AMID WARSAW CONTRASTS
Seething Poland--Governmental lawlessness--Overwhelming little
Poland by sheer force of numbers--Twice over the Polish frontier--A
panic of Warsaw Jews--Russian oppression--A nervous
populace--Campaign to exterminate Warsaw police--Hopeless plight of
latter--A pathetic incident--Where poverty stalks--Effect of era of
misery and chaos upon Warsovians--Traffic in white slaves--Daily
occurrences--A Warsaw hospital--Chiaroscuro in the Polish
capital--Parties of Poland--Poles traditional revolutionists--Hope
and optimism temperamental characteristics of the Polish people.
During the early summer I entered Poland twice; once from Russia, from
Bielostok in Grodno; once from the Austrian frontier. Both occasions
were memorable, because each in its own way was typical of the condition
of Poland. Bielostok was still dripping with Jewish blood spilled by the
treacherous authorities. Just outside of the town the railroad crosses a
narrow stream. In a field bordering the stream a large contingent of
soldiers were encamped, giving it the appearance of the outskirts of an
army. The bridge was guarded not by sentinels merely, but by a guard of
fighting strength. Near the railroad station on sidings were several
military trains, freight vans converted into barracks. A company of one
hundred men held the station--as if the remaining, panic-stricken Jews
were in danger of rising up and storming the troops of the Emperor. But
Russia needs to maintain this show of force. From this point clear
across the strip of territory called Poland troops were ever in
evidence.
My other entrée was from Austria, a little later, during a panic of the
Warsaw Jews. A Russian religious holiday was approaching. Sundays and
church days have long been notorious massacre days in Russia, and the
Jews dread them as a plague. The celebration of the Day of Peter and
Paul was to be signalized by a massacre of Warsaw Jews, current gossip
said. The report spread, and gained in credence. The day before the
holiday forty thousand Jews fled the city. I crossed the frontier at
Granica at midnight--was tumbled from a train into a broad customs
inspection-room, where every traveler’s baggage was closely overhauled
and all arms, tobacco, and forbidden literature confiscated, then on to
Warsaw where the spirit of unrest seemed to have possessed not only Jews
but every human being. Not that life is any the less gay in the Polish
capital, for here the music of song and dance is always in the air, but
the nerves of the populace are on edge--quivering. I stepped out of a
shop one day just as a stalwart soldier was passing by. He caught sight
of a small camera under my arm and jumped, startled, as a woman by a
mouse. Warsovians warned me not to go about the streets alone even in
broad daylight, so many casualties were daily reported. The ever-present
Cossack with his terrible _nagaika_--that barbarous lash-whip, tipped
with lead--was on every hand. Hospitals were crowded with injured and
“pogromed.” Prisons were crowded; fortresses were full, and the police
were guarded by soldiers. There were daily cases of mob violence. On
every hand evidence of military law--and on every hand evidence of
internal chaos.
If the Caucasus offers the most intricate and difficult problem of
administration in all the Russian empire, Poland presents a situation
almost as troubled and quite as hopeless of immediate adjustment.
Poland from border to border seethes with unrest and bitter hatred;
there more nearly than anywhere else in Europe is a situation
approaching the chaotic. Russia appreciates how desperate is her hold on
Poland and as a safety measure martial law is maintained universally and
continuously.
“Martial law” is a means for legitimatizing utter lawlessness on the
part of the military and police authorities, excusing the indiscriminate
use of bayonets and bullets. The example thus ingloriously set by the
officials is all too quickly followed by the people who have thrown to
the four winds all respect for law and discipline and restraint and the
battle is waged on “a fight as fight can” basis. Bloodshed, riot,
assassination, robbery, and crimes unlisted are part of each day’s work.
Ever since “bloody Sunday” in January, 1905, not one night of peace has
visited this wretched country that for so many decades was the source of
contention of half of Europe’s greatest powers. Just as the slaughter of
Father Gapon’s working-men in St. Petersburg was the signal to all
Russia to rise, so Poland also responded to that signal at that time.
