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made Voltaire rejoice. The unanimous hosannas with which to-day the human conscience greets Poland were then to be found only on the lips of the Popes, and very weak was their echo.

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In three stages the crime was accomplished beneath the powerless observation of the Church. Against Poland and against the Church two of the robbers got on marvellously together. Berlin provided schismatic Czarism with splendid organizers of spiritual dictatorship. Under Catherine one of them was a foreign philosopher by the name of Bulgari, a former courtier of Frederic II. Under Alexander I it was a Stanislas Siestrencewicz, a former student of Calvinist theology, then a Prussian officer, then a churchman, of whom Joseph de Maistre said: If I had absolutely to touch the hand of this man I should first put on a buff leather glove.' In the last quarter of the nineteenth century it was Constantin Petrovitch von Kauffmann, who had passed over from German Protestantism to Russian orthodoxy to become the barefaced agent of the 'forced conversions.' The spirit of persecution against Rome, in order to be let loose in Russia, gathered together in Prussia its most trustworthy arms and its cleverest agents. Austria, calm and correct, and publicly indifferent, let things take their course.

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'Europe,' exclaimed Gratry, is in a state of mortal sin.' The sinner was ill at ease, felt herself troubled. It was an uncomfortable balance that relied on a crime for its preservation. Crushed under the weight of Russia, of Prussia, and of Austria the Polish people reminded Montalembert of the giant of the fable whom one had thought annihilated in being crushed under Etna. Far from being annihilated every movement of his made the earth tremble and eruptions break out. There is the perfect symbol of Poland; every movement of her heroic heart shakes Europe.' This Polish soul, so long faithful to her own sufferings, without the power or the will to die, was esteemed and admired. In critical moments of European conflicts the alliance of this august_impotence was sought. The honour of treating her as a Power was done to her. The Europe of 1812 saw Napoleon and Alexander dispute with each other over the adhesion of Poland, so anxious were they 'to enlist a great moral force.' The Europe of 1914 heard Prussia, Austria, and Czarism make advances to Poland which had not always

the value of promises, but which recognized implicitly her right to a new life, to something more than a mere survival.

'The question of Poland,' said Talleyrand to Metternich at the time of the Congress of Vienna, 'is the first, the most eminently European.' But woe to the Polish soul if she sought to raise this question. Prophets, who were consolers, then arose. Intoxicated by the national martyrdom they announced that the rebirth of Poland would mark a rebirth of entire humanity. As at the resurrection of Christ,' prophesied Mickiewicz, 'human sacrifices_ceased over the whole earth, so, at the resurrection of Poland, wars will end in Christianity.' This was Polish Messianism. In making the very destinies of humanity centre round the destinies of Poland the imaginations of these prophets seemed to defy history. And diplomats said: that is all a dream. But some dreams are idea-forces that call forth the reality of to-day only in order to quell that of the

morrow.

The Catholic Church always looked with gratitude and pride on Poland's past, her long struggle for the Christian name, against Islam, against the Tartars, against the pagans. Pope Paul V spoke of Poland as a sanctuary of heroism, the very soil of which was sanctified. The Church did not believe that this sanctuary could be for ever profaned, and the rôle that Poland had played in the history of the Catholic past made her not less worthy of being resurrected than did the mission to which she believed herself called in the future European evolutions. Happy and unfortunate Poland! She had the happiness, in the name even of her misfortunes, to raise up during the whole of the nineteenth century a kind of sacred union between Roman Catholicism and European liberalism. She was their common dependant. They disputed over their client only in order to seek the means to help her most effectively. 'You, priests, are too lukewarm for her,' said Edgar Quinet one day. And Mgr. Dupanloup replied to him: You are always herding the clergy behind the altar, and you call them out when it suits you; you load them with impediments, then you reproach them for not acting.' The Church, through this eloquent voice, that was frightened neither by the idea nor the word of liberty, asked her enemies to liberate-herself so that she might be better able to free Poland and to struggle, there as elsewhere, against

the work of Voltaire. That was the great humiliation of the nineteenth century, to be so unanimous in its forum internum in favour of Poland, and so useless in bringing her relief.

There was, however, one Power that clung with a cruel feeling of powerlessness to the Polish sorrows, and that sometimes herself felt this sorrow. This Power was the Holy See. Let us listen to Gregory XVI at the Consistory of 1842. For ten years he had suffered from the fact that in threatening him with the deportation into Siberia of all the Bishops, Russia had driven him into a corner to send to them, in a famous brief, counsels of obedience. No doubt, shortly afterwards, in two notes he made known his grievance to the Czar's Government with regard to the attacks made on their liberty. The world knew about his brief, but did not know about his notes. For several years no Pole could cross the Pontifical frontier without a Russian passport. Some thought that the Pope had closed the door on the Poles, who were weeping. But the aged Pontiff, gathering together his Cardinals, confided to them his paternal sorrows. He said to them :

Nobody knows what we have done incessantly to protect and defend the inviolable rights of the Catholic Church in all the territories subject to the Russian nation. The enemies of the Holy See, by a hereditary fraud that is characteristic of them, have spread the report in these territories where the faithful are gathered in large numbers that, forgetful of our sacred ministry, we have covered by our silence the great ills with which they are overwhelmed, and that thus we had almost abandoned the cause of the Catholic religion. We have almost become a stumbling-block, the stone of scandal, for a great portion of the Lord's flock.

