Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/55

Rh Tzar to command, that all strolling, orphan, or poor boys in Poland shall be admitted into the militia battalions, and subsequently be sent away in a body to Minsk, when decision will be made about them according to the regulations of his Majesty's general staff." And the execution of this order is not any exceptional incident. Six years later—April 13, 1838—the following communication from the council of the government appeared in the Warsaw newspapers: "On the 8th of this month, in the Town Hall, there will be a public offer of contracts for the transport to St. Petersburg and Ural of some thousands of the sons of Polish noblemen." From this time forth Jewish and Christian Poles have felt, not indeed as a community, but as a nation. The fraternising of the people with the Jews in Warsaw in 1860 solved the question as the equality of the latter, and when in February 1861, in the square before the castle, and in another larger square, shots were fired upon the kneeling crowd, who with the mouths of the Russian cannon before their eyes, gave utterance to a national hymn, and besought God to send to the Poles freedom and a fatherland, the Jews felt impelled to manifest their national disposition by an unmistakable demonstration. In great numbers they accompanied their Rabbis into the Catholic churches, just as the Christians in great numbers went into the synagogues to sing the same hymn.

But the feeling of unity was already strong in Poland's greatest poet, Mickiewicz; his work, Pan Tadeusz (of 1834), which has become the Polish national epic, ends with the playing of Poland's celebrated national song for Dombrowski and his soldiers by a Jew. "The great Master," as the poem calls him, by his cymbal music alone, in great enthusiasm, evokes the whole history of Poland from 1791 for his audience. The impetuous polonaise of May 3rd is the starting point, then follows the false chord, the sound of the traitor-note, which calls to mind Targovice, then march, attack, battle, storming and shot, groans of the children, wailings of the mothers; the blood-bath of Praga rises before the eyes dim with tears. Then the key changes to the wailing melody of the old popular