Page:The New Europe - Volume 3.djvu/283

 place-hunting preachers of Realpolitsk, be expected to answer the fiery call of revolutionary beacon-lights? The working classes of Russian Poland answered them in 1905. A flame of enthusiasm ran through Galicia, and every face was turned towards the East. During the next two years the Polish radicals and socialists fought the battle both against the Russian Government and against their own reactionary masters. Their aim was a Constituent Assembly at Warsaw, elected by universal suffrage to settle the future of Poland—the very terms held out to Poland in the Proclamation which the new Russia issued on 29 March, 1917. They fought the battle shoulder to shoulder with revolutionary Russia. Had the revolution of 1905 been successful and had its repercussion liberated the democratic forces in Austria-Hungary or, at least, by settling the Polish question in Russia, provided the three Western Slav nations of Austria with a common basis for an anti-Prussian foreign policy, who knows whether this war would ever have been needed? But freedom was not to come as yet. Reaction triumphed in Russia, and, as far as Poland was concerned, only so much was left of the achievements of 1905 as enabled the Polish reactionaries to negotiate with the reactionary Russian Government for a division of spoils and power. A new wave of refugees swept over Galicia—men who, having seen the collapse of the mighty Russian Revolution, began to doubt whether its victory could possibly be expected in their lifetime.

The votaries of Realpolitik from Austrian Poland were enriched by a new specious argument: all hopes built on Russian liberalism were vain; separation from Russia—that was the only hope for Poland In view of the Austro-German alliance, it was most convenient for the prætorians of the Vienna Hofburg to declare Russia the chief enemy, and to profess to believe in the possible “conversion” of the German Government. Mutatis mutandis—the same was done by the Polish would-be prætorians of the reactionary Government of Petrograd.

Which of these two cries found the greater echo in Austrian Poland? No one who has watched it can doubt that, however much the anti-German feeling was increasing in Galicia during recent years, the anti-Russian trend was still predominant in the popular feeling of the province. Galicia has always felt much more strongly with Russian Poland than with