Today the dreams of the Polish people are coming true. Hopes cherished since about the twelfth century are through the World War being realized in a new Poland.
The tenth century saw the formation of the first kingdom of Poland in central Europe to the east of the Germans. The country grew and prospered for two hundred years. Then, lacking kingly leadership, it became weak, and was finally divided into many principalities. At that time came the terrible Tartar invasion across Russia and into Poland, resulting in shocking desolation and ruin.
When complete destruction was threatened from hostile peoples, on the north and east, the Poles summoned aid from the Teutonic Knights, a German crusading order.
The Germans drove out the hostile neighbors, promptly taking control of their lands. Then Poland learned that she had even worse enemies to fear in those she had called to help her. She watched them build up military power to conquer her own lands. But by joining with the Lithuanians, she managed at length to defeat the Germans at the famous battle of Tannenberg in 1410.
For over three hundred years the kingdom possessed great power. But at last it again began to weaken, and the year 1772 "saw the beginning of the end." The three great nations, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, then joined against Poland and began to divide the kingdom among themselves. By 1795 Poland had ceased to exist as a nation.
The terrible misfortunes of the Polish people under these hostile foreign powers served really to bind them together with one common purpose--to win back the kingdom and to reëstablish a free country. This was their dream.
When the World War came, the Polish people in many lands, especially in the United States, volunteered for service on the French front. On June 22, 1918, the first division of Polish troops in France was presented with flags at a solemn ceremony, and listened to an address by the French president. Soon large numbers of Poles were fighting the Austrians and Germans in Italy and in Russia, although they knew that capture meant court-martial and death, since Austria and Germany considered them deserters, as they indeed were. The supreme commander of Polish forces, General Josef Haller, had been a colonel in the Austrian army. But he decided to desert the Austrian army to lead an "Iron Brigade" of Poles against the enemies of freedom.