With firm, deliberate intention she then entered upon a period of
sanguinary revolution which rages as fiercely to-day as it has at any
time since that fatal Sunday. Russia, appreciating the universality of
this aggressive attitude, put an army of nearly 300,000 men into the
country. Approximately 200,000 of these were soldiers and 100,000
administrative officials--all Russians--bitterly hating the Poles, who
in their turn hold dislike for official Russians, second only in
keenness to their dislike for the Germans, whom they also fear. On the
other hand, between the labor parties of each country is a strong
friendship, for, in official Russia, the workingmen of Poland, as well
as the rank and file of Russia itself, appreciate a common enemy.
Not only from hereditary wrongs does Poland suffer, but from present
oppression. The iron yoke of Russia presses heavily, and every one in
Poland is in desperate rebellion, including the children, who refuse to
go to school until the Polish language is substituted for the Russian,
and the university students, who are shut out of their university
because of the tyranny and cowardice of a government that only sees
revolution in education. Small wonder, then, that over half of the
population of Poland can neither read nor write, and that the proportion
of schools is decreasing rather than increasing. The attitude of Russia
toward Poland is that of suppression--not of rational administration. Of
what interest is it to Russia if Polish children do not go to school?
The salaries of teachers are at least saved. Warsaw has 60,000
school-less children--growing up in darkness, nurtured only by a blind
hatred of the people whose flag floats over their city. The amount of
money spent on education in Poland amounts to twelve cents per child, as
compared to $2.30 per child in Berlin.
Poland’s population is approximately 10,000,000. Nearly two thirds are
agriculturists. More than one half of this number have either no land at
all, of their own, or next to none, at best an insufficient amount to
afford them a livelihood. Industry has been demoralized and disorganized
to such an extent that wages have remained stationary for a decade while
the cost of living has doubled--and this in the face of an increasing
population. The Poles are so fiercely nationalistic. The people
[Illustration: An infantry patrol. Warsaw]
[Illustration: Three soldiers to guard each policeman. Warsaw]
of Finland have been submerged much as the people of Poland have been,
but with a very different effect. The population of Finland is rapidly
decreasing. All of her young men are going abroad--to England, to
America. Not so in Poland. In spite of an emigration to America of
nearly 50,000 in one year, Poland’s population is on the increase.
Poland’s young men stay--to fight, to starve, to suffer inquisitorial
tortures in Russian prisons.
One striking example of the warfare waged in Poland against the Russian
administration was the campaign of extermination inaugurated against the
police of Warsaw while I was in the city. Thirty-four officers and one
hundred and forty policemen were killed within a few weeks--all in broad
daylight on the public streets. Twenty-seven were shot within three
days. In the proletariat suburb of Wola there were, originally,
thirty-seven policemen. Twenty-seven of these were shot to death and ten
seriously wounded. The most extraordinary part of this unusual campaign
is that not one culprit was caught.
In America the police would long ago have taken shelter from such deadly
attacks. It is only natural that panic should possess the remaining
members of the police force in Poland’s olden capital. Some did escape,
but most found themselves in a veritable trap, from which they could not
escape. Without a passport no traveler may find a place to rest his head
at night in Russia--much less a refugee policeman. Without a passport
the frontier looms like a great, impassable Chinese wall. A single man
might escape by stealth in the night, but even policemen sometimes have
scruples about deserting their wives and families. And so these
unwilling martyrs continued their nerve-racking but senseless patrol of
Warsaw streets. Senseless because troops possessed each avenue and
alley. According to the most reliable estimates there were at least
75,000 troops quartered in the city at that time. In justice to the
military it should be said that they did their utmost for the long
suffering police, for each and every policeman who was then left had a
military guard of three infantrymen. One of the grim humors of the
revolution was to see an ordinary policeman going to his post of duty
with two soldiers following at ten paces to the rear with loaded rifles
and fixed bayonets. Then, when he took up his position of duty in the
center of the two intersecting streets, two soldiers remained at one
corner and a third at an opposite corner. For this inglorious service
the Russian government generously paid these luckless men _six dollars a
month_!
This reign of terror directed against the police department was by no
means the only evidence of turmoil and unrest in Warsaw. On every hand
were indications of a terrible blight. Beggardom here was at its worst.
