Notes on Life and Letters

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Notes on Life and Letters


When the war broke out there was something gruesomely comic in the
proclamations of emperors and archdukes appealing to that invincible soul
of a nation whose existence or moral worth they had been so arrogantly
denying for more than a century. Perhaps in the whole record of human
transactions there have never been performances so brazen and so vile as
the manifestoes of the German Emperor and the Grand Duke Nicholas of
Russia; and, I imagine, no more bitter insult has been offered to human
heart and intelligence than the way in which those proclamations were
flung into the face of historical truth. It was like a scene in a
cynical and sinister farce, the absurdity of which became in some sort
unfathomable by the reflection that nobody in the world could possibly be
so abjectly stupid as to be deceived for a single moment. At that time,
and for the first two months of the war, I happened to be in Poland, and
I remember perfectly well that, when those precious documents came out,
the confidence in the moral turpitude of mankind they implied did not
even raise a scornful smile on the lips of men whose most sacred feelings
and dignity they outraged. They did not deign to waste their contempt on
them. In fact, the situation was too poignant and too involved for
either hot scorn or a coldly rational discussion. For the Poles it was
like being in a burning house of which all the issues were locked. There
was nothing but sheer anguish under the strange, as if stony, calmness
which in the utter absence of all hope falls on minds that are not
constitutionally prone to despair. Yet in this time of dismay the
irrepressible vitality of the nation would not accept a neutral attitude.
I was told that even if there were no issue it was absolutely necessary
for the Poles to affirm their national existence. Passivity, which could
be regarded as a craven acceptance of all the material and moral horrors
ready to fall upon the nation, was not to be thought of for a moment.
Therefore, it was explained to me, the Poles _must_ act. Whether this
was a counsel of wisdom or not it is very difficult to say, but there are
crises of the soul which are beyond the reach of wisdom. When there is
apparently no issue visible to the eyes of reason, sentiment may yet find
a way out, either towards salvation or to utter perdition, no one can
tell--and the sentiment does not even ask the question. Being there as a
stranger in that tense atmosphere, which was yet not unfamiliar to me, I
was not very anxious to parade my wisdom, especially after it had been
pointed out in answer to my cautious arguments that, if life has its
values worth fighting for, death, too, has that in it which can make it
worthy or unworthy.

Out of the mental and moral trouble into which the grouping of the Powers
at the beginning of war had thrown the counsels of Poland there emerged
at last the decision that the Polish Legions, a peace organisation in
Galicia directed by Pilsudski (afterwards given the rank of General, and
now apparently the Chief of the Government in Warsaw), should take the
field against the Russians. In reality it did not matter against which
partner in the "Crime" Polish resentment should be directed. There was
little to choose between the methods of Russian barbarism, which were
both crude and rotten, and the cultivated brutality tinged with contempt
of Germany's superficial, grinding civilisation. There was nothing to
choose between them. Both were hateful, and the direction of the Polish
effort was naturally governed by Austria's tolerant attitude, which had
connived for years at the semi-secret organisation of the Polish Legions.
Besides, the material possibility pointed out the way. That Poland
should have turned at first against the ally of Western Powers, to whose
moral support she had been looking for so many years, is not a greater
monstrosity than that alliance with Russia which had been entered into by
England and France with rather less excuse and with a view to
eventualities which could perhaps have been avoided by a firmer policy
and by a greater resolution in the face of what plainly appeared
unavoidable.

