In this dawn let the sign of the cross, the symbol of the
sufferings and the resurrection of the people, shine."
How clearly this manifesto, with its surprising love of liberty, its
pious reference to the cross, bore the stamp of having been enforced by
circumstances, and how accustomed one had become to disregard promises
from the Russian Government of full constitutional liberty and the like,
as those given before had not meant very much either in Finland or in
Russia itself. Still the manifesto, as a sign of the time, was well apt
to make an impression on the great masses who had always heard the
authorities stamp as criminal plots, as high treason, what was now
suddenly called from the supreme place "the holy dream of the
forefathers."
The purpose of the proclamation was probably, above all, to prevent a
revolt in Russian Poland the moment hostile troops invaded it. On the
Austrian Poles the manifesto seems to have failed to produce its effect.
As these Poles enjoy full autonomy in Galicia, and for a century have
witnessed the severity and cruelty with which their kinsmen in Russian
Poland have been oppressed, they received the proclamation with loud
vows of faithfulness to the house of Hapsburg; nay, all the _sokol_
societies which in time of peace (keeping a decision in view) had
trained their members in games and the use of arms, placed themselves as
Polish legions at the disposal of the Government against the Russians.
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