TROUBLED POLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2652, 11 January 1905, Page 37

TROUBLED POLAND.

1 AJSTATIONALISM THAT WILL NOT i DIE. IMPOTENT OPPRESSORS. Recent cables point to increasing trouble in Poland — trouble for the three nations that, between them, possess the ancient ■ little kingdom which they do not dare to own. No other country in Europe has had such a chequered history as Poland. What with troubles from within and attack from without, it has been more or less in a state of turmoil for 1000 years, and apparently it is doomed to turmoil for years and years to come. Three times has Poland undergone partitioning at the hands of its generous neighbours, first in 1772, then in 1793, and again in 1795, which division,- rearranged in 1815, gave Russia 220,500 square miles of territory, carrying c population of 16,000,000 ''people; Prussia,, 26,000. square miles, with 3,000,000 people; ai.d Austria, 35,500 square ir-iks, with 5,000,000 people. With some variation in the population figures, that is how Poland stands to-day. Napoleon promised to reconstitute the nation in the early part of the last century, and on the strength >of that- promise got the Poles behind him in his. fights, with Russia; but all that he accomplished in fulfilment of his promise -was the establishment by the treaty of \ Tilsit (1807) of the Duchy of Warsaw, chiefly out of the Prussian sliare of "Poland, -with a liberal constitution, and the ' Elector of - Saxony as -its head. lii • 1809 • Western Galicia was taken by -Austria- and -added -to the "Duchy, but. the advance, of the allied armies in 1813 put an .end tq its existence. The main causes of the fall of Poland have_ been summarised as " (1) The want of patriotism and cohesion among "the nobles, each pursuing his own interests, and the country thus being divided among a number of petty tyrants ; (2) the want of a national middle class, the tradteof the country being almost entirely in the hands of Jews and Germans ; (3) the intolerance of the Jesuits, who perseCuted, on the one hand, the Dissidents, which caused them to sympathise with Prussia, and, on the other, persecuted also the orthodox inhabitants, of the eastern provinces and the Cossacks, who thus looked to Russia; (4) in a less degree than the first thi-ee causes, the weakness of character of 'Jie Kings — though .with such a turbulent nobility, it must be. confessed they had no fair play; (5) the want o"f natural frontiers." But whether this be a fair statement of tJie causes which led to dismemberment or not, the fact remains that -after over a century of systematic, -and in the neain Tuthless, endeavour on the part of Russia, Germany, and Austria to denationalise Poland, there never was a- time when the national spirit was more robust and- defiant than to-day. - In the Quarterly Review for October the present position is set out in a very striking •way by a writer who apparently has the advantage of full inside knowledge". "Tt is, indeed, a truth," he writes, " that never since the first partition has the life- of the nation been so -vigorous, so abundant, -as at l the present . day'} pervading as it does now every class of society, from one end -of the scale .to the other; so much so- that even at the risk of being called paradoxical, it may beisaid that tne -partition 'of "Poland was a providential means of saving that life. . . . Plunged in a. "death trance, Poland required the knife of the 'operators., to rouse h£iy by .striking at the mosjb^sensitive nerve of all. She was, indeed, roused and passed, not at once, but by degrees, from deatnV in life to life in death. This has been; the cause of all the spasmodic "throes, the struggles and bloodshed of the last 100 years ; thence, too, comes it that . at the present day Germany feels the ' Polish danger ' as a menace to part of the Empire; that the Government of St. PetersTrarer has long' ago recognised the impossibility of forcing the Polish nation into unity with Russia; that Austria, having .iaken the wis^j course of granting some amount of autonomy to , the incorporated provinces, has found this semblance of irdependence to be the best means of eluding the bitter consequences -of what has been done." The spirit of the .nation having asserted itself, it was struck at by striking at the j •owners of the land,* at the national language, and the national religion. As to 'Russia, she has, according to this writer, excelled herself in the severity of her repressive measures. In Poland proper the children are forbidden to speak 'Polish, whether within the precincts of their schools or in the street. By special permission of the -Czar the native tongue is taught 'for two hours per week — .through a Russian grammar. Polish may be spoken in the home"; but only because there is no effective means of preventing it. But all printing must be Russian. As to religion, Roman Catholicism, which is the creed of the vast majority of Poles, is regarded as hostile. to Russia, and treated accordingly. Almost all convents, according to this authority, have been closed; those that were spared, forbidden to receive new members, are almost empty now. Secular priests live under the close surveillance of the police like ticket-of-leave men in England. Without special leave from the Governor of Warsaw, entailing, of course, endless vexatious i formalities, they may not even take a drive beyond' the limits of their district ; so that ; a clergyman may have to wait six months : for permission to visit a- sick friend, if the i district boundary runs between them. That is in Poland itself, where the native population is conipact; but in tihe other provinces which formerly belonged to the : kingdom, containing a, large percentage of Poles, and a strong leaven of antagonism towards Russia, -severer measures are said to have been adopted." There the laws are designed to gradually secure the Pole's ; divorcement from the land ; desirable employments are practically forbidden him. In 1830 there -were computed to be 1000 primary schools from Lithuania to Ukraine. To-day not one exists, and " though there ; are two millions of Poles -still in these parts, they are forced to send their children to establishments where even the miserable two hours per -week of Polish allowed in Poland proper ajre not to be had, and •where pupils are severely punished if caught speaking a word in that language/ Even adults are denied free speech. *" It is, a* least, in Lithuania, a-vjnisdenaeanor to speak Polish in a cafe, in tie streets, in may publio place." Within the last yea Tot two- iliere has been Blight sparing of -Si© rod in one or two directions, for which the present Czar is thanked. "For, though much wrong is done in biz name, Nicholas HJby no means approves of it, 3 ' remarks the writer. . . . " The jEql^s know him to be r -weak but

