PARTITIONED POLAND 



By William Joseph Showalter 



IT WAS four years before the United 

 States was born into the family of 

 nations that Poland saw the begin- 

 ning of her end as a member of that 

 family; and it was two years before 

 Washington had completed his great task 

 of blazing the way for the young nation 

 his sword had founded that Poland's 

 name as an independent country was 

 erased, perhaps forever, from the list of 

 sovereign States of the earth. 



And yet the hundred and seventeen 

 years that have sufficed to transform the 

 United States from a little country on 

 the middle eastern seaboard of North 

 America into one of the wealthiest and 

 most influential nations of the world have 

 not served to quench the national spirt of 

 the Polish people, nor to end their dream 

 of a rehabilitated and reunited Poland. 



Generations of- the sternest repression 

 ever practiced upon any people have still 

 left the Pole with his heart set on the one 

 desire of his life — Poland restored. In 

 spite of the efforts of three of the world's 

 most powerful governments to assimilate 

 them and to incorporate them into their 

 own bodies politic, 20 million Poles have 

 hoped and longed for and dreamed of the 

 day when their country shall resurrect it- 

 self and make itself a vital force in the 

 civilization of the future. 



Efforts at assimilation have been met 

 by struggles against it, and after nearly a 

 century and a quarter of trying to quench 

 the fire of fervor for their beloved Po- 

 land from the hearts of the Poles they 

 still stood at the beginning of the present 

 war, with hearts aflame and souls afire, 

 hoping in the face of despair, that some- 

 how, somewhere, some time, the ashes of 

 captivity might be replaced with the gar- 

 lands of liberty. 



THEIR Fe;rve:nt love 



The fervent love of the Pole for all 

 things Polish is borne witness to by all 

 who travel that way. He will tell you 

 that their cooking is better than that of 

 Paris ; that their scenery is more beauti- 

 ful than that of any other country; that 



their language is the most melodious that 

 falls from human lips ; that there is no 

 dance in the world to be compared with 

 the mazurka; that the most beautiful 

 women on the face of the earth and the 

 bravest men who ever lived are to be 

 found among them ; that the Poles are a 

 cheerful, hospitable, easily pleased, and 

 an imaginative race ; and that yet, in spite 

 of and notwithstanding all this, they are 

 the most unhappy people and theirs the 

 most hapless nation in history. Kras- 

 veski once exclaimed during his exile : 



"Oh, thou beautiful land, our mother ! 

 When we say farewell to friends we have 

 the hope of meeting them in heaven; but 

 never again shall we see thy loved land- 

 scapes, thy linden avenues, thy villages, 

 thy brooks, and thy rivers. Can heaven 

 really be so beautiful that it makes us for- 

 get all this, or does a river of Lethe flow 

 before the gate of Paradise?" 



Some one has said that there is perhaps 

 after all no condition more elevating for 

 a race than one in which no distinguished 

 man has any external distinction, title, or 

 decoration, and where the official tinsel 

 of honor is regarded as a disgrace. In 

 Poland such a condition has prevailed 

 since her partition, for the honor of over- 

 lord governments is despised. A poor 

 but distinguished teacher in Warsaw re- 

 ceived from the government the decora- 

 tion of the Order of Stanislaus. He 

 never wore it, but when his children were 

 naughty pinned it on their breasts as pun- 

 ishment for their misdeeds. And it is 

 said that never a dunce-cap was more 

 eft'ective. 



THE POEAND OF YESTERDAY 



Poland, before Maria Theresa of Aus- 

 tria found cause to remark that she had 

 •been a party to an outrage upon geogra- 

 phy and to an act of violence against the 

 laws of ethnology, had been one of the 

 leading nations of Europe. It was the 

 Poles who successfully stayed the march 

 of the triumphant Turk across the conti- 

 nent and mayhap saved the West from 

 the fate that came uoon the Near East. 