For let the truth be spoken. The action of Germany, however cruel,
sanguinary, and faithless, was nothing in the nature of a stab in the
dark. The Germanic Tribes had told the whole world in all possible tones
carrying conviction, the gently persuasive, the coldly logical; in tones
Hegelian, Nietzschean, warlike, pious, cynical, inspired, what they were
going to do to the inferior races of the earth, so full of sin and all
unworthiness. But with a strange similarity to the prophets of old (who
were also great moralists and invokers of might) they seemed to be crying
in a desert. Whatever might have been the secret searching of hearts,
the Worthless Ones would not take heed. It must also be admitted that
the conduct of the menaced Governments carried with it no suggestion of
resistance. It was no doubt, the effect of neither courage nor fear, but
of that prudence which causes the average man to stand very still in the
presence of a savage dog. It was not a very politic attitude, and the
more reprehensible in so far that it seemed to arise from the mistrust of
their own people's fortitude. On simple matters of life and death a
people is always better than its leaders, because a people cannot argue
itself as a whole into a sophisticated state of mind out of deference for
a mere doctrine or from an exaggerated sense of its own cleverness. I am
speaking now of democracies whose chiefs resemble the tyrant of Syracuse
in this, that their power is unlimited (for who can limit the will of a
voting people?) and who always see the domestic sword hanging by a hair
above their heads.

Perhaps a different attitude would have checked German self-confidence,
and her overgrown militarism would have died from the excess of its own
strength. What would have been then the moral state of Europe it is
difficult to say. Some other excess would probably have taken its place,
excess of theory, or excess of sentiment, or an excess of the sense of
security leading to some other form of catastrophe; but it is certain
that in that case the Polish question would not have taken a concrete
form for ages. Perhaps it would never have taken form! In this world,
where everything is transient, even the most reproachful ghosts end by
vanishing out of old mansions, out of men's consciences. Progress of
enlightenment, or decay of faith? In the years before the war the Polish
ghost was becoming so thin that it was impossible to get for it the
slightest mention in the papers. A young Pole coming to me from Paris
was extremely indignant, but I, indulging in that detachment which is the
product of greater age, longer experience, and a habit of meditation,
refused to share that sentiment. He had gone begging for a word on
Poland to many influential people, and they had one and all told him that
they were going to do no such thing. They were all men of ideas and
therefore might have been called idealists, but the notion most strongly
anchored in their minds was the folly of touching a question which
certainly had no merit of actuality and would have had the appalling
effect of provoking the wrath of their old enemies and at the same time
offending the sensibilities of their new friends. It was an unanswerable
argument. I couldn't share my young friend's surprise and indignation.
My practice of reflection had also convinced me that there is nothing on
earth that turns quicker on its pivot than political idealism when
touched by the breath of practical politics.

It would be good to remember that Polish independence as embodied in a
Polish State is not the gift of any kind of journalism, neither is it the
outcome even of some particularly benevolent idea or of any clearly
apprehended sense of guilt. I am speaking of what I know when I say that
the original and only formative idea in Europe was the idea of delivering
the fate of Poland into the hands of Russian Tsarism. And, let us
remember, it was assumed then to be a victorious Tsarism at that. It was
an idea talked of openly, entertained seriously, presented as a
benevolence, with a curious blindness to its grotesque and ghastly
character. It was the idea of delivering the victim with a kindly smile
and the confident assurance that "it would be all right" to a perfectly
unrepentant assassin, who, after sawing furiously at its throat for a
hundred years or so, was expected to make friends suddenly and kiss it on
both cheeks in the mystic Russian fashion. It was a singularly
nightmarish combination of international polity, and no whisper of any
other would have been officially tolerated. Indeed, I do not think in
the whole extent of Western Europe there was anybody who had the
slightest mind to whisper on that subject. Those were the days of the
dark future, when Benckendorf put down his name on the Committee for the
Relief of Polish Populations driven by the Russian armies into the heart
of Russia, when the Grand Duke Nicholas (the gentleman who advocated a
St. Bartholomew's Night for the suppression of Russian liberalism) was
displaying his "divine" (I have read the very word in an English
newspaper of standing) strategy in the great retreat, where Mr. Iswolsky
carried himself haughtily on the banks of the Seine; and it was beginning
to dawn upon certain people there that he was a greater nuisance even
than the Polish question.

