Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/101

SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR empire which tries to wipe it out. It can never be wiped out. Crushed and trodden on it may be, as Austria has crushed and trodden on the soul of Austrian Poland, and as Germany has crushed and trodden on the soul of Prussian Poland, when they have fallen so low in the scale of civilized peoples as to flog Polish school- children for refusing to learn their catechism and say their prayers in a language which they cannot understand. But to kill the soul of a nation is impossible. The German Chancellor could not do that when he violated the body of Belgium. And though Warsaw has fallen the fatuous Prince Leopold of Bavaria, with his preposterous proclamations, cannot kill the soul of Poland.

At Cracow in 1892 I tried to buy for one of my children the little Polish national cap, but after a vain search for it through many shops (where I was generally suspected of being a spy for the Austrian police), the cap was brought to me at night, in my private room, by shopkeepers who had been afraid to sell it openly in the day. At Wieliezhe, I, with some forty persons of various nationalities (including the usual contingent of detectives), descended the immense and marvellous salt-mine which is now used as a show place for visitors. After passing, by the flare of torches, down long galleries of underground workings, we were plunged into darkness by a rush of wind over a subterranean Rh