utonic Knights, a
German crusading order.

The Germans drove out the hostile neighbors, promptly taking control of
their lands. Then Poland learned that she had even worse enemies to
fear in those she had called to help her. She watched them build up
military power to conquer her own lands. But by joining with the
Lithuanians, she managed at length to defeat the Germans at the famous
battle of Tannenberg in 1410.

For over three hundred years the kingdom possessed great power. But at
last it again began to weaken, and the year 1772 "saw the beginning of
the end." The three great nations, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, then
joined against Poland and began to divide the kingdom among themselves.
By 1795 Poland had ceased to exist as a nation.

The terrible misfortunes of the Polish people under these hostile
foreign powers served really to bind them together with one common
purpose--to win back the kingdom and to reestablish a free country.
This was their dream.

When the World War came, the Polish people in many lands, especially in
the United States, volunteered for service on the French front. On
June 22, 1918, the first division of Polish troops in France was
presented with flags at a solemn ceremony, and listened to an address
by the French president. Soon large numbers of Poles were fighting the
Austrians and Germans in Italy and in Russia, although they knew that
capture meant court-martial and death, since Austria and Germany
considered them deserters, as they indeed were. The supreme commander
of Polish forces, General Josef Haller, had been a colonel in the
Austrian army. But he decided to desert the Austrian army to lead an
"Iron Brigade" of Poles against the enemies of freedom.

Eighty-eight officers and twenty-six privates in his regiment were
captured by the Austrians, court-martialed, and sentenced to death.
When offered pardon by the Emperor Karl, they refused, saying, "We are
soldiers of the Polish Nation. The Austrian government has no right to
grant us pardon even as it has no more right to inflict punishment upon
us than upon the soldiers of France and England."

Facing death, these men wrote to the Polish Parliamentary Club in
Vienna, their reasons for desertion,--namely, the unfair treatment at
the hands of the Austrians and their love for Poland. They had heard a
rumor that the Polish organization was about to secure a more liberal
sentence for them by agreeing to the cession of cer