well-meaning man : one who, if he- should reign 100 years, might possibly remove all their grievances." It is recognised as not logical to visit on the Russians at large wrongs that they can in no wise redress ; but the Poles know the Russians only by those that are amongst them, and the impression made by officialism far outweighs any other. In East Prussia and Posen the meihode in operation lack nothing in German thoroughness, but they do not seem to be ' affecting the object desired. From the date of the first partition the Paussian monarchs aimed at substituting German for Polish nationality, and succeeded so far that very nearly half of these provinces had become German when the wars with Napoleon relaxed the Prussian hold. The outcome of that was a pledge to respect the Polish language and nationality, which was fairly well observed until Bismarok began his crusade "in defence of the Teutonic race against the aggressive fecundity of the irreconcilable Slav." The net ! result of all has been that in the last 10 years the Polish element m Prussia has increased by 10 per cent., and the Germans ia the same provinces by 5.7 per cent, only. The attempt to force the German language on the Poles, and to have even the Catechism taught in that language, resulted in the famous Wreeehen trials, which excited co much sympathy for those who were the "victim* of them. k In Austrian Poland the Boles are declared -to be much more free, being allowed to wear national costume, sing national songs, open Polish schools. JFriendly treatment lias invoked a certain amount of loyalty to the Hapsburg dynasty, but the national idea is aiever thought of. ' Summing, up, ike writer quoted says: — , " The Polish" question then.' even ' to men who know all that can be known, seems to be an insoluble problem. For the nation, aware of its great past, and its present not quite bereft of a certain greatness, refuses either to die or to be assimilated, an«| will not now, any more than in 1772, give up - its claim to what is just — to full and entire liberty. But those who enthralled her, on the other hand, dare neither destroy Her , nor set her free ; and day by day they see j assimilation farther off than in the days of J Kosciuszko. Only two fatal solutions can , be found to this problem — impossible solu- ■' tione both. One 5s to be found in the words of Zamoyski, who, "when the Gover- • nor of- Warsaw, shortly befoi'e the rising of 3J863, asked him what was to be- done, curtly , replied, 'Allez-vous en.' The other would be to dig 20 millions of graves, shoot 20 millions of Poles, bury them, and have done with it. As matters stand, the question is still unsolved; and a population almost half as large as the United Kingdom lives, and must live on, in perpetual unrest and fermentation, not less disquieting than disquieted, ever growing in downtrodden strength. And all this is but the result of that first great act of injustice ■ which was committed towards the close of , the eighteenth century j