It was a man grieving over his weakness and grieving that weaknesses were imputed to him who spoke, desirous to vindicate the Papacy, to vindicate God, from having for one moment failed Poland. The promises that in a memorable audience he snatched from Nicholas I, those that later the Government of Alexander II gave to Pius IX, remained a dead letter, and Pius IX, in 1864, in another consistory, made in turn, in the name even of his responsibilities, the range of his protests be heard. Poland then was abominably tortured. In Europe the press was uneasy, brochures were multiplied, but the sovereigns were silent. Pius IX broke the silence :

I do not wish to have to cry out one day in presence of the Eternal Judge: Vae mihi quia tacui. A ruler, who calls himself an Eastern

Catholic, oppresses and kills his Catholic subjects, driven by his persecutions to insurrection. Under pretext of suppressing this insurrection he extirpates Catholicism, he deports entire populations into the most northern parts where they are deprived of all religious help, and replaces them by adventurers of other religions. He persecutes and massacres priests, he banishes Bishops, and heterodox though he is, yet he deprives of his jurisdiction a Bishop lawfully installed. . . . And let nobody say that in rising up against the ruler of the north I foment European revolution; I know well how to distinguish from revolution reasonable right and liberty, and if I protest against him it is to satisfy my conscience.

Thus did Pius IX protest; and before the Parliament of Turin a deputy named Brofferio, who was by no means a lover of priests, confessed quite simply:

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When I see an old man, worn-out, an invalid, without resources, without an army, on the brink of the grave, cursing a ruler because he has throttled his people, I feel myself moved in my whole being, I think myself carried back to the time of Gregory VII, I bow and I applaud.

III-THE CHURCH AND THE POLISH SOUL-THE
RESURRECTION

Sustained by the words of the Popes Poland did not despair. She learned to suffer as long as it was necessary. She considered herself a martyr, but not a dead one. She introduced into the bearing of her troubles the Catholic philosophy of suffering; she changed her disasters into a vocation. And the more the Church saw this people suffer the more she felt the suffering her own. Garibaldi would not forgive the Poles for their Catholicism. 'Cease,' he wrote to them, 'to give your heroic struggle a religious character, which alienates sympathy from you and provokes bloody reactions against you.' Poland despised these bloody reactions and preserved her soul.

Montalembert in 1830, at the time that he thought of setting out for Warsaw as a volunteer of the Church and of the nations, had congratulated the Poles for showing to the world what this Catholic faith was which was being relegated to the tomb, and what the world could expect from it for its liberty. Even when 'the horse of the Cossack bathed its feet in the blood of the sons of Sobieski,' these remained witnesses of what the Catholic conscience was worth and of what it could do for the freedom of nations. Come what might, they had done all that they could. It was certainly an austere rôle, but Poland accepted it and knew, thanks to Montalembert, how to charge herself

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with it. 'The tribune, when you ascend it,' wrote the Anonymous Poet of Poland later to him, is changed into a kind of spiritual pulpit, and I know not what memory of the Church of the Middle Ages, thundering against tyrants and freeing the nations, is called up suddenly in the enthusiastic soul.' And the Anonymous Poet, commenting on the predestination of his people, made it consist in introducing by the strength of its sorrows the spirit of the Gospel into the affairs of this world, in showing to political unbelievers and Pharisees, who for centuries have not ceased to crucify Christ again on all the crosses of history, that nationality is an imperishable thing on earth.' Poland furnished a proof of this, and was contented with these words as with a title of nobility. The Anonymous Poet again meditated:

In order that the kingdom that every day we ask our Heavenly Father may come in this world, all men, even the ministers of religion, must become real Christians. That can take place only when the principle of national existence has been recognized as inviolable-inviolable because it comes from God. Thus Poland, whilst accomplishing her Slav mission, accomplishes another that is universal. It brings a new political and social truth to the conscience of the human race.

It is [says M. Goyau] to her very sufferings that she owes this eloquence and this fertility; she spoke aloud such profound things, because she was provisionally erased from the number of the States. A people is successfully invincible when each and everyone of its successive defeats brands it with the sign of election, of which it can be proud as others would be of victory; the Church knew how to advise Poland to remain a force, and Poland accepted it with all her temperament, with all her faith.

'The blood that we shed,' she sang, 'will raise up our country and unite it to that of Jesus Christ.' And Mickiewicz, unbeliever as he was, speaking to a Polish mother, said: "Run and throw yourself on your knees before the statue of Our Lady of Dolours; think of amusing your child only with the instruments of its future pains.' The little Polish child, the pupil of such a discipline, of the desires of Christ, of the deeds of Christ, was often more ready to suffer than to struggle. And Adam Czartoryski, on the eve of his death, implored his country: Do not come down from this height on which the nations and the rulers of the earth are forced to respect thee. Reject temptations to anger. Remember that it requires more heroism to go towards death in baring one's breast than to defend one's life, sword in hand.'

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