Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/114

 102 everything which the Poles lack and want; national independence, a constitution, freedom of the press, liberty of speech, liberty of assembly, right to use our money as we like, the power of the state in our own hands, the army in our service, free access to the sea, as well as to all the benefits of freedom—we wonder that such a nation has led a life comparatively so meagre, and so formless, and has suffered so many of its greatest advantages to be torn from it without any foreign intervention.

Although there is so much that is sanguine in the temperament of the Poles, nevertheless the lack of any future prospect in their situation, humanly speaking, broods over their minds like a nightmare. There is no visible prospect of their emerging from their present state save the extremely vague one which appears in the possibilities of a great war with Russia on the one side, and Germany and Austria on the other. Not that they cherish any wish to exchange the Russian rule for the German, although the latter is more humane—it seems on the other hand more dangerous, less likely to be shaken off. If their hopes assume a more definite direction, they rather tend to the establishment of a great Slav power, under the leadership of Austria, in which a leading part would fall to the Poles in that part of Poland belonging to Austria. These dreams of the future assume no more definite form in the minds of the most cultured and experienced.

But we shall hardly be wrong in the opinion that with the majority of those of average culture, faith in the re-establishment of the ancient kingdom of Poland in a not very distant future is still a religion.