They have not been able to believe, as I for my part cannot believe,
that the last outcrop of nationalism in Russian Poland is more than a
temporary epidemic.
How could Russian Poles in the long run be unfaithful to the only powers
they have been able to appeal to, the only powers which took an
interest in them? How can they who are fighting for their liberty after
so many years' ill-treatment be willing to seize an opportunity to
ill-treat the only people who (to its misfortune) is in their power, the
only people who have suffered far more and twenty times as long as they
themselves; and the only ones who are too strong to be destroyed through
any ill-treatment? How can the Poles, who were at times ruined as a
State through the treachery of their own men, want to fling out the
accusation of treason against a tribe which has never betrayed itself
and which even in the deepest abasement never betrayed the only Slavic
tribe who in the Middle Ages gave a refuge to its children?
I suppose that the Poles will maintain against this appeal to them that
I, whom the Ruthenians could never bring to make any attack on them, am
now, because of my descent, speaking in favor of a matter, which is very
unpleasant to them. My personal descent has so little influenced my
proceedings and way of thinking that during the whole of my public life
I have been subject to continual attacks in national Jewish periodicals
and newspapers as the man who denied community of descent and supposed
community of faith.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124