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RESURRECTION OF POLAND
149

dress, and subsequent events clearly proved that it was better to err on the side of caution.

As there is little political life, so there is little intercourse between the different sections of the people. The Jew does not mix with the Christian, nor the Pole with the Russian. Social life is at its lowest ebb. The police is everywhere visible, and the Polish population lives in an atmosphere of suspicion and suppression.


VII

It seems inconceivable that national antipathy could go any further than the antipathy which existed between Russian and Pole before the present war of liberation. Yet Prussia has succeeded in inspiring her Polish subjects with a hatred even more deadly. And this is not because Poles and Russians belong to the same Slav race, whilst Poles and Prussians belong to different races. The Pole hates the Prussian, because there is in Prussian despotism something much more odious than in Russian despotism. The Russian was content in the past to persecute the Pole. But the Prussian both persecutes him, despises him, and slanders him. The Russian at least did not use any canting