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Introductory
When the world that we had lived in
passed away, and when the people that we were four months ago had
suddenly died, and we stood like newly-incarnated souls and shuddered,
though not with fear, on the verge of a new world, then we saw,
astonished, that we were still holding in our hands some things we had
brought with us out of that past life: they were changed, perhaps, by
the shock of fire, but they had not perished, and among them are belief
in certain rights and duties, and pity for certain wrongs. Therefore I
make bold to show what I carried with me out of that former time. It is
the story of my journey in Poland, the country that was lying captive
while all we lived at ease, the nation that had "no future” while we
were "making progress,” that now in our days of peril turns towards us
in friendliness and hope, Poland who comes in the midst of death to a
new birth, who will live, we believe, even as we shall, in freedom in
the new age of mankind.
This book is no grave political, historical or sociological work on
Poland. Whatever value it may have lies in this — that it is a truthful
record of what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears,
descriptions of the places that I visited, the people whom I met and the
impressions that they made on me; sketches, in fact, written as I
painted them, with no other motive than that strange human craving we
all have that others should see the things that we saw and be saddened
by the thing that has made us sorry.
Since the book was finished in the spring of this year I have in no way
added to or changed it. I have neither exaggerated the bitterness of
feeling that I found to exist amongst Poles against the German
Government, nor tried to extenuate what I heard said against the
Russian. The oppression and injustice suffered in the past are too well
known to be denied. But the Polish nature, as I have noted, is not of
that ungenerous kind which cherishes implacable hatred, and at the
present moment the sentiments of the Poles towards Russia are rapidly
changing.
Trusting in the magnanimous resolutions of the Czar, supported by the
goodwill of England and France, their attitude of mind is now one of
reconciliation, of loyalty, and of confidence in the future.
November, 1914.
Sketches in
Poland
Written and Painted by Frances Delanoy Little (1914) (pdf) |
