32 NAROD
Children such as these were won over to the Polish Cause for life, irrespective of
its objective merits. They were taught to serve, and to resist, with no expecta-
tion of personal advantage, and with no consolation except that of poetry:
Behind you, soldier of Poland, when you hang on the gallows, or when you perish in the
slow agony of the Siberian desert, there wave no mighty banners... When you die, no
one will feed your children: your fellow-citizens will disown you; your compatriots will
forget you... Your offspring will be reared in the gutter... and cut-throats will be their
guardians... All is against you: reticence, fear, hatred, the protests of the ruling class,
the jangling of factory bells, the intrigues of cowards, and the dark ignorance of poverty.
The frightened eyes of national self-bondage peer at you through cracks and holes, from
behind buildings and corners ... Your destiny is death for holy ideals, death without con-
solation, death without fame... You crept out in the darkness of the autumn night, with
the wild wind moaning and the rain beating down, whilst the rest of us, twenty million
strong, slept in our beds, sunk in the deep slumber of slaves... And yet, soldier, your
steps resound with a lonely echo in the secret hearts of the people... Legends will arise
from the pools of congealed blood - legends such as Poland has not yet heard... For the
poetry of Poland will not forsake you, will not betray or insult you... Poetry alone will
be faithful, however lost your cause... Poetry will cover your corpse... with a mantle
of nobility... Between your deathly, stiffened hands, she will place her golden dream -
the dream of a knight-errant's lance!^33
The moderates of Polish politics dismissed such statements as so much roman-
tic slush: but each generation had its sons and daughters who took them
seriously, and followed their bidding.
The catastrophes of insurrectionary Nationalism regularly encouraged the
opposite forces of compromise and Conciliation. These forces had always been
present, and they, too, can be traced to the traditions of the pre-Partition era.
They were embodied in the convictions of people who believed that more could
be achieved by striking a bargain with the powers-that-be than by confronting
them. They calculated that proof of political loyalty would be rewarded by a
licence of limited autonomy or at least of control over social and cultural affairs.
Their attitude to the ruling Empires may be summed up in the phrase attributed
to Staszic: 'We are ready to be your brothers, but not your slaves.' Their advice
to their hot-blooded compatriots was to abandon the negative and distructive
exercises of Insurrection, Resistance, or Conspiracy, and to throw themselves
into all forms of enterprise that were positive and constructive. In their view, the
Polish nation could never secure its position in the world until it was as well edu-
cated, as prosperous, and as united, as its neighbours. Hence the emphasis on
Education, on Self-improvement, on Science, on Economy, on Social Reform,
and above all, on Work. In this context, the stance of Stanislaw-August should
be contrasted with that of Kosciuszko, the career of Staszic or of Wawrzyniec
Surowiecki (1769-1827), the economist, with that of Hugo Kottataj. In Russian
Poland, the road of Conciliation was followed by Xawery Drucki-Lubecki
(1778-1846), by Aleksandr Wielopolski (1803-77), and at the end of the century
by Roman Dmowski (1864-1939). Their policies ran parallel to those of Prince