The White Eagle of Poland

by E. F. Benson

During these ninety-nine years, from the Congress of Vienna up to the outbreak of the European war, the inhabitants of the dismembered Poland, shared up between Germany, Austria and Russia suffered diverse treatment at the hands of the annexing Powers. They were promised at the Congress that they should enjoy independent political organizations, certain national rights and certain economical privileges, including, for instance, free navigation of the whole course of the Vistula. These promises were variously interpreted by the three nations in whose hands it was placed to carry them out, and as might be expected, the fulfilment of them was strongly coloured by the national characteristics of their interpreters. In order to understand the feelings of the Poles at large on the partition of their people among three different nations, it is necessary to recount briefly the treatment they experienced at the hands of each.

From 1815 to 1830 the inhabitants of that part of Poland which fell to Prussia’s share had nothing to complain of except the outrage of the act of annexation itself. They had a Polish regent, Prince Anthony Radziwill, the possession and authority of the Polish nobles was upheld, their religion was respected and government posts were given to them. The Polish language was taught in schools, and in the administration of the country it was used equally with German. But in 1830 occurred the Polish revolution in the Kingdom of Poland, which, by the partition, went to Russia, and for fear of a similar insurrection, the liberal policy of Prussia was changed for a far more rigid Germanization. Prince Radziwill was replaced by a German, Flottvell, who was made President of the Duchy of Posen.

With the object of smothering the national spirit, the power of the Polish nobility and clergy was curtailed, the German language began to take the place of Polish in schools and public business, special encouragements were given to Prussian settlers in the country, and the Polish officials were replaced by Prussians. For a while under Frederick William IV. (1840) a more liberal policy was pursued, but an insurrectionary movement in 1848 caused to be administered to the Poles a redoubled dose of Germanization. This continued to be the fixed policy of Bismarck, who avowedly did all he could to stamp out any sense of national existence in the Poles, and to absorb them in his work of uniting Germany. Religion and language are two of the strongest ties which hold together those of the same blood, and Bismarck set to work to loosen these, even as did the Young Turks when they ordered that a translation into Turkish should be made of the Koran, to be used in mosques, and that the prayer for the Caliphate should be recited no longer in Arabic.[4] Polish bishops were imprisoned, church-schools and charitable institutions managed by the clergy were closed, endowments were confiscated, and parishes deprived of their pastors. The tie of language was similarly dissolved, and between 1870 and 1874 Polish was no longer permitted to be taught in second-grade schools, and German took its place, so that the next generation it was hoped, would grow up without any literary knowledge, at any rate, of their own tongue. German was similarly made the sole official language, and the whole of the administration of the country, legal and political, was carried on in that tongue. Simultaneously Poles were prohibited from holding any government post, and the names of Polish towns were Germanized.

The Polish population, as was found by the census of 1880, was increasing more rapidly than the German in Prussian Poland, and fresh steps were necessary for its suppression. All Poles, subjects of Austria and Russia, were therefore expelled from Prussian Poland, and in 1886 Prussia voted the sum of 100 million marks for the purchase of land from Polish proprietors, and the settlement on these lands of Germans. Next year the complete elimination of the Polish language from all schools was effected and German was made the only language for religious instruction of Polish children. With the dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 the rigidity of these restrictions was relaxed for a few years, but in 1894 an even more active propaganda for the Germanization of Prussian Poland was organized by the “Ostmarken Verein,” or Hakatist Association (so called after the initials of its founders Hannemann, Kennemann, and Tiedemann). Another 100 million marks was voted in the Prussian Diet for the purchase of Polish lands and the settlement thereon of German Colonists, and these were introduced into villages in solid blocks with their mayor and their Protestant church. By the aid of the state grants these settlers acquired their land at ludicrously low prices, but were not permitted to part with it again to Polish proprietors, and a couple more regulations rounded off the general policy, the total effect of which was to forbid Poles either to acquire land or to erect houses. A further grant of 125,000,000 marks was voted in 1908 for fresh acquisition of land and the establishment of German settlers. Territorially the result of these measures was entirely satisfactory from a German point of view, for in 1912, a quarter of the whole territory nationally Polish and inhabited by Poles was owned by Germany.

But neither these restrictions and prohibitions nor Bismarck’s declared policy directed against the destruction of Polish nationality have been able to render moribund the inherent vitality of this nation, or to extinguish the flame of its individual life. The Prussian Poles organized against the hostility of the Ostmarken Verein a system of defence for their land, their language, and their stability, and if we take for consideration a series of years, say from 1870 to 1900, we find that they developed national banking corporations in such perfection that they were declared by German economists to constitute an internal peril. Similarly in spite of legislation the land in Polish hands was larger at the end of that period than at the beginning, while, most significant of all, the population of Poles in Prussian Poland increased more rapidly than that of the nation that aimed at submerging them. The fact had already been disclosed by the German census of 1880, and by 1900 the percentage of Germans in Posen had decreased from being 45 per cent. of the whole population to 38 per cent. National consciousness and like force alike proved themselves superior to repressive legislation.

