Political reflections force themselves on you in this subjugated but by no means pacified country. It is in vain you tell yourself that the constant factors of climate, soil, race, and religion are of greater importance for the true understanding of a country, city, or people than passing political incidents and systems. You cannot emancipate yourself from politics in Poland. This is not a country like German Alsace, where, according to Moltke, a guard must be kept for fifty years, after which, like the German country it originally was, it will again become and remain German. Poland is a country forcibly subjected and conquered, and you feel it when walking the streets and in the fashionable hotel, where the national sorrow is generously moistened with champagne at the tables of the aristocracy even at the early breakfast hour. However, it is not necessary for us to be more passionately patriotic and political than these champagne counts, and we must attempt to secure something of the street scenes without becoming involved too deeply in political problems. Whenever I come to a town I ask myself, Why was it built here and not elsewhere? With the help of a little imagination one can understand even to-day how Warsaw came into existence. It was at the head of a bridge. The word "Warsaw" is believed to be derived from the word "Warszain" (on the height). So the city lies at a height of about forty metres on the bank of the Vistula, fully half a kilometre wide at this place. An elevation of forty metres on the immediate bank of a broad stream offered, at the time of its foundation in the twelfth century, a natural fortification, and the merchants who came up from the sea to sell their wares to the semi-barbarous inhabitants of the plain may have found perhaps on this height a frequent protection from the attacks of the plainsmen. Later the fort became a city and culture and luxury made their appearance, offering to the tamed dwellers of the plains and to the landed proprietors from far and near the opportunity to squander the proceeds of their crops. The numerous churches did not fare badly in the days of penitence then. To-day, Warsaw is still a fine city of broad streets paved with wooden blocks, with rows of stores on both sides, prominent among which are the richly equipped jewelry establishments. Carriage traffic is considerable, even though it cannot compare with that in St. Petersburg. Just now the main artery of the city, the Vistula, is closed. The stream is frozen almost over its entire width and ravens croak I have no faith in a Polish kingdom. There may be a Polish revolution to-morrow, perhaps, when the Russians shall meet defeat in eastern Asia, as the Russian patriots hope, but a Polish kingdom there will never be. It is quite apparent how the influence of the times is changing the entire social structure of the people. No nation can maintain itself without a middle class, and Poland still has no middle class. The material for such a class, the strong Jewish population, has been so ground down that a half-century would not be sufficient for its restoration and the Russian rÉgime of to-day is disposed to anything rather than to the uplifting and the education of the Polish Jewry. It is stated that there are in Warsaw a quarter of a million Jews, a few well-to-do people among them, who have hastened, for the most part, to transform themselves into "Poles of the Mosaic faith," without And yet, to be just, one should compare this cheerless Polish-Jewish proletariat with its immediate environment—the Polish peasants and the common people. Here one would still find a plus of virtues on the Jewish side. The wretched Polish peasant
Goethe's verse applies not only to the Italians, for whom it was intended; it applies also to Poland and Russia, where less faith is attached to statements than is customary with us, and it applies, above all, to the merchant classes of all nations who are wont to make their living by overreaching their neighbors. There is a wide gulf between the development of commercial ethics, as they are understood with us and in England, and the tricks and devices of petty trade no matter of what nation. But the Jew in Poland and in Russia has been and still is being driven, in great measure, into a class of wretched petty traders; and the law of the land forces back into the pale of settlement by drastic The Jewish section is the "partie Hortense" of the beautiful Polish capital; the Jewish misery is a shameful stain on Polish rule and its Nemesis. All the five continents must have their misery and toil, and they need a firm, all-embracing humanity to relieve them of this contagious wretchedness, this residue of centuries of depravity. But for Poland and Russia the humane solution of the Jewish question is simply a life-question. |