Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/79

Rh cultivated classes are still Polish, in and on all public buildings a notice is posted with the words: "The speaking of Polish is forbidden." The violation of the prohibition is punished severely, and every functionary, even to the lowliest, who is reported to have said a few words in Polish, even as an answer to a question in Polish, even to persons who do not understand any other language, is punished with heavy fines or dismissal. A tramcar conductor was recently fined twenty-five rubles—more than his month's pay—for having answered a Polish question in the same language.

Just imagine a trial in Russian Poland. The magistrate, who is generally a Pole by birth, and speaks Russian with difficulty and with a bad accent, questions in his Russian the accused, a Polish peasant, who does not understand a word of the judge's speech. The questions are therefore translated by an interpreter. He answers in Polish. New translation by the interpreter, unnecessary as it is, and thus questions and answers continue, because neither magistrate nor accused is permitted to speak his native language. And at the public trial the prosecuting counsel speaks against the accused in a language which the latter understands no more than what his counsel says in his behalf.

The Kingdom of Poland, where the language is still allowed, and where the Code Napoléon is still in force, seems to the inhabitants of the other provinces comparatively a paradise of freedom. They go from Wilna to Warsaw for a few weeks every year to breathe freely.

He who has experienced the state of things in this paradise of freedom can draw his own conclusions as to what it is in the provinces.

So far as education is concerned, the parents keep their little boy or girl at home and out of school as long as possible, teach them themselves, or have them taught, in order to give the first elements of knowledge in Polish and in the Polish spirit. The child sucks in with his mother's milk contempt for the Russians, and passionate hatred for them. Everything which the child hears in the first years of his life strengthens this hatred and contempt. He learns so much that is great and good about the superior culture