The war raging in and out of Europe does not give the experienced much reason to hope. The immense mischief daily caused by it is certain enough. The benefits which are believed to be the result of it and of which the various nations dream differently are so uncertain that they cannot possibly be reckoned upon. Before those whose sympathy was with the deep national misfortune of the Polish people, there rose the image of the reunion and emancipation of this tripartited people under extensive autonomy, and most probably under the protection and supremacy of a great power.
For the present we are far away from that goal. Poles are compelled by necessity to fight in the Prussian, Austrian and Russian armies, against each other. Not the smallest attempt at emancipation has been made either in Prussian Posen or in the Russian "Kingdom" or in Austrian Galicia. We might even say that the dismemberment at present is going deeper than ever, as it is now cleaving the minds as well.
The only indication of a future union is the manifesto of the Grand Duke Nikolai, the Russian Field Marshal, to the Poles, issued in the middle of August. It began: "Poles, the hour has struck in which the holy dream of your fathers and grandfathers may be fulfilled. Let the borders cutting asunder the Polish people be effaced; let them unite under the sceptre of the Czar. Under this sceptre Poland will regenerate, free in religion, language, and autonomy."
And it ended in the following way: "The dawn of a new life is beginning for you. In this dawn let the sign of the cross, the symbol of the sufferings and the resurrection of the people, shine."
How clearly this manifesto, with its surprising love of liberty, its pious reference to the cross, bore the stamp of having been enforced by circumstances, and how accustomed one had become to disregard promises from the Russian Government of full constitutional liberty and the like, as those given before had not meant very much either in Finland or in Russia itself. Still the manifesto, as a sign of the time, was well apt to make an impression on the great masses who had always heard the authorities stamp as criminal plots, as high treason, what was now suddenly called from the supreme place "the holy dream of the forefathers."