Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/The Polish mystery - the national government
THE POLISH MYSTERY—THE
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Some weeks ago I was travelling through Poland. I had made the journey from Berlin with some Polish ladies, dressed in what, I believe, would properly be described as half-mourning, the sort of dress that a widow might wear whose bereavement already sat lightly on her. Amongst other articles of attire, my friends wore pearl-grey gloves, which showed off with much precision the delicate smallness of their hands. On approaching Warsaw I saw that these gloves were removed, hidden in their reticules with a half-suppressed sigh, and replaced by sombre black gloves, which undoubtedly were not equally attractive. On my inquiring the cause of this change, I was told that it was not lawful to wear anything but black gloves in Warsaw, because “the government” had forbidden it. On inquiring further, I found that the government was not, as I supposed, the Russian one, but the secret conclave which rules Poland at the present hour, and has ruled it for the last year or more. The extent of their authority seemed to me revealed more clearly by this fact than by any other I had heard before, and during my short residence in Poland, I tried to make out as much as I could of the doings of this mysterious body. It was, of course, very little that I could learn. Such scraps, however, of information as I picked up on the subject may, perhaps, be interesting.
It so happened that in Berlin I had acquaintances, who probably were better informed about Poland, and had more communications with Polish patriots, than most of the inhabitants of that stolid, beer-drinking capital. My friends, in as far as Germans can sympathise with what they consider, rightly or wrongly, as an inferior race, were strongly in favour of the insurrection. Being Germans, of course they held the orthodox Teutonic doctrine, that it is the mission of the fatherland to improve the Sclavonic nations off the face of the globe, or, at any rate, of Western Europe. But, as between Poles and Russians, their sympathies went strongly with the former.
If I had listened to their advice I should, before starting on my journey to Poland, have provided myself with a pass from the Polish National Government at Warsaw. They offered very kindly to obtain one for me; but the offer, however tempting, was coupled with conditions which rendered it to me, at any rate, decidedly unacceptable. I should have had to pledge myself, in the event of there being any risk of this document falling into the hands of the Russian authorities, to swallow it bodily like a pill, having carefully chewed it first into a state of pulp. I misdoubted sadly my own faculty of masticating paper in the presence of Cossack soldiers; and I was alarmed at the possible consequences which might result from the failure of the experiment. The Russians, I reflected, might very reasonably consider me an agent of the insurgents, and, in that case, my career would probably have terminated with undesirable brevity; or else the National Government might select me for punishment, as having, however unwittingly, furnished some clue to their discovery. So, on the whole, I resolved to run whatever risk there might be in travelling unindorsed by the insurrectionary authorities. Fellow-countrymen of mine, whom I met in Poland, had been more venturesome, and carried with them a crumpled scrap of paper, closely resembling in size and colour a Prussian thaler note, on which certain cabalistic characters were inscribed, recommending them to the good services of all Polish patriots. However, I could not discover that these documents had ever been of much use to them, or rather no occasion had turned up on which they needed any further protection than that afforded by the obvious and patent fact of their being Englishmen. We may sneer as much as we like at home at the “Civis Romanus” doctrine, but any Englishman who has lived much abroad knows its value fully. If you can rely upon your papers, or, still better, upon your dress and look, to show that you are a British subject, you are pretty safe in any portion of the civilised world. Even if you get murdered, ample redress is certain to be exacted for your death; and though this fact is probably no particular consolation to the sufferer on the eve of military execution, it is an immense guarantee against the risk of any injury being done to you. My passport was duly viséed and in order; and, furnished with that, I considered my safety was tolerably well secured. Such I found the fact to be; and I would recommend all Englishmen placed in my position to follow my example, and keep clear of all dealings with revolutionary governments.
But though I question the “Regulator,” as the Poles call their government, having much assistance to offer strangers, or wielding any great authority in purely rural districts, there is no doubt about its existence, or its power in all the great towns of Poland. To any one acquainted with the mechanism of printing it will seem absolutely inconceivable that newspapers could be composed, printed, published, and circulated regularly, in the midst of a large city, without anybody interested in the matter being able to detect where and by whom the enterprise was conducted. A printing-press, however small, occupies a considerable space of room, and the work of printing is of a nature on which many hands are required. The copies which I saw of the papers of the National Government at Warsaw, were not mere handbills, but regular newspapers of four pages each, about the size of a page of Once a Week. Now the Russian government would assuredly give an enormous reward to anybody who would betray the names of the persons connected with this Polish printing establishment; and yet, in spite of this known fact, papers are printed regularly, under the very nose of the Russian officials, without their being able to lay their hands upon the persons who conduct the operation. This one fact in itself speaks volumes. It is impossible to believe that any one of the thousands, or tens of thousands of Poles, who must have, to say the least, a shrewd suspicion as to the names of the members of this secret organisation, should be of such a heroic type, as to be able to withstand every inducement of terror or avarice. The plain truth is, that fidelity is secured by terrorism. Every Pole knows that to betray this secret to the Russians would be to expose himself to certain and absolute vengeance. Death for death, he prefers to die by Russians rather than by his own countrymen, as a martyr rather than as a traitor. No sum of money is of any value as a bribe, if the receiver knows that he will be stabbed like a dog to-morrow. But, still, this explanation only removes the difficulty one step further off.
