish spirit remains one and indivisible
though it runs through the material framework of three
separate and several States.
Everywhere the Poles fight for the same old cause. Only
their methods are different. In Prussian Poland it was the
fight for the land which revealed among the people of Posen
a spirit of unflinching self-sacrifice, joined to illimitable
patience, of which every Pole is justly and entirely proud.
In Galicia the Poles have enjoyed more of the freedom of
political life. At the commencement of the nineteenth
century they were strangled in the tentacles of the Austrian
octopus. It was only after mighty efforts that they extricated
1 M. Dziembowski-Pomian, member of the German Parliament 1908.

POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND 29
themselves and began a new and reinvigorated existence.
They were exploited, in the economic sense, by the richer
Habsburg country, and they had to fight long and in
cessantly in order to preserve their recovered sense of
vitality. It was this continuous conflict that created the
conditions in Galicia which are favourable to the develop
ment of intellectual life, and it was in this way that Polish
science received an ever assured shelter.
Galicia, too, was able successfully to develop under
conditions which protected her from the vagaries of the
public censor. She could express the political thought of
Poland as the thoughts of Alsace have never, except in
France, been expressed during the last forty -four years. In
Eussian Poland the national energy had no rest from the
machinations of the oppressor. But notwithstanding every
kind of hindrance, it has succeeded in expressing itself in a
large number of public institutions.
In foreign lands people often say nowadays, "Poland
is divided; her people do not know what they want."
They impute to our nation all possible kinds of defects.
A well-known French historian once said, " Poland is
not interesting. It is all very interesting when it is per
secuted, but as soon as its affairs begin to mend it simply
becomes commonplace. It is moving in the same direc
tion as Eussia. It oppresses the feeble Euthenians and
Lithuanians." Another authority considers that Poland
is reactionary, and that her methods lack humanity.
What have I to say to all the reproaches?
Is it not well to be candid ? Is it not true that such
defects are found everywhere and at all times? Every
modern society, be it French or British, is brought face
to face with these perplexing problems, the class war, the
conflict of nationalities. I should like it well if my own
people were the best of all, if our upper classes were kinder
and more sympathetic than can elsewhere be found, if
our statesmen were more clear-sighted than all others,
but comparative history soon comes in to deposit my
dreams amid sober realities.
Finally, I should like to leave, as a souvenir, a jewel
Of Polish literature, a little parable taken from a won-

30 POLITICAL LIFE IN POLAND
derful book, dear to past generations as to our own, the
Book of the Pilgrims of Adam Mickiewicz :
A woman had become unconscious and her son called in
the doctors.
They all said, " Choose one of us to take charge of the
case."
The first said, " I would treat this case according to the
method of Brown." But the others replied, " That is a bad
method. The woman might as well remain unconscious for
ever as have the precepts of Brown applied to her."
A second then said, " I will treat her according to the
methods of Haneman." But the others said, " That is a bad
method. She might as well die as be treated according
to the methods of Haneman."
Then the woman's son broke in and said, " Treat her
exactly as you please. But see that at the end you restore
her again to the full use of her faculties."
But it was not to be. None of the doctors would yield
first place to the other.
In grief and desperation, at last the son cried out, " 0 my
mother ! My mother ! " And at the sound of her son's voice
the woman opened her eyes and consciousness returned to
her.
It is by repeating and applying the watchwords of
liberty and progress, of democracy and social justice,
that the sons of Poland hope to wake up to a new life
their oppressed and persecuted Motherland.

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WOKING AND LONDON

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