Winning a Cause Part 7

SONG OF THE AVIATOR

(_This poem was written for an entertainment given by the Y.M.C.A. at an aviation barracks in a large camp in France. Mrs. Wilc.o.x addressed five hundred aviators, and these verses were recited with great effect by Mrs. May Randall. After the entertainment there was a rush to obtain autographed copies of the poem._)

You may thrill with the speed of your thoroughbred steed, You may laugh with delight as you ride the ocean, You may rush afar in your touring car, Leaping, sweeping by things that are creeping-- But you never will know the joy of motion Till you rise up over the earth some day And soar like an eagle, away--away.

High and higher, above each spire, Till lost to sight is the tallest steeple, With the winds you chase in a valiant race, Looping, swooping, where mountains are grouping, Hailing them comrades, in place of people.

Oh, vast is the rapture the bird man knows As into the ether he mounts and goes.

He is over the sphere of human fear; He has come into touch with things supernal.

At each man's gate death stands await; And dying flying were better than lying In sick beds crying for life eternal.

Better to fly halfway to G.o.d Than to burrow too long like a worm in the sod.

ELLA WHEELER WILc.o.x.

NATIONS BORN AND REBORN

In America, and in many other countries, people have listened with wonder and enjoyment to strangely beautiful music played by, probably the greatest of all pianists of today, Ignace Jan Paderewski. For years he has traveled from country to country and from city to city, playing the piano in a manner no other has been able to imitate, although Chopin's playing, it is said, had much the same effect upon the audiences. In Paderewski's playing as in his composition there is always an undercurrent deeply sad and weird. No one but a genius from the martyred land of Poland, or from some other that had equally suffered, could play as Chopin and Paderewski played or could compose music such as they composed. All the old glory of Poland in the ancient centuries, her grievous losses, the terrible wrongs done her, and the long-treasured dreams of a new and happier day for her people, live in the soul of Paderewski, and vibrate through his very finger tips as they move over the keys of his loved instrument.

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 leaders.h.i.+p, it became weak, and was finally divided into many princ.i.p.alities. 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 reestablish 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.

Eighty-eight officers and twenty-six privates in his regiment were captured by the Austrians, court-martialed, and sentenced to death.

When offered pardon by the Emperor Karl, they refused, saying, "We are soldiers of the Polish Nation. The Austrian government has no right to grant us pardon even as it has no more right to inflict punishment upon us than upon the soldiers of France and England."

Facing death, these men wrote to the Polish Parliamentary Club in Vienna, their reasons for desertion,--namely, the unfair treatment at the hands of the Austrians and their love for Poland. They had heard a rumor that the Polish organization was about to secure a more liberal sentence for them by agreeing to the cession of certain provinces of Poland. So the prisoners further wrote:--

"We value greatly the love of our countrymen and we were touched deeply by the generosity with which they thought of us, but we desire to protest most energetically against relief and concessions secured for us to the detriment of our country and the ancient rights of our nation.

"Do not permit our personal lot to weaken the united Polish front, for the death penalty can affect us only physically. The sufferings undergone by our grandfathers and fathers, we will continue to endure and with the sincere conviction that we are serving a free, united, and independent Poland."

A few days after they were condemned, the Polish National Committee sent a message to Italy declaring that representatives from all cla.s.ses of the Polish people had met at Warsaw and proclaimed the union of all Poland.

Italy, France, and Great Britain formally recognized the Polish national army as independent and Allied, and on November 4, 1918, Secretary Lansing, in a letter, to a representative of the Polish National Committee, stated that the United States Government also wished to recognize officially the independence of the Polish army as a part of the Allied forces.

The people of the United States with those of other countries are hoping that Paderewski's great national family shall become united in one free and independent state. They now applaud this master of music as the first leader of free Poland. He will help destroy Bolshevism with its cry, "Death to the educated," which has resulted already in the death of hundreds of doctors, professors, engineers, and in one case, the extermination of all the pupils in a single high school. He will join the other great leaders in their belief that "Economic development, patriotism, and the enn.o.bling of all human souls alone can lead to freedom."

To the south of Poland in the very heart of Europe is another new country, which already has set up a democratic government and elected as its president,--Thomas G. Masaryk, a former professor in the University of Prague, now the capital of Czecho-Slovakia.

Professor Masaryk spent some time in the United States conferring with officials at Was.h.i.+ngton. He was here when he received word that he had been elected first president of his newly formed country by a convention held in Geneva, Switzerland.

Great preparations for his return were made by the people. When at one o'clock on December 22, the booming of cannon told that the president's train was drawing in at the station, the hundred thousand people who had poured into the city of Prague were ma.s.sed on every side to welcome him and sang, as only the Slavs can sing, their national song.

Soon President Masaryk's train, with its engine elaborately decorated, steamed in through the silent crowd. In complete silence, Masaryk, gray-haired and distinguished appearing, left the train and entered the station. There he saw groups of Czecho-Slovaks in French uniforms, some wearing the war cross, and groups who had been fighting in the Italian Alps. He saw also a group of university professors who had come to honor him.

