That is the will of my
mighty and gracious King." Knowing the passion with which the Poles have
hitherto been driven away from their soil and persecuted because of
their language, we learn from this proclamation that the German
Government has felt the necessity of outbidding the Czar.
As far as may be seen, the Czar's manifesto made very little impression
on the intellectual in Russian Poland, who, of course, received it with
much suspicion. The masses in Russian, as in Austrian, Poland have for
some time stood passionately against each other, hurling accusations of
treason to the holy cause of their native country, until a new party has
now been formed which is politically most unripe, but for that very
reason has an enormous extension. Its password is this: "We do not want
to hear of Russia or of Austria; we only want one thing: the Polish
State without guardianship from any side." In other words, we want the
quite impossible. Political oppression for almost one and one-half
centuries brings its own punishment to a people. In such a people
political skill too easily becomes local patriotism, or it remains in
the state of innocence.
Of what use is it to begin singing: _Polonia fara de se_? That Poland
cannot become free by itself is evident to anybody who has any political
idea.
Still I am inclined to say, never mind the forms which the Polish
independence and thirst of liberty are taking: they seem to pass like a
purifying storm through all Polish minds.
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