usy with Polish and Russian affairs
can therefore, without much difficulty, imagine how many young Polish
hearts are now beating and burning with hope, expectation and the most
noble aspirations.

Nevertheless, the state of affairs in Russian Poland is at present more
desperate than it has ever been before, during war and revolt; and this
is not due to the pressure of the conditions or the horror of the
situation, but is due to the Poles themselves, to the overstimulation
of the national feeling which sends forth its breath of madness all over
Europe and now whirls round in Polish brains to drive out magnanimity
and humanity, not to speak of reason, which, on the whole, has no
jubilee in Europe in the year 1914.

I dare truthfully say that for no other people have I felt the
enthusiasm that I have felt for the Poles. I have revealed this feeling
at a time when they were not the order of the day, and only very few
shared my sentiments. I pronounced this feeling long ago, but it had
slight effect in drawing the attention of the Poles to my writings about
them or in winning their thanks. The Poles did not discover my book
about them till ten years after it had appeared, and when it had been by
chance translated into German. To write in Danish is as a rule to write
in water.

It would be very ungrateful of me, on this occasion, when I am obliged
to use sharp words to the Poles, not to remember the indescribable
affection and kindness they have shown me in Russian Poland as well as
in Austrian Poland. Among them I have found quite incomparable friends.

For a long time I have therefore refused to say an unkind, not to
mention an offensive word. As far back as in 1898 I refused so
absolutely to make myself the advocate of the Ruthenians against them
that the Ruthenian leaders became my bitter enemies, who never tired of
attacking me, and I was mute as a fish when Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, not
long before his death, upon application of the Ruthenians, attacked the
Poles, fortunately for them with such unreasonable exaggerations that
the attacks did no harm. (Bjoernson maintained that the Pole as such was
the devil himself as the Middle Ages had imagined him.) I knew better
than Bjoernson what might be said against electioneering and pressure on
electors in Galicia, but I remained silent because I considered it
unworthy to attack a people which was in such a difficult position and
which was able to defend many minor injustic