But there is no use in talking about all that. Some clever person has
said that it is always the unexpected that happens, and on a calm and
dispassionate survey the world does appear mainly to one as a scene of
miracles. Out of Germany's strength, in whose purpose so many people
refused to believe, came Poland's opportunity, in which nobody could have
been expected to believe. Out of Russia's collapse emerged that
forbidden thing, the Polish independence, not as a vengeful figure, the
retributive shadow of the crime, but as something much more solid and
more difficult to get rid of--a political necessity and a moral solution.
Directly it appeared its practical usefulness became undeniable, and also
the fact that, for better or worse, it was impossible to get rid of it
again except by the unthinkable way of another carving, of another
partition, of another crime.

Therein lie the strength and the future of the thing so strictly
forbidden no farther back than two years or so, of the Polish
independence expressed in a Polish State. It comes into the world
morally free, not in virtue of its sufferings, but in virtue of its
miraculous rebirth and of its ancient claim for services rendered to
Europe. Not a single one of the combatants of all the fronts of the
world has died consciously for Poland's freedom. That supreme
opportunity was denied even to Poland's own children. And it is just as
well! Providence in its inscrutable way had been merciful, for had it
been otherwise the load of gratitude would have been too great, the sense
of obligation too crushing, the joy of deliverance too fearful for
mortals, common sinners with the rest of mankind before the eye of the
Most High. Those who died East and West, leaving so much anguish and so
much pride behind them, died neither for the creation of States, nor for
empty words, nor yet for the salvation of general ideas. They died
neither for democracy, nor leagues, nor systems, nor yet for abstract
justice, which is an unfathomable mystery. They died for something too
deep for words, too mighty for the common standards by which reason
measures the advantages of life and death, too sacred for the vain
discourses that come and go on the lips of dreamers, fanatics,
humanitarians, and statesmen. They died . . . .

Poland's independence springs up from that great immolation, but Poland's
loyalty to Europe will not be rooted in anything so trenchant and
burdensome as the sense of an immeasurable indebtedness, of that
gratitude which in a worldly sense is sometimes called eternal, but which
lies always at the mercy of weariness and is fatally condemned by the
instability of human sentiments to end in negation. Polish loyalty will
be rooted in something much more solid and enduring, in something that
could never be called eternal, but which is, in fact, life-enduring. It
will be rooted in the national temperament, which is about the only thing
on earth that can be trusted. Men may deteriorate, they may improve too,
but they don't change. Misfortune is a hard school which may either
mature or spoil a national character, but it may be reasonably advanced
that the long course of adversity of the most cruel kind has not injured
the fundamental characteristics of the Polish nation which has proved its
vitality against the most demoralising odds. The various phases of the
Polish sense of self-preservation struggling amongst the menacing forces
and the no less threatening chaos of the neighbouring Powers should be
judged impartially. I suggest impartiality and not indulgence simply
because, when appraising the Polish question, it is not necessary to
invoke the softer emotions. A little calm reflection on the past and the
present is all that is necessary on the part of the Western world to
judge the movements of a community whose ideals are the same, but whose
situation is unique. This situation was brought vividly home to me in
the course of an argument more than eighteen months ago. "Don't forget,"
I was told, "that Poland has got to live in contact with Germany and
Russia to the end of time. Do you understand the force of that
expression: 'To the end of time'? Facts must be taken into account, and
especially appalling facts, such as this, to which there is no possible
remedy on earth. For reasons which are, properly speaking,
physiological, a prospect of friendship with Germans or Russians even in
the most distant future is unthinkable. Any alliance of heart and mind
would be a monstrous thing, and monsters, as we all know, cannot live.
You can't base your conduct on a monstrous conception. We are either
worth or not worth preserving, but the horrible psychology of the
situation is enough to drive the national mind to distraction. Yet under
a destructive pressure, of which Western Europe can have no notion,
applied by forces that were not only crushing but corrupting, we have
preserved our sanity. Therefore there can be no fear of our losing our
minds simply because the pressure is removed. We have neither lost our
heads nor yet our moral sense. Oppression, not merely political, but
affecting social relations, family life, the deepest affections of human
nature, and the very fount of natural emotions, has never made us
vengeful. It is worthy of notice that with every incentive present in
our emotional reactions we had no recourse to political assassination.
Arms in hand, hopeless or hopefully, and always against immeasurable
odds, we did affirm ourselves and the justice of our cause; but wild
justice has never been a part of our conception of national manliness. In
all the history of Polish oppression there was only one shot fired which
was not in battle. Only one! And the man who fired it in Paris at the
Emperor Alexander II. was but an individual connected with no
organisation, representing no shade of Polish opinion. The only effect
in Poland was that of profound regret, not at the failure, but at the
mere fact of the attempt. The history of our captivity is free from that
stain; and whatever follies in the eyes of the world we may have
perpetrated, we have neither murdered our enemies nor acted treacherously
against them, nor yet have been reduced to the point of cursing each
other."

