Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/224

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS cause, the work which providence accomplishes without other arms than its ideas for the regeneration of the people and the fraternity of the human race.

As Poles you have spoken admirably. As for us it is our duty to speak as Frenchmen. "We must both of us fulfil our respective duties. As Poles you are justly impatient to fly to the land of your fathers, and to respond to the appeal which the already liberated portion of Poland has made to her generous sons. We can only applaud this sentiment and furnish, as you desire, all those pacific means which will aid the Poles in returning to their country, and can only rejoice at the commencement of independence at Posen.

We, as Frenchmen, have not to consider the interests of Poland alone; we have to consider the universality of that European policy which corresponds to all the horizons of France and all those interests of liberty of which the French Republic is the second outbreak, and we trust he most glorious and the last, in Europe. The importance of these interests, the gravity of these resolutions, render it impossible for the provisional government of the Republic to surrender into the hands of any partial nationality—any party in a nation, however sacred its cause may be—the responsibility and freedom of its resolutions.

If the policy toward Poland, forced upon us under the monarchy, be no longer the line of