PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION OF VOLUME I XVIt was the great poet Stanislaw Wyspianski who asked his listeners to gather round a little
girl, to whom he said, 'What can you hear beating there inside you? It's your heart. And
that heart is what Poland really is.'...
After all, each one of us possesses a heritage within us-a heritage to which generations
and centuries of achievement and calamity, of triumph and failure, have contributed: a
heritage which somehow takes deeper root and grows new tissues from every one of us.
We cannot live without it. It is our soul. It is this heritage, variously labelled the
Fatherland or the Nation, by which we live. As Christians, we live by this Polish heritage,
this Polish Millennium, this Polish Christianity of ours. Such is the law of reality ...
For believers and unbelievers alike, these were powerful words indeed, to be
heeded by some, to be feared by others, but to be respected by all.
The final preparation of a large typescript further increases an author's
indebtedness to collaborators and patrons. In this regard, I wish to acknowledge
the assistance of Mr. Ken Wass of University College, London, who undertook
the technical drawing of most of my maps and diagrams: of Andrzej Suchcitz
and Marek Siemaszko, who compiled the index: of the Publications Committee
of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies: and especially of the De
Brzezie Lanckoronski Foundation, which provided a generous subsidy.
Wolvercote, 3 May 1979.Norman Davies.