Chapter XIII: 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

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

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.