Page:The New Europe - Volume 3.djvu/284

 Posnania. Geographically, western Galicia is part of Russian Poland, a strip of land cut off at its base, for the Carpathians are the natural and ethnographical southern frontier of Poland. With Posnania, the centre of the Polish districts of Germany, Galicia has no frontier in common. Galicia remained continually in touch with the revolutionary movements of Russian Poland; ever since 1830 the most active and most vigorous elements from Russian Poland, when defeated in battle or caught in conspiracies, sought and found an asylum in Galicia—the anti-Russian interests of the Austrian Government securing to these fighters for liberty what Habsburg principles would otherwise never have conceded. The struggle of the Prussian Poles against German oppression was no less bitter but never culminated in violent outbreaks, and never drove its champions into exile. The fight against Tsardom was thus eternally before the eyes of the Austrian Poles in the persons of those who had waged it, whilst the systematic struggle against German economic and linguistic aggression did not appeal to them in an equally visible manner. Also, the character which the struggle against Tsarism produced in those who participated in it made the stronger appeal to popular imagination. In the slow, everyday fight against the Germans, the Poles of Posnania have acquired the virtues of hard labour and good management, and have gained in determination; they have become economically sound and vigorous, and have achieved a degree of democratic development unequalled in any other part of Poland. But, unfortunately, men learn from their enemies almost more than from their friends. Pious Christians scalping or impaling their enemies or revolutionaries using the very methods of terrorism from which they have suffered, are only outstanding illustrations of that rule. The Poles of Posnania have paid heavily for what they have learnt in the struggle against the Germans; they have become a narrow, uninspired and uninspiring petite bourgeoisie which, since about 1850, has failed to produce any intellectual movement, and from which its poets and artists fled in self-defence. On the other hand, Russian Poland, in spite of its official political representatives, has preserved the great traditions of the fighters for liberty. Intellectual leaders and heroes arose to fight and suffer in common with the Russian revolutionaries. The glamour of an heroic legend has surrounded