nursed through more than a hundred years of suffering and oppression.

Through most of these years, and especially since 1830, Poland (I use
this expression since Poland exists as a spiritual entity to-day as
definitely as it ever existed in her past) has put her faith in the
Western Powers. Politically it may have been nothing more than a
consoling illusion, and the nation had a half-consciousness of this. But
what Poland was looking for from the Western Powers without
discouragement and with unbroken confidence was moral support.

This is a fact of the sentimental order. But such facts have their
positive value, for their idealism derives from perhaps the highest kind
of reality. A sentiment asserts its claim by its force, persistence and
universality. In Poland that sentimental attitude towards the Western
Powers is universal. It extends to all classes. The very children are
affected by it as soon as they begin to think.

The political value of such a sentiment consists in this, that it is
based on profound resemblances. Therefore one can build on it as if it
were a material fact. For the same reason it would be unsafe to
disregard it if one proposed to build solidly. The Poles, whom
superficial or ill-informed theorists are trying to force into the social
and psychological formula of Slavonism, are in truth not Slavonic at all.
In temperament, in feeling, in mind, and even in unreason, they are
Western, with an absolute comprehension of all Western modes of thought,
even of those which are remote from their historical experience.

That element of racial unity which may be called Polonism, remained
compressed between Prussian Germanism on one side and the Russian
Slavonism on the other. For Germanism it feels nothing but hatred. But