Not beggardom as we know it, but infinitely worse. Public charities,
private philanthropies, day nurseries, diet kitchens, and settlements
are not known in Poland. The streets were literally lined with the lame,
the halt, the blind, the sick, the starving. I was accosted by twenty
odd during the course of a short walk from a boulevard café to my hotel
one night. Once I came upon a woman who had sunk to the pavement from
weariness--or hunger. She pressed a rude bundle under her shawl. A
_dwornik_ (janitor) was sternly though not unkindly bidding her rise up
and move on. Her dress was in rags. Her feet were bare. The old gray
shawl round her shoulders was the only trace of comfort. A passerby
extended a hand and helped her to her feet. She staggered on and we saw
that the bundle she held was a very young baby, and as the electric
light fell upon her face we realized her youth. Seventeen, perhaps, or
eighteen at most. This at past eleven o’clock. At that moment from the
café on the corner came the lively strains of “The Belle of New York.”
Up and down the boulevard as far as eye could reach were women--girls of
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, girls not beyond their teens yet old in
features, mature women, oldish, faded women--women, women, women. An
endless, ceaseless procession. It swells at twilight and diminishes
toward dawn, but ends never. But these are not like the
beggar-women--yet. Pure statistical tables arranged like a page from a
census report of the sights and scenes of one night in Warsaw would
appear absolutely incredible to unfamiliar eyes. It is almost
melodramatic in its seeming unreality. For in spite of the squalor and
the misery and the scenes, both revolting and pitiful, there is a
fascination about Warsaw, a laughing, careless air that is ever present.
Sunshine and shadow chase each other through Warsaw streets; and
sunshine and shadow have entered into the temperament of the people.
This duality is characteristic of both.
On first acquaintance Warsaw seems not unlike Paris. A smiling city of
long avenues and pleasant streets and shaded boulevards brightened at
night by brilliant cafés. The warm summer nights are none the less
delightful because martial law prevails. Music is everywhere; these
fiery, temperamental people, how they play! The very _abandon_ and
nonchalance of the Warsovians is in itself an added charm.
There is no repudiating the situation. The streets swarm with soldiers
recently returned from an ignominious war, in which they never had an
interest--released to starve upon the streets. War is not the
root-evil, but the war was largely responsible for the situation here
so far as the beggary is concerned. With so large a portion of the
able-bodied men of the country called away on unproductive campaigns of
destruction, the women and children were forced to fight the wolf
themselves. Warsaw’s traffic in prostitutes is as extensive as it is
world-wide. The total population of the city is 750,000. The number of
professional prostitutes, carrying “yellow passports” (i.e., passports
issued by the authorities to prostitutes), in the city is between fifty
and sixty thousand. It is asserted on reliable authority that there are
regularly organized companies dealing in young girls, who supply not
only Europe, but distant places, like South American capitals.
Piccadilly and Regent Street, in London, which so frequently horrify
Americans, are as nothing compared to Warsaw’s boulevards.
More than this, business was at a standstill and industry disorganized
and deteriorating. Strike following strike in the trades necessity
supports. One week the bakers were trying to get enough of the bread of
their own baking to fill the mouths of their children. Another week the
men of some other trade, but ever and always somewhere the hopeless,
heartbreaking struggle was on. Violence is an instinct with the Poles. A
few of the bakers stuck to their ovens. The result was that the early
nights of the week were characterized by riots, usually suppressed by a
volley from Cossacks’ rifles. The day I arrived in Warsaw there were
twenty-five reported clashes between the authorities and the people. The
following day there were thirty. For weeks before the hospital
ambulances had been called out on an average of thirty times a day for
casualties resulting from lawlessness--either on the part of the people
or of the authorities, for no one is guiltless here.
The wounded from a recent Jewish massacre were in a hospital on the
outskirts of the city. Driving to visit the place I inquired at my hotel
how much I should pay a cab-driver to take me there. “Must you go, sir?”
said the hotel porter. “Do not go, sir, if it is possible to avoid doing
so.”
“Why?” I asked in surprise.
“It is a dangerous road.”
“But at ten o’clock in the morning?”
“A man was killed there yesterday afternoon in daylight. Many have been
shot there recently.”
The hospital was located three quarters of an hour’s drive from the
center of the city, in a district which somewhat suggested the Bowery,
but more closely resembling Commercial Road in Whitechapel.
