Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/38

 26 happened, when, in 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen, by simply calling his Russian campaign the second Polish war, he induced 80,000 Poles under Josef Poniatomski to accompany him. The following year only 8000 of them came back.

The Poles are as vivacious as Southerners, but they are not a politically prudent people, educated in the school of Machiavelli, like the Italians, who understood how to make the French pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. They are a people whose legions Napoleon induced to shed their blood on a hundred battlefields merely by holding the white eagle before them, and a people whose battalions Steinmetz, in 1870, induced to storm the terrible heights at Spicheren, by allowing the Prussian bands to play the melody of the national song, Jeszcze Polska nie zginela, which is prohibited in Posen in time of peace.

Such a youthful or childish enthusiasm is certainly not a sustaining element in the great struggle for life of the nations in industrial and militarian ages. It does not flourish in conjunction with thrift, industry, discipline, moderation, and civil prudence, qualities which ensure the continuance of the individual and of the state.

In old descriptions of the Poles it is commonly said that their chivalry and personal bravery can be counted on under all circumstances, but that there is something of vanity in their magnanimity, something volatile in their generosity, that they are obstinate, combative and quarrelsome, recognising no higher law than their own will, and incapable of keeping this will long on the same point. They are commonly represented as poor economists, very easily involved in pecuniary embarrassments, however large their incomes, as turning over thousands of books, but not studying any, as being exceedingly erratic, and wasting their time and talents. It has been charged against them that at the very time they were raving over ideas of freedom, they were playing the autocrat towards their peasants, and that though they are the most tender husbands, they have two or three mistresses as well as the adored wife. In brief, a combination of eastern and western peculiarities is ascribed to them.