"THE FAIR LAND OF POLAND."

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 87

"THE FAIR LAND OF POLAND."

An impression prevails among many people who know little history, and whose knowledge of Poland consists of a few poetic passages about Kosciuszko and a vague recollection of Prussian and Russian persecutions, that the. Poles have been, in some way or other, martyrs to the cause of liberty. Tiiat is true to this extent: that the destruction of their State was accomplished by most unscrupulous and tyrannical opponents; but to imagine that the people themselves need have expected any other- fate is to belie the teachings of history. Politically. Poland was one of the most corrupt States of which there is any record. Every petty province was given over to the ruthless domination of some local magnate, all of whom in turn were ready to cut one another’s throats or sell themselves to a foreign invader rather than sacrifice an iota of what they considered their own private rights for the sake of establishing a. strong government at home. One virtue only these decadent noblemen had, that of lavish hospitality. To meet the expenses in which it involved them their peasantry were ground in the direst poverty. The complete degeneracy of this turbulent aristocracy is aptly described by Mr Nisbet Bain in his book, “The Last King of Poland.” In spite of all their external glitter, these princes had, he says, “very few mental resources. Their education was rudimentary at best. If they grew up with a smattering of Latin, that was considered quite enough for any gentleman to know. Very often they had to be coaxed to learn anything at all. The handwriting” of the most eminent and distinguished magnates was generally so bad that nobodv, not even themselves, could decipher their letters. Whenever, therefore, the great man had to write a relation or friend with his own hand, he at the same time dictated it to a secretary sitting in an adjoining room. The caligraphic copy of the secretary was then attached, as a sort of key to the magnate’s own heiroglyphics, and both documents were forwarded to their destination. It would Ijave been simpler, no doubt, to have signed the secretary’s letter. but it would not have had the same, value in the eyes of the recipient. A holograph letter from a magnate was treasured up as an heirloom, and had pecuniary value also. —Estates Wasted in. Senseless Orgies.— “Thus the young squires grew up ignorant and empty-handed. ‘Tire amusement of letters’ was'incapable of diverting such blockheads, and as time hung heavily on their hands in consequence they were obliged, for want of something better to do. to fall back upon the primitive delights of eating and drinking. Hence it was that so many of the nobility literally ate and drank up their estates, and that banquets were apt to become orgies. ‘Gluttony and drunkenness,’ says a contemporary satirist, ‘are the beginning and end of all our magnificence. Witt' us he is the most popular who can give us the most to eat and drink!’ It was no uncommon tiling for a magnate to mortgage a whole town in order to pay for a single banquet. ‘As for the culinary science.’ savs another satirist, ‘so much money is spent upon its profession, and it has attained such a degree of perfection, that if the army or the Treasury were only half as well cared for, the Republic would have become by this time, the most powerful and stable State in Europe,’

“Hard drinking in especial was regarded rather as a virtue than a vice. It was considered .as one of the distinguishing marks of the good old Polish gentleman. For instance, the Grand-Hetman Branicivi once told King Stanislaus 11, quits seriousiy, that he must never expect to be popular unless he got drunk at least twice a, week. "In vino veritas” and “Qui fa Hit in vino fa! 1 it in oir.ne” were maxims highly cherished by the Pans, both temporal and spiritual. Consequently every sort of business, both public and private, was settled over the wine cups, while at purely social gatherings nobody was allowed to leave the table unless he had first drunk his proper quota, which was calculated according to “the capacity of the toper who could carry most liquor. The weaker stomachs had, therefore, to fall back upon such expedients as coloured water and the surreptitious discharge of their beakers into their jack-boots. An ailing or otherwise*incapacitated host was, however, permitted to have by his side a, surrogate to drink his toasts for him, and prevent the entertainment from flagging. Both in town and country every male visitor on his arrival was welcomed with a stirrup-cup of generous dimensions. If he drained it off at one draught he won general approval, while if he followed this up by drinking a gallon of old Hungarian before dessert his fame was assured. , —Some Historic Feats.— “At the house of Sapieha there was a very famous beaker renowned as a work . of art, but still more so from the fact that Augustus II and Peter the Great had successively drained it to the dregs in each other's honour. It was religiously, preserved in a magnificent cupboard especially made to house it, and was never brought forth except with the honorific accompaniment of drums and trumpets. Another historic drinking cup fashioned by a famous goldsmith, on the occasion of the revival of the Order of the White Eagle by Augustus 11, bore the inscription ‘ Pro lege, fide, et grege.’ It was subsequently acquired by the Potocki family. Augustus, the physically strong, had often emptied it at a single draught; but as nobody in the succeeding generation was capable of repeating this exploit the cup still could boast’ of heroes far renowned for their bacchanalian prowess. Thus Pan Komarczewski could empty a bucket full of ebampangne without losing h:s head or his feet. This gentleman and another equally famous drinker, Pan •Sosiejfcowski, High Chamberlain of Wolbymia, drank between them a whole butt of old Hungarian at a sitting. The process was as follows: —Drawing out the bung, Komarczewski placed his beaker beneath the bungliole till it was brim- ■ full, and drank it off while his comrade took his place, beaker in hand; and thus they relieved each other till the butt was empty.” Alphabet Taught by Musketry.—• A typical aristocrat was Prince Karol Radziwill, and a story told of his earlv days will show how difficult was the education of these turbulent youth. Pie was petted and spoiled from his birth. His mother would not allow him to be bothered with book-learning, and the consequence was that when he had reached his fifteenth year he could not read a. word. Every tutor who tried to make him work was dismissed by his mother the moment her darling boy complained of him. At last it occurred to his father that a youth destined one day to fill the high offices of his ancestors ought perhaps to know a little more than the science of riding horses barebacked ■ or of shooting a dozen eggs tossed up in the air without missing one. He won over his wile to the same opinion, and the lady thereupon announced that she would give two freehold farms to whomsoever would teach her son reading and writing without using the least compulsion. This pedagogic feat was actually performed by. ■ an ingenious squire, who thereby won the : eternal gratitude of the magnate. His , plan was as follows: He clwlked up all the letters of the alphabet on a large wooden board. The young Prince and 1 two other nobles of the same age, who were educated along with him to stimu- * late their rivalry, were then stationed a certain number of paces away with loaded , muskets in their hands, and shot at the letters as they were named by the tutor. In this way letters, syllables, words, and at last whole periods were learnt by heart till the pupils were able to read without quite knowing how they had acquired the accomplishment. The festivities of the upper classes, however, were not always marked by these crass drinking bouts, though that 1 was the rule. A certain naity was to b© found which emulated the refinement of contemporary France. Among these was the last King, Stanislaus I. whose biography has come from the pen of Mr Nisbet Bain. A graphic picture is drawn of the King's favourite home;—“Hither in the summer months he would flit with a gay company of poets, wits, and fair ladies, who. attired as shepherdesses or goddesses, promenaded with him in its far-extending bowers, boated with him on its lakes and canals, and entertained him at fetes chamnetrcs amidst its bnsqnes and gardens. Here. too. were an elegant theatre at which the last French pieces were acted, and an opera house. But what the King liked best of all was to train whole bands of peasant girls and their swains to sing the popular songs and dance the national dances before him in their characteristic native costume .in the open air, . . . The manners of this butterfly court were exquisite, but of high morality there was not the leasir pretence. Any affection of austerity would have seemed supremely ridiculous to this Prince Charming and the ladies whom h« delighted to honour.” —Hard Lot of the Peasantry.— , In marked contrast to the aristocrats wore the wretched peasantry whose toil made possible these festivities and orgies.;