On the way I met cavalry patrol after patrol--Cossacks and dragoons. All
rode in “open order.” That is to say, two abreast in the center of the
road, then one at either side of the road, and so on. This was the
current precaution against bombs. Rifles were unslung and held in the
right hand ready for instant action. The advance guard of an army
scouting a battle-ground for the enemy would take no greater
precautions. A few days before there had been a fusilade directly in
front of the hospital. No one knew exactly what started it, but members
of two political parties had begun dueling in the open street. The
matter was reported to military headquarters and a special troop of
Cossacks detailed to the scene. They arrived one hour after the
incident, but having been sent out to do something and not knowing what
else to do they fired several volleys at the hospital, breaking a few
windows, but fortunately doing no other damage.
What with the injured from Warsaw riots and the wounded from the
massacre, this hospital, except for the women and children who lay
there, punctured by bullets and slashed by swords and bayonets, was not
unlike an army hospital. I found a child of four years whose leg had
been broken by a soldier’s rifle. According to a young girl who was very
bright and intelligent, she and the youngster of four and a young boy
were standing together on the doorstep of their home. A company of
soldiers were coming up the street on their mission of murder and
horrors unmentionable, when one of them deliberately fired at the trio.
The bullet struck the boy first, killing him, then the child’s leg,
breaking it, and glanced upward, lodging in the girl’s stomach.[16] To
say that these were “dangerous” persons to the Russian government is the
absolute extreme of absurdity.
Even the children have the spirit of revolt. One day every school in
Warsaw was pupil-less. The children had struck. Being Polish children
they objected to doing their lessons in Russian. But the Russian
government forbade the use of any other tongue. So the children left the
schools _en masse_. Parents were powerless to coerce attendance. The
Russian government could not turn the military upon school-boys and
girls, and so it compromised. Permission was granted for the use of
Polish in private schools. Whereupon the children entered private
schools. To-day, in Warsaw, the private schools are taxed to their
utmost capacity, while empty benches and deserted playgrounds are found
in the public schools.
When a general strike is declared in Russia Warsaw responds with a
bound. So perfect is the organization that every railroad, postal or
telegraph strike that is declared in Russia is most effectually carried
out in Poland. When the Warsovians declare a program they carry it out.
As witness, the destruction of the police force. They destroy the rank
and file, and incidentally pick off the top as well. The chief of police
was blown up as a matter of course.
The Poles are inherently violent. The same spirit which makes them
capable of great artistic achievements makes them demoniacal when goaded
beyond endurance.
To-day Warsaw prisons are full. Politicals even crowd the fortresses.
And one hears awful stories on every hand and from every conceivable
source of the torturing of prisoners. One method of extracting
information said to be commonly resorted to is to suspend prisoners by
their wrists and beat them alternately back and front until their
stomachs turn. Another is pulling out their hair, and their teeth;
starvation, giving them food but no drink; preventing their sleeping.
All of these things I have heard of from reliable people. More terrible
tortures I refrain from staining this page with by even mentioning.
Never morning wears to evening but blood is spilled in Warsaw. Never a
lull between twilight and dawn but some hellish thought finds expression
in deed. The clatter of cavalry patrols rings over the stony streets
every hour of the twenty-four. The swish of the cruel _nagaika_ in the
hands of the relentless Cossacks attends each trifling disturbance.
Sentinels finger their rifles at intervals only of yards--rifles,
bayonet-pointed, always ready. And yet--Warsaw is fair to see, with its
public buildings, small parks, dashes of fresh green here and
there--even flowers, richly blooming beds that scent the warm air and
seem to bring a breath of the open into the town. Flower-girls, too,
children with daisies, and roses, and pinks; a boutonnière for m’sieur,
a bright nosegay for milady. Quite a feature of the city indeed. And
always the music. The violin, the ’cello, the piano. The weird and
intense music of Poland alternating with the flippant, laughing melodies
that America sends abroad. Typically Warsovian, all this. The beautiful,
the careless, the jaunty ever to the fore. And underneath, the dire, the
grim, the intense. Like an animal that fixes its teeth in a death-grip
in the throat of its antagonist, so the Poles of Warsaw have set their
teeth toward the heart of Russian despotism. There will be no letting
go--no truce--one or the other will go under.
