fidelity to control and guide the sentiment of the nations, and their
union remained as a pure affirmation of the national will." The Grand
Duchy of Lithuania and its Ruthenian Provinces retained their statutes,
their own administration, and their own political institutions. That
those institutions in the course of time tended to assimilation with the
Polish form was not the result of any pressure, but simply of the
superior character of Polish civilisation.

Even after Poland lost its independence this alliance and this union
remained firm in spirit and fidelity. All the national movements towards
liberation were initiated in the name of the whole mass of people
inhabiting the limits of the old Republic, and all the Provinces took
part in them with complete devotion. It is only in the last generation
that efforts have been made to create a tendency towards separation,
which would indeed serve no one but Poland's common enemies. And,
strangely enough, it is the internationalists, men who professedly care
nothing for race or country, who have set themselves this task of
disruption, one can easily see for what sinister purpose. The ways of
the internationalists may be dark, but they are not inscrutable.

From the same source no doubt there will flow in the future a poisoned
stream of hints of a reconstituted Poland being a danger to the races
once so closely associated within the territories of the Old Republic.
The old partners in "the Crime" are not likely to forgive their victim
its inconvenient and almost shocking obstinacy in keeping alive. They
had tried moral assassination before and with some small measure of
success, for, indeed, the Polish question, like all living reproaches,
had become a nuisance. Given the wrong, and the apparent impossibility
of righting it without running risks of a serious nature, some moral
alleviation may be found in the belief that the victim had brought its