Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/132

 work in the schools is done in German—even in that country Polish ideas gradually developed, and so long ago as 1900, in the elections to the German Reichstag the Polish candidate got 6000 votes against his German opponent who obtained 8000.

In Russian Poland the struggle was neither for a position in the Empire, because there was no chance of getting any influential position, nor for national existence, because the national existence of the Poles in Poland proper was not threatened by Russia. It is true that the institutions were Russian and the schools were Russian, but they were unable to Russianise the Poles. The Polish culture showed great vitality against the Russians. The struggle in Russian Poland was for the progress of national civilisation, which was stopped by the policy of the Russian Government before the present war.

All three parts of Poland had their own political struggle, but a close analysis of the political situation of the whole of Poland revealed to the Polish leaders the following facts: first, that the greatest danger threatening the national existence of the Poles came from Germany; for the German view was that, if they wanted to assure for themselves their position on the Baltic coast, they must destroy not only the Poles in German Poland but must look to the future destruction of the kingdom of Warsaw. That means the total destruction of the Polish nation, and that struggle between Poland and Germany is a struggle for life and death. The Germans knew of the renascence of Polish civilisation and realised that, if Poland kept her power to struggle against Germany, sooner or later they must