Such in brief has been the hundred years’ history of that part of Poland which, with promises of liberty and autonomy, was assigned to Prussia. The policy of Mittel-Europa has striven (and has largely succeeded) in stripping it of its lands, its religion and its tongue, patching the rents with German fabric. It is not much to be wondered at that when in November 1916 the Central Empires proclaimed the independence of Russian Poland, which they still jointly occupy, its inhabitants put but little faith in the significance of the boon, for they were familiar with the interpretation placed by the Germans on the word independence. Their suspicions have been amply justified.

The three partitions had given to Russia certain Eastern Polish provinces mentioned above[5] which had formed part of the ancient republic, and by the Congress of Vienna this arrangement was confirmed and the district known as the Kingdom of Poland was added. A constitution was granted it which assured it of equality of citizenship with Russian subjects, liberty, its own language, to be taught in schools and to be used officially, and a national government consisting of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. The observation of these pledges was of the shortest duration, and Russia soon began infringing them and depriving Poland of any semblance of independence or self-government. The effect of this was the insurrection of 1830, which ended in the victory of the Russian armies and the capture of Warsaw. Russia thereupon deprived the Kingdom of Poland of its constitution and of its army, and put at the head of the administration a Russian general, Paskevitch, who ruled the country by martial law. All literature dealing with subjects calculated to keep alive feelings of patriotism among Poles was suppressed, and the national church was deprived of her position as state church.

The accession of Alexander II. in 1855 saw a more liberal policy introduced. A Council of administration was established again, Polish was taught in schools, and Polish officials were employed in the civil administration. But after the second insurrection of 1863 the separate administration of the Kingdom of Poland was abolished, the country was finally incorporated into the Russian empire, Poles were expelled from all official posts, and their places taken by Russians sent from Russia, and all shadow of self-government and semblance of liberty was withdrawn. The possessions of the church were confiscated, communication with the Holy See was forbidden, and in 1874 the rites of the orthodox church were made compulsory. Polish schools were suppressed, the Polish language forbidden in schools and as the official language, and in a word the whole of that part of the kingdom of Poland which had fallen to Russia was completely Russified so far as laws and the penalties for breaking them could ensure the process.

In Lithuania, once also belonging to Poland, this second insurrection was visited with even greater severity under the administration of General Muravieff (suitably styled “The Hangman”), who was given unlimited power to punish the insurgents as he chose, and used that power with the utmost ability of his savage mind. He treated the Poles as enemies of the state, he shot the ringleaders, he destroyed whole Polish villages and sent their inhabitants to Siberia, he suppressed all Polish papers, he prohibited the use of the Polish language in public altogether, even in conversation in the streets, and in particular he inflicted heavy fines on landowners and clergy who did not fall under direct suspicion of having had any part in the insurrection, in order to render them more powerless for the future. The proof, even the suspicion of complicity, was not required: perfectly innocent men were deprived of the power of doing again what they had never done at all. No Pole was permitted to acquire land in Lithuania or Little Russia, so that any Pole who wished to sell his land, must sell it only to a Russian: this measure was supplemented by a further ukase in 1887 which provided that if any Pole not being a Russian subject, inherited real estate in Lithuania or Little Russia, he had to sell it within two years. Catholic churches were transformed into orthodox, orthodox monks were put in possession of Uniat monasteries.

Now revolutions are dangerous things, and the state, among whose peoples occur such risings as the Polish insurrections of 1830 and 1863, is perfectly right to put them down, for the state’s first duty is to ensure its own safety. If it is a liberal and beneficent government, it will remedy the injustices that have given rise to discontent, but it is primarily its business to suppress what is dangerous to its own existence. But in the case of Russian Poland it must be remembered that it was the disregard of the Russian Government for the promises which it had made to its Polish acquisitions that directly produced these risings: it had shewn itself an irresponsible autocracy to whom its own treaties and obligations meant no more than they mean now-a-days to Germany, and having put down those risings, Russia in no way redressed the wrongs that had occasioned them, but aggravated the burdens and disabilities of the people to whom she had promised rights and liberty. In the democratic crisis that followed the Japanese war, it is true, certain concessions were made to the Poles, certain liberties granted them—they sent, for instance, thirty-four members to the Duma (a number reduced in 1907 to twelve)—but, broadly speaking, during the hundred years that succeeded the partitions, neither Russia nor Prussia shewed any sincere intention of fulfilling the obligations they had entered into after the Congress of Vienna, but both alike pursued the settled policy of extinguishing the national consciousness of the people whose territories they had appropriated. In this, though they tried to loose all the ties which bind a people together, they have utterly failed. The national vitality of the Poles, as a race, has survived the century of bondage, and exists to-day with no less vigour than it did when those partitions were made. The tie of blood has proved to be insoluble by oppression, and the shedding of it has but cemented its coherence.