The world stands upon the tortoise; but upon what does the tortoise stand? To the question how an unknown and nameless committee, living in daily jeopardy of their own lives, can have it in their power to condemn any traitor to death with the absolute certainty that their order will be executed, I could obtain no sufficient answer. The theory placed before me by persons most likely to be acquainted with the truth, and the one, I own, which commended itself most also to my judgment, was simply this. The National Government exists by sufferance of popular opinion, and is powerful only so long as it acts in consistence with that opinion. Now public sentiment will indorse heartily the assassination of a spy or a traitor; but it will not sanction the infliction of the punishment of death on persons whose only crime is their defencelessness. On various occasions the National Government has endeavoured to forbid petty tradesmen and mechanics from rendering compulsory service to the Russians. The compositors were ordered not to work at the government presses, and the railway servants were ordered to throw up their appointments. Here, however, its authority failed to carry out its edicts. The argument, Il faut vivre, was felt to be irresistible. Over the nobles and over men of wealth and position, the jurisdiction of the secret committee is supreme. Men of this class are expected by public opinion to make any sacrifice required of them for the good of Poland, and if they refuse to do so, popular feeling sanctions any penalty that may be inflicted on them. This sentiment holds good in a far stronger degree of spies and traitors. They have no friends, and their fate, however cruel, is considered well deserved. But when it came to punishing men whose sole fault was that they had paid taxes to the Russian authorities, when compelled to do so by sheer force of arms, the feeling of the community would not support the act. The decrees issued by the National Government forbidding payment of taxes under compulsion, and prohibiting manual labour in the employment of the Russian government, were never carried into execution, and have had to be dropped silently. The fact is, as I take it, that all terrorism breaks down before the tacit resistance of the multitude. The “Sed periit postquam cerdonibus esse timendus cœperat” is true of all reigns of terror, and so, when the National Government tried to interfere with the daily life of petty shopkeepers and workmen, it found that there was a limit to its power.
No doubt this theory, if correct, pre-supposes an almost incredible unanimity of public sentiment; but then I do believe the Poles to be unanimous to an incredible degree in their dislike to the Russians. The hatred of the Spaniard for the French, or of the Italian for the Tedeschi, scarcely I suspect, approached in intensity that of the Pole for the Muscovite. It is this universality of hate which constitutes the strength of the Polish Committee of Public Safety. The impression appears to be that, if the names of this body were known, they are not such as to command any great weight or influence in the country. It is known, too, that many of their acts are bitterly disapproved of and condemned by the more educated and wealthy Poles. Yet the authority of this clique of unknown men, who are supposed to be petty lawyers and needy professional men, is acquiesced in readily by the proudest of the Polish aristocracy. There are many and obvious advantages in the fact, that the members of this body should not be men of family and eminence. Such men carry their lives in their hands, as I believe pretty well every educated Pole would do readily at the present hour; but they carry no one else’s. If a Czartoriski or a Zamoiski were found guilty of belonging to this mysterious conclave, the whole of his fortunes and his family would be involved in his ruin. If some Polish Smith or Brown is arrested, he is killed with more or less of cruelty, and there the matter ends. Moreover, the Polish nobles reckon confidently that they can always keep this Vigilance Committee within due bounds, from the fact that they provide the money for its expenses, and that, in case of need, they could stop the supplies. I am not sure whether this calculation is a sound one, or whether the Polish nobles might not find they had created a power too strong for them to curb or suppress. But the belief is entertained and acted upon pretty generally.
However, be the case what it may, the fact is certain, that the National Government has maintained itself for months at Warsaw without detection; that its authority over the Poles is recognised readily, and that the names of its component members are utterly unknown. A foreign friend of mine, resident at the Polish capital, told me that the nearest approach he ever had to direct communication with the National authorities, was after this wise:—One morning at a very early hour, he received a visit from a Polish nobleman, whose name was unknown to him. On being introduced, his visitor apologised repeatedly for intruding upon him at such an inconvenient time, but pleaded absolute necessity as an excuse. He stated that he had arrived late the previous evening at Warsaw, and that he was obliged to continue his journey the same morning. He declared that he knew nobody in the city, but that since his arrival he had received orders to deliver a letter to my friend in person. After professing complete ignorance of the contents of this missive, the mysterious messenger took his departure, and was seen no more. The letter, on being opened, proved to be a communication from the National Government, cautioning my informant against talking freely in the presence of his servants, as they were spies in the pay of the Russian police. The power of the National Government is not confined to Russian Poland. Two or three days before I passed through Cracow, there was a Polish gentleman—an Austrian subject—stopping at the Hotel de Saxe, where, like most travellers, I took up my quarters. This gentleman shortly before had declined to pay a forced loan levied upon him by order of the National Government at Warsaw. In the middle of the day, in the centre of a crowded and busy hotel, four agents of this hidden body entered this gentleman’s room and began belabouring him with sticks. The Pole happened to be a resolute man, and with the aid of his water-jug, offered so sturdy a resistance, that his assailants took to flight. Any attempt however to discover the men who had committed the outrage failed utterly; they were shielded by the sympathy of the population, and no single one of the scores of persons about the hotel who must have known their names could be forced to reveal them.
If you ask a Pole how he can justify such acts of tyranny as these, he does not attempt to do so; but he tells you that, after all, the National Government, whatever its faults may be, is a native Polish one, not a Russian; and that he must support his own people against foreigners; and this policy explains the power of this modern Wehmgericht.