“I see,” said one eighteenth-century . traveller, “ millions of beings, many of .whom go about half naked, while others i .hare clad only in .short and thin siermengas ' (coats of coarse cloth), all of them pinched, /parched, dishevelled, begrimed, with eyes | [ deep-sunken in. their heads, with bent backs and narrow chests, working con- j Manually. Moody, muddled, and stupid, j they feel little, and think less—and this ! is their only felicity. _At I Ifiirst sight their bestial figures remind . tonje .rather of brumes than of human- j Hand. The daily bread of these creatures j |t,is coarse groats, and for four months out j\ of the 12 they snatch .a bare subsistence (■' front the forest and the heath,. Their j dwellings are holes in the earth, or hovels /.raised a little above the surface of the ground. The sun never seems to shine

upon these dwellings. It is in such filthy steaming dens that the peasant, after working all day for his master," lies down in the foul straw of his lair, which he shares with his children- —and ins cattle.” “I have never seen a smiling Polisli peasant,” declared another, equally well informed. “When I have met them they have turned their faces away and, with eyes oast down, uttered the usual formula, ‘ Praised be Jesus Christ.’ The more I look at them, the more I wonder how they can praise God at all.” It is a remarkable fact that in the days of Poland’s greatness the women were quite outside the political arena, and that they came more and more into prominence as the State was tottering to its fall!. Mr N is bet Bain has some striking remarks apropos of this. On the one hand

he says that ‘’it must frankly be admitted that the earlier types of these female politicians were remarkable for a superior energy and sagacity, which put men to shame,” but he hastens to add that their degeneracy was much more precipitate, and that even this early merit ‘‘was an unnatural state of things after all. A society in which the women are virile and the men are effeminate is already far advanced in decadence. Subjectivity, the predominance of the purely personal point of view, is characteristic of feminine politicians all the world over, and the consequences are narrowness and bitterness. It cannot well be otherwise when the political outlook is circumscribed by family interests and obscured by family prejudices.” The only thing, Mr Nisbet Bain concludes, that could have snatched Poland from this awful abyss was a patriotic war. The idea is striking ; an explanation may bo had in the author’s own words. “We of the twentieth century,” he says, “are so accustomed to assume war to be an unmitigated evil that we are tempted entirely to overlook its nobler, its curative properties. Yet it has been the mature and deliberate conviction of some of the best and wisest men of every age, our own included, that, in certain contingencies, war alone is able to arrest the course of national decadence. History, fairly and carefully scrutinised, points irresistibly to the same conclusion. Anyhow, as regards Poland, there can bo no doubt whatever that the discipline of warfare alone was capable of dissipating the sluggishness and curbing the egotism of the half-million or so of armed and unemployed gentlemen who claimed to represent the whole nation. For 70 years the Republic had been engaged in no regular warfare. Tine immediate consequence of this long and enervating peace was that the ancient and chivalrous spirit of the nation liad been well nigh extinguished, and with the martiaf spirit the public spirit was also disappearing. The Poles had become a nation of trifiers and pettifoggers.”