Her father made an impatient movement and said in a broken voice: 'We Germans have a country of our own, larger than yours, but it's not pleasant to live in: too many people, too little land; it's difficult to make a living, and we have to pay heavy taxes and do hard military service, and there are penalties for everything.'
He coughed and continued after a pause: 'Everybody wants to be comfortable and live as he pleases, and not as others tell him. It's not pleasant to live in our country, so we've come here.'
Jendrek brought the milk and offered it to the girl, who gave it to her father.
'God repay you!' sighed the invalid; 'the people in this country are kind.'
'I wish you would not do us harm,' said Slimakowa in a half-whisper.
'Why should we do you harm?' said the man. 'Do we take your land? do we steal? do we murder you? We are quiet people, we get in nobody's way so long as nobody gets…'
'You have bought the land here,' Slimak interrupted.
'But why did your squire sell it to us? If thirty peasants had been settled here instead of one man, who did nothing but squander his money, our people would not have come. Why did not you yourselves form a community and buy the village? Your money would have been as good as ours. You have been settled here for ages, but the colonists had to come in before you troubled about the land, and then no sooner have they bought it than they become a stumbling-block to you! Why wasn't the squire a stumbling-block to you?'
Breathless, he paused and looked at his wasted arms, then continued:
'To whom is it that the colonists resell their land? To you peasants!
On the other side of the Vistula[1] the peasants bought up every scrap
of our land.'
[Footnote 1: i.e. in Prussian Poland. One of the Polish people's grievances is that the large properties are not sold direct to them but to the colonists, and the peasants have to buy the land from them. Statistics show that in spite of the great activity of the German Colonization Commission more and more land is constantly acquired by the Polish peasants, who hold on to the land tenaciously.]