thieves, haunted also the Cabinets of Europe, waved
indecently its bloodstained robes in the solemn atmosphere of Council-
rooms, where congresses and conferences sit with closed windows. It
would not be exorcised by the brutal jeers of Bismarck and the fine
railleries of Gorchakov.

As a Polish friend observed to me some years ago: "Till the year '48 the
Polish problem has been to a certain extent a convenient rallying-point
for all manifestations of liberalism. Since that time we have come to be
regarded simply as a nuisance. It's very disagreeable."

I agreed that it was, and he continued: "What are we to do? We did not
create the situation by any outside action of ours. Through all the
centuries of its existence Poland has never been a menace to anybody, not
even to the Turks, to whom it has been merely an obstacle."

Nothing could be more true. The spirit of aggressiveness was absolutely
foreign to the Polish temperament, to which the preservation of its
institutions and its liberties was much more precious than any ideas of
conquest. Polish wars were defensive, and they were mostly fought within
Poland's own borders. And that those territories were often invaded was
but a misfortune arising from its geographical position. Territorial
expansion was never the master-thought of Polish statesmen. The
consolidation of the territories of the _serenissime_ Republic, which
made of it a Power of the first rank for a time, was not accomplished by
force. It was not the consequence of successful aggression, but of a
long and successful defence against the raiding neighbours from the East.
The lands of Lithuanian and Ruthenian speech were never conquered by
Poland. These peoples were not compelled by a series of exhausting wars
to seek safety in annexation. It was not the will of a prince or a
political intrigue that brought about the union. Neither was it fear.
The slowly-matured view of the economical and social necessities and,
before all, the ripening moral sense of the masses were the motives that
induced the forty three representatives of Lithuanian and Ruthenian
provinces, led by their paramount prince, to enter into a political
combination unique in the history of the world, a spontaneous and
complete union of sovereign States choosing deliberately the way of
peace. Never was strict truth better expressed in a political instrument
than in the preamble of the first Union Treaty (1413). It begins with