In the tense silence, one of the leaders of the new republic came forward. He had for years conspired and worked with Masaryk for the freedom of their country, and now he greeted him by throwing his arms about him. After a further greeting from the government officials, and from the nation's aged and honored poet, Masaryk gave a brief speech telling of his hopes for the republic. He then pa.s.sed out to the crowd who hailed him in a tumult of joy. One who witnessed Masaryk's return pictures the scenes on the way to the government buildings.

"There began a triumphal procession which took two hours to arrive at the Parliament house. Every window, every balcony and every roof was filled to overflowing, and every street lined on either side, twenty deep. All this mult.i.tude, most of whom had been standing for hours, had such joy written on their faces as has never before been seen and cannot possibly be described. Elders were holding children on their shoulders, all eyes were full of tears, all eyes smiling. The people kissed the flags of the Allies as they would kiss their babies.

"Since the proclamation, all the young ladies of Prague have taken to the fas.h.i.+on of peasant costumes, and several members of Parliament wore the old national dress. Searchlights playing on the spires and steeples of this most beautiful Slav city now again touch the great castle, henceforth the seat of government, where hundreds of windows are ablaze with lights, the first rejoicing it has known for three hundred years."

For three hundred years the peasants of Bohemia together with Slovakia which, with some smaller provinces, is now called Czecho-Slovakia, had tried every means to free themselves from Austria. On the north and west were the Germans and on the south the Austrians, both enemies, seeking only to get what they could for themselves out of the little country.

In their Declaration of Independence, given in Paris, October 18, 1918, the people have told the story of their past, as well as their purposes for the future.

"We make this declaration on the basis of our historic and natural right. We have been an independent State since the seventh century, and in 1526, as an independent State, consisting of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, we joined with Austria and Hungary in a defensive union against the Turkish danger. We have never voluntarily surrendered our rights as an independent State in this confederation. The Hapsburgs broke their compact with our nation by illegally transgressing our rights and violating the Const.i.tution of our State, which they had pledged themselves to uphold, and we therefore refuse longer to remain a part of Austria-Hungary in any form.

"We claim the right of Bohemia to be reunited with her Slovak brethren of Slovakia, once a part of our national State, later torn from our national body, and fifty years ago incorporated in the Hungarian State of the Magyars, who, by their unspeakable violence and ruthless oppression of their subject races have lost all moral and human right to rule anybody but themselves.

"The world knows the history of our struggle against the Hapsburg oppression. The world knows the justice of our claims, which the Hapsburgs themselves dared not deny. Francis Joseph in the most solemn manner repeatedly recognized the sovereign rights of our nation. The Germans and Magyars opposed this recognition, and Austria-Hungary, bowing before the Pan-Germans, became a colony of Germany, and, as her vanguard, to the East, provoked the last Balkan conflict, as well as the present world war, which was begun by the Hapsburgs alone without the consent of the representatives of the people.

"We cannot and will not continue to live under the direct or indirect rule of the violators of Belgium, France, and Serbia, and would-be murderers of Russia and Rumania, the murderers of tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers of our blood, and the accomplices in numberless unspeakable crimes committed in this war against humanity by the two degenerate and irresponsible dynasties. We will not remain a part of a State which has no justification for existence.

"We refuse to recognize the divine right of kings. Our nation elected the Hapsburgs to the throne of Bohemia of its own free will, and by the same right deposes them. We hereby declare the Hapsburg dynasty unworthy of leading our nation, and deny all of their claims to rule in the Czecho-Slovak land, which we here and now declare shall henceforth be a free and independent people and nation.

"We accept and shall adhere to the ideals of modern democracy, as they have been the ideals of our nation for centuries. We accept the American principles as laid down by President Wilson; the principles of liberated mankind--of the actual equality of nations--and of Governments deriving all their just power from the consent of the governed. We, the nation of Comenius, cannot but accept these principles expressed in the American Declaration of Independence, the principles of Lincoln, and of the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen. For these principles our nation shed its blood in the memorable Hussite Wars, 500 years ago; and for these same principles, beside her Allies, our nation is shedding its blood today in Russia, Italy, and France."

It is said that the Czech soldiers fighting on the French front received the news of the declaration with wild enthusiasm, rushed forward, and wrested from the enemy one of the most difficult positions on the Aisne.

The Czechs were also fighting in Italy, and in Russia, although they had been first forced into the Austrian army. One Czech battalion commanded by Austrians and ordered against the Russians, rushed forward, but killed their officers on the way and surrendered in a body to the Russians, asking to fight with them against the Austro-Germans.

If the Russian soldiers had held together and followed the invincible Czechs, Germany would have been driven completely out of Russia.

But the Czechs did not deceive the Austrians. Their hopes and plans were not secret. They openly warned Austria of their desertion. They wrote in chalk on the outside of the cars: "With us the Monarchy will not win."

Upon seeing this declaration, it is reported, the German and Austrian officers ordered the trainload of men to stand in line, and then shot every tenth man.

But the rest went on, through terrible and thrilling experiences, fighting and dying by the hundreds for the sake of the new republic which at last was born.