Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/29

Rh of the country. Nay, even in the corridors of the University the students are forbidden to speak Polish with each other.

Even more dangerous to Polish nationality is that provision of the law which requires that all instruction in the schools shall be in Russian. Even the scanty instruction in the Polish language is given in Russian. And so strict is the prohibition against speaking Polish in playtime, or generally in the school-grounds, that a boy of twelve years old was recently shut up for twenty-four hours in the dark because coming out of school, he said to a comrade in Polish: "Let us go home together." But the régime to which the schools are subjected with regard to the suppression of the national peculiarities is not confined to the domain of language. In a family which I was invited to visit the following incident happened. The son of the family, a boy of sixteen, the only son of a widow, one evening in the theatre had thrown a wreath to Helena Modrzejewska on behalf of his comrades. A few days after, in obedience to an order from the Minister of Education, the principal of the school called him up, and told him that he must not only leave the school, but that all future admission to any other school whatever was forbidden him; it was the punishment for having been guilty of a Polish demonstration. The boy went home and put a bullet through his head.

We may perhaps wonder that provisions which in certain circumstances drive a half-grown lad to suicide are maintained, or that so innocent a thing as the throwing of a wreath is forbidden. But the answer is, that as, a rule everything which betrays a love for the language is forbidden in Warsaw.

For instance, strange as it may appear, it is forbidden to give instruction to the common people, because instruction can only be given in Russian, which the common people do not understand. Their ignorance is very great; only one-fifth of the population can read and write. This strikes even the stranger who only remains for a few weeks in Warsaw; a coachman there is never seen reading his newspaper as in other cities; nay, the coachmen, as Rh