Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/111

Rh when the gendarmes came, forced him to get up, and carried him away in a sleigh. He did not know of what he was accused. His family was a long time learning his place of detention. When he was set free after the lapse of some months, he did not learn what was his offence, and has continued ignorant of it ever since. And Szymanowski has represented the most peaceful conservatism throughout his whole life.

Let us now consider the psychical influences of this general condition on the younger generation. It has now gone so far in Russian Poland that many a young jurist or doctor of an old Polish family speaks Russian better than Polish, nay, speaks his mother-tongue with a foreign accent. I may instance this case: The young man has studied in St. Petersburg. He has by no means given up his nationality, but he has associated and been compelled to associate with Russians as comrades. He comes back to Warsaw, where no Pole ever associates with a Russian, the nationalities being as oil and water. It seems unnatural to him that his mother and sisters oppose his visiting at the house of the Governor-General. They live another emotional life, speak another language. The nerve of national indignation is blunted in him. Besides, there are practical considerations. He is sure that if he makes no concessions he will never get even a subordinate office in Poland, never be able to live in the same city as his mother. He may become procureur in Riga, or subordinate magistrate in Kasan, but he will never get a position in Warsaw, if he is irreconcilable.

The suppression of the language is also effective. Recently at a competition for the prize offered by a private person for the best drama, the winner, Koslowski, attracted attention by the purity and strength of his diction. General pride and joy were expressed that a young man of twenty-five years, educated under the latest school regulations, should write such beautiful Polish, Slowacki-Polish. There is a pervading fear that the growing generation will be unable to write the mother-tongue in its purity.

The temptation to make some concessions to the Russians is, as has already been suggested, very great. It is, moreover,