SLEEPERS IN CRACOW

Taranaki Daily News, 3 August 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

SLEEPERS IN CRACOW

PATRIOTS SIDE BY SIDE.

TRIBUTE TO LEADERS OF PEOPLE.

In memory of Marshal Pilsudski the Polish nation is to raise a great mound at Cracow. ; Earth will be brought to it from the battlefields on which this great patriot fought, and an aeroplane will bring soil from the traditional grave of Our Lord in Palestine. This idea of a great mound is peculiarly Polish, and is very beautiful. There is already a grassy hill at Cracow which was built in 1823 as a monument to . the polish patriot Kosciusko, who inspired cudski in his long struggle to make his country free. This mound, too, is built of soil from all the battlefields on which Kosciusko fought, added to by little packets of soil from every corner of Poland, brought by peasants for a hundred years. The artificial hill is lOb f--* an d stands on a natural hill LOO feet high. Thaddeus Kosciusko was born in Lithuania in 1746, when his country was in a deplorable condition. He served in its army but at 31 he went to America to fight under the banner of George Washington in his struggle for independence against George the Third. He was so successful that he was made a general. He returned to Poland in 1786 to find the country in dread of a second attack from Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which had already seized 80,600 square miles of it. Some of the Polish nobles, however, were discontented because they had lost their privileges under a new Constitution which the Polish Diet had set up, granting liberty to every Pole as a free citizen and giving free education to every child. These nobles encouraged Russia to attack Poland, but Kosciusko led his countrymen against the Russians and with only 4000 men withstood 18,000 Russians for five days. But the Polish king submitted to the Empress Catherine and the patriot resigned his command and retired to Leipzig. The Prussians then joined the Russians and between them compelled the Diet to surrender 100,000 more square miles. That was too much for Kosciusko, who put himself at the head of a national revolt and was appointed dictator. Once more he was defeated by the Russians and Prussians in turn. With a remnant of his army he was shut up in Warsaw, and finally he marched out to meet the Russians once again. Seriously wounded, he was taken prisoner and in the following year Russia, Prussia, and Austria absorbed the remaining 80,000 square miles of Poland. Hope for a season bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell, . the poet Thomas Campbell wrote.,

Kosciusko was freed after a year or two and went to live in France,-where he refused to aid Napoleon iri a-scheme to use the Poles for his own ends, as Pilsudski was later to refuse to become a catspaw to the German Kaiser. Kosciusko’s end was dramatic, falling with his horse over a precipice in Switzerland in 1817. The Tsar Alexander removed his body to Cracow, there t>. lie in the cathedral among the Polish kings. Beside him now lies a • marshal who brought Hope and Freedom back to the land for which both these patriots endured much suffering. i