Without a single great leader (Russia watches too closely for one to
rise), without definite ideals, wild, passionate, desperate, the Poles
naturally do not all work through the same channels. They split into
factions and parties, each striving for Russia’s overthrow, or Poland’s
advancement, but each in its own way. Consequently party clashes
engender bitterness and hatred within. The parties of Poland are as
numerous as the tongues heard at Babel. Not all equally strong, but
several there are of large influence--each pledged to one definite
object, and if all were ultimately to succeed, the result would be the
regeneration of Poland through extinction were it not for their saving
policy of uniting in time of great crises, magnanimously putting aside
party differences for the salvation of the whole people. Yet their
methods for the time are party methods and the situation in all its
strange phases is only explained through an analysis of the more
important parties and influential political organization.
The Jewish Socialist _Bund_ is the most widely known, and perhaps the
most powerful of these organizations, though not numerically the
largest. Nor is the _Bund_ a
[Illustration: “Bomb order”]
strictly Polish organization. It extends into the Baltic provinces, and
through those parts to south Russia which are included in the Jewish
pale. But in Poland is its center, and in Poland is it most active. It
is the fighting organization of the Jews. It aims to combat Jewish
persecution in every way--politically, pacifically, terroristically, and
from behind barricades when opportunity offers. This is a striking
development, for traditionally the Jews are not a fighting people.
Accustomed to centuries of persecution they have learned to meekly bow
to the blows showered upon their heads--or to flee. It is only during
the more recent years of the Russian revolution that the Jews have
produced active rebels in formidable numbers. The Russian terrorists now
number many Jews, and the _Bund_ counts thousands of members, hundreds
of whom are ready to perform terroristic acts when occasion demands. So
powerfully menacing has this organization become that Austria and
Germany both fear of its spreading across the frontier and of leaguing
the young Jewish men and women of those countries into active Jewish
defense organization. If this does happen, Austria and Germany may blame
the blind, vicious government of Russia--none other. Fifty years ago a
series of so-called “temporary” laws were enacted in Russia applicable
to Jews--laws destined to arouse the very spirit of revolt which has
culminated in the _Bund_.[17]
The Nationalist party is numerically the strongest in Poland. First,
because it was in opposition to the Duma. It appreciates that Poland’s
plight has no connection with Russia’s internal difficulties, so the
Nationalist party opposed the first Duma on principle--simply because it
was Russian. This was the clerical party, the Jesuitical party, for
Poland continues to be Roman Catholic. The nationalists seek to
establish the Polish language throughout the country and to gain a
Polish administration. Being under clerical influences the Nationalist
party is anti-Semitic.
Then follow two middle-class, bourgeois parties, each of considerable
strength. The National Democratic party, and the Progressive Democratic
party. The National Democrats are opportunists. The present régime is to
them intolerable. Any kind of a change they hope will improve the
situation. A party of despair, without ideals, but with some energy to
continue fighting--for anything. The Progressive Democrats, on the other
hand, represent the _intelligenzia_. They challenge comparison with the
liberals of France and the free-thinkers of Germany. Distinctly a
radical, if not a revolutionary group, they work for the autonomy of
Poland under a Russian federation. They have some thought for the
economic progress of the country, and are not unfriendly to the Jews.
They want free schools, and universal suffrage.
The public schools in Poland under Russia, as if not heavily enough
saddled with impositions and restrictions, are heavily taxed. A Polish
child to attend a public school must study in a language not his mother
tongue, must learn from a teacher who is a foreigner--to him--and who is
utterly unsympathetic--and for these and adjunct privileges the Russian
government exacts from each child fifty rubles ($25) per year.
There are all degrees of socialists in Poland. If all of the socialist
parties in Poland were to combine there would be formed a party of such
overwhelming strength that it would sweep all the others along with it.
But socialism without factions would not be recognized by its best
friends. The _Bund_ is socialistic and entirely Jewish. The Christian
Socialists are socialists but anti-Semitic. This latter organization is
made up of a more or less dilettante element, kid-gloved radicals,
tailor-made revolutionists.
To offset the Christian socialists are the realists. Formerly this was
the great reactionary party but of late it has become the party of the
landed proprietors. Not a formidable organization, yet the one
monarchical conservative voice, crying in the wilderness of radicalism.
