Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/84

72 since the educational standard of the people is so low—makes the strongest bulwark of the nation.

Then it also appears—albeit it is denied and the adherents of Prawda do not like to hear it—that the censor is more indulgent to this paper than to any other. It has permission to say things which would be forbidden to any other journal. For everything which tends towards cosmopolitanism and which undermines the Catholic church is far less dangerous to Russia than the nationalistic religious tendency. The influence of the Roman Church still appears to Russia its chief enemy and chief danger.

There is only one power in Poland which Russia persecutes and fears to the same degree, perhaps even more, and that is—singularly enough—Socialism.

I have said that there is a group among the studious youth who call themselves Socialists; a large number of the woi king people are of the same mind through the influence of the socialistic thought of Germany. I believe that these so-called Socialists among the students are of the highest class, the best informed, the most enthusiastic and devoted; they are mostly young doctors who have acquired modern science, and who by reading at first or at second hand have become disciples of Karl Marx. They feel keenly the existing injustice of the conditions of society. They realise that, even if Poland per impossibile should become free, little or nothing would be gained if the aristocracy or the clergy should continue to exercise the ruling influence, and capital should continue lo exploit those who own no property. They have nothing against the Russians as Russians, and dream vaguely of allying themselves with the revolutionary elements in Russia, of which indeed they know nothing. They pay dearly for the perilous and wholly Platonic sympathy for Socialism which they cherish. For every student who is accused or suspected of socialist propagandism is sent relentlessly to the castle, even if he has not been guilty of the smallest illegality.

It is the danger threatening from Russian socialism which makes the government so anxious about that of Poland. The five political criminals who were hanged in the prison of Warsaw at the end of January were Russians. The case,