PARTITIONED POLAND 



103 



Germany has tried in every possible 

 way to transform her Poles into Ger- 

 mans. It has used the Russian tactics in 

 quenching the fire of their nationalism, 

 but with no better success than Russia 

 had. Heretofore Poles were not ap- 

 pointed to office ; letters addressed in 

 Polish went undelivered. Marriages be- 

 tween German men and Polish women 

 were discouraged, for Bismarck had not 

 let it escape his notice that "a Polish wife 

 makes a Polish patriot out of her hus- 

 band in the twinkling of an eye." 



There were laws forbidding the use of 

 Polish in public meetings, and Polish 

 children who refused to answer the cate- 

 chism in German were punished. 



In the hope of making Germans out 

 of the Poles, the Prussian government de- 

 cided to colonize German settlers among 

 them. First this was undertaken by pri- 

 vate enterprise, but the Poles boycotted 

 the settlers, and their lands finalh^ were 

 bought back. Then a law was enacted 

 that no Pole could build upon lands ac- 

 quired after a certain date. The result 

 is that one who travels through Polish 

 Germany today occasionally will see farm- 

 houses, barns, dairies, stables, and even 

 chicken-coops on wheels. The people 

 live, move, and have their being in glori- 

 fied wagons. 



When private enterprise failed to Ger- 

 manize Prussian Poland the government 

 made appropriations, which up to the 

 present time have amounted to a hundred 

 million dollars, to acquire Polish lands 

 and turn them over to German settlers ; 

 but with all that was done, the Poles are 

 still Poles, and in spite of the law forcing 

 some to sell their lands and preventing 

 others from buying, the German settler 

 has not succeeded in getting much of a 

 foothold on Polish lands ; and Germany 

 has about four million Poles in her popu- 

 lation. 



POLISH pi;asants 



The lot of the Polish peasant is always 

 a hard one, whether he live in Russia, 

 Germany, or Austria. His food is simple, 

 if not poor. His whole family must toil 

 from the hour that the sun peeps over 

 the eastern horizon to the hour when 

 twilight falls into dusk. If he can say 



that his wife works like a horse, he has 

 bestowed the acme of praise upon her. 

 Hard work, many cares, and much child- 

 bearing makes a combination that takes 

 all pride out of the wife's heart and gives 

 to the women of peasant Poland a hag- 

 gard look, even before the third decade 

 of their lives is closed. 



You may even see them working as 

 section hands on many of the railroads, 

 and they are reputed to make good ones. 

 It is not exceptional to see them carrying 

 mortar for bricklayers and plasterers or 

 to find them painting or paper-hanging 

 in the cities. 



Every peasant wants his daughters 

 married off as soon as they reach woman- 

 hood, and little hands are drawn upon 

 the lintel of the door to indicate to the 

 world that there is a marriageable daugh- 

 ter inside the house. And the wedding 

 day among the peasants is about the one 

 bright spot in a girl's life. Where the 

 children of the United States roll eggs 

 on Easter Monday, those of peasant Po- 

 land pour water over one another in a 

 spirit of fun. 



THIv POI^ISH NOBLUMAN 



Poland was a republic of landowners, 

 in which the serf did not count. The 

 man who owned land, or whose ancestors 

 owned land, was a noble. He might 

 match poverty for poorness, he might not 

 have a single sole between his feet and 

 the ground, he might have only a rusty 

 old sword to tie to his girdle, and only a 

 piebald blind horse to drive, and that a 

 hired one, but he still was a noble if 

 ownership of land had ever set its ap- 

 proving stamp upon him or his family. 



With him the peasants were as but 

 worms of the dust. The Russian noble 

 is proud of his peasants, the German 

 noble was proud of his, and the Austrian 

 noble had nought but words of praise for 

 his ; but the Polish noble was not proud 

 of his. 



Nothing illustrates better how the Po- 

 lish peasant felt toward the Polish noble 

 than the insurrection of the Poles of 

 Austria in 1846. That Avas a movement 

 of the nobles. The government did noth- 

 ing to check the outburst, and it is said 

 that the loyalty of the peasants to the 