The labor movement in Poland, while a long way in advance of Russia, is
yet leagues behind Europe. Still, the labor party nucleus are a grim
lot, and they have it within their power to more completely paralyze all
Poland for a limited time than any other party or organization. There
are more than 300,000 factory or mine-workers in Poland, and as they
have learned from their repeated experiences, the general strike is a
most effective weapon. When not a factory-wheel turns; when the mines
are left to flood; when the railroad lines are exposed to rust, and
telegraph and telephone wires stretch useless across the miles of
unhappy country, every human being in Poland feels the strain and
stress. Europe takes fright and St. Petersburg cowers in panic. Three
times has this taken place and each time with a similar result. So much
for the labor party and its method of revolt.
There remains one large party. This is the party whose efforts are above
all others propagandistic. The Polish Party Socialist, the “P. P. S.” as
it is commonly called. If heredity counts in the abstract realm of
politics this party should be _the_ socialist party of Poland. It is the
direct descendant of the first socialist organization established in
Poland in 1875. Now, as then, socialism progresses by stealth. To admit
that one holds socialistic opinions is to commit oneself to prison. In
its earliest beginnings it was purely intellectual, but in the eighties
it spread to the proletariat. Marxist doctrines were the regularly
accepted gospel of these socialists. With the growth of nihilism in
Russia, Polish socialism came to absorb something of the policy of
violence and even the terrorism it still maintains. The P. P. S. as it
exists to-day was definitely organized thirteen years ago. Twelve years
ago it undertook the printing and circulating of a newspaper. At the
outset this paper appeared only occasionally. But as its circle of
readers extended it was published more regularly. Now it is a daily.
This record represents one of the most remarkable “underground”
achievements in Russia, for the police have never been able to discover
it, or to suppress it, though to be found with a copy of it on one’s
person means arrest. In spite of this it is one of the easiest papers to
procure in Warsaw. Boys sell it stealthily on the streets. I asked a
hotel porter where I could get a copy, and he promptly took one from his
inside pocket and gave it to me. During the past year several hundred
people have been arrested for no other offense than reading this paper.
It is called _Robotnik_--“Laborer.”
The Polish Party Socialist, besides promulgating and propagating German
socialist doctrines, works for the decentralization of the Russian
empire. A United States of Russia, with state control and autonomy for
Poland. The prime differences between this party and the Social
Democrats--the powerful Russian proletariat organization--is that the
latter demand an out-and-out republic, modeled on France.
And against all of these parties is Russia struggling in her frantic
effort to hold Poland subject. It is commonly supposed that the conquest
of the Caucasus which has been going on for a generation was without a
parallel in the Russian empire. But in Poland the situation is equally
grim. Poland carries Russia’s yoke because coerced by merciless force.
But never for a day is the fight regarded as finished.
The idea of revolution is more universally understood in Poland than in
Russia. The Russian peasants want “land and liberty.” The Russian
proletariat want a reorganized industrial life. The Poles want freedom
from Russian oppression--freedom to worship God in their own way. To-day
there are several hundred thousand legally illegitimate children in
Poland because the parents were united according to the rites of the
Roman Catholic Church instead of by the Greek Church, as stipulated by
intolerant Russia. They want freedom to choose teachers for their young
who are of their own blood and who speak their own tongue. They want
freedom to select their own administrative officials, and to make their
own laws. And for all these things they are actively and openly
fighting. They do not expect to win them by a single _coup_. They are
resigned to a prolonged fight. The people of Poland remember that the
French Revolution lasted twenty years and the Austrian uprising of ’48
almost equally long. They understand that the progress of revolutions is
like unto the onward roll of the sea--a succession of waves. The sea of
revolution has washed completely over Poland and now the waves are
mounting higher and higher. There are moments of quiet and apparent
retreat, but these are growing fewer and briefer. In the grimness of the
people is a dire significance that Russia has already recognized.
Just now is the reign of chaos. So far as one can see, Poland is in the
grip of the old middle-class conception of anarchy--anarchy stripped of
all its philosophy and idealism; stark, black, fearful. Yet the great
underlying dynamic of this terrible unrest is a great hope.