people can suffer at the hands of a
conquering government, and were it not that the young Tzar of Russia
has done away, either by public ukase or private advice, with the
worst of the wrongs his father permitted to be put upon the Poles, I
could not bear to listen to their recitals.

Politics, as a rule, make little impression upon me. Guide-books are a
bore, and histories are unattractive, they are so dry and accurate. My
father's grief at my lack of essential knowledge is perennial and
deep-seated. But, somehow, facts are the most elusive things I have to
contend with. I can only seem to get a firm grasp on the imaginary. Of
course, I know the historical facts in this case, but it does not
sound personally pathetic to read that Russia, Prussia, and Austria
divided Poland between them.

But to be here in Russia, in what was once Poland, visiting the
families of the Polish nobility; to see their beautiful home-life,
their marvellous family affection, the respect they pay to their
women; to feel all the charm of their broad culture and noble
sympathy for all that makes for the general good, and then to hear the
story of their oppression, is to feel a personal ache in the heart for
their national burdens.

It does not sound as if a grievous hardship were being put upon a
conquered people to read in histories or guide-books that Prussia is
colonizing her part of Poland with Germans--selling them land for
almost nothing in order to infuse German blood, German language,
German customs into a conquered land. It does not touch one's
sympathies very much to know that Austria is the only one of the three
to give Poland the most of her rights, and in a measure to restore her
self-respect by allowing her representation in the Reichstag and by
permitting Poles to hold office.

But when you come to Russian Poland and know that in the province of
Lithuania--which was a separate and distinct province until a prince
of Lithuania fell in love with and married a queen of Poland, and the
two countries were joined--Poles are not allowed to buy one foot of
land in the country where they were born and bred, are not permitted
to hold office even when elected, are prohibited from speaking their
own language in public, are forbidden to sing their Polish hymns, or
to take children in from the streets and teach them in anything but
Russian, and that every one is taught the Greek religion, then this
colonization becomes a burning question. T