I could not gainsay the truth of that discourse, I saw as clearly as my
interlocutor the impossibility of the faintest sympathetic bond between
Poland and her neighbours ever being formed in the future. The only
course that remains to a reconstituted Poland is the elaboration,
establishment, and preservation of the most correct method of political
relations with neighbours to whom Poland's existence is bound to be a
humiliation and an offence. Calmly considered it is an appalling task,
yet one may put one's trust in that national temperament which is so
completely free from aggressiveness and revenge. Therein lie the
foundations of all hope. The success of renewed life for that nation
whose fate is to remain in exile, ever isolated from the West, amongst
hostile surroundings, depends on the sympathetic understanding of its
problems by its distant friends, the Western Powers, which in their
democratic development must recognise the moral and intellectual kinship
of that distant outpost of their own type of civilisation, which was the
only basis of Polish culture.

Whatever may be the future of Russia and the final organisation of
Germany, the old hostility must remain unappeased, the fundamental
antagonism must endure for years to come. The Crime of the Partition was
committed by autocratic Governments which were the Governments of their
time; but those Governments were characterised in the past, as they will
be in the future, by their people's national traits, which remain utterly
incompatible with the Polish mentality and Polish sentiment. Both the
German submissiveness (idealistic as it may be) and the Russian
lawlessness (fed on the corruption of all the virtues) are utterly
foreign to the Polish nation, whose qualities and defects are altogether
of another kind, tending to a certain exaggeration of individualism and,
perhaps, to an extreme belief in the Governing Power of Free Assent: the
one invariably vital principle in the internal government of the Old
Republic. There was never a history more free from political bloodshed
than the history of the Polish State, which never knew either feudal
institutions or feudal quarrels. At the time when heads were falling on
the scaffolds all over Europe there was only one political execution in
Poland--only one; and as to that there still exists a tradition that the
great Chancellor who democratised Polish institutions, and had to order
it in pursuance of his political purpose, could not settle that matter
with his conscience till the day of his death. Poland, too, had her
civil wars, but this can hardly be made a matter of reproach to her by
the rest of the world. Conducted with humanity, they left behind them no
animosities and no sense of repression, and certainly no legacy of
hatred. They were but a recognised argument in political discussion and
tended always towards conciliation.

I cannot imagine, whatever form of democratic government Poland
elaborates for itself, that either the nation or its leaders would do
anything but welcome the closest scrutiny of their renewed political
existence. The difficulty of the problem of that existence will be so
great that some errors will be unavoidable, and one may be sure that they
will be taken advantage of by its neighbours to discredit that living
witness to a great historical crime. If not the actual frontiers, then
the moral integrity of the new State is sure to be assailed before the
eyes of Europe. Economical enmity will also come into play when the
world's work is resumed again and competition asserts its power. Charges
of aggression are certain to be made, especially as related to the small
States formed of the territories of the Old Republic. And everybody
knows the power of lies which go about clothed in coats of many colours,
whereas, as is well known, Truth has no such advantage, and for that
reason is often suppressed as not altogether proper for everyday
purposes. It is not often recognised, because it is not always fit to be
seen.

Already there are innuendoes, threats, hints thrown out, and even awful
instances fabricated out of inadequate materials, but it is historically
unthinkable that the Poland of the future, with its sacred tradition of
freedom and its hereditary sense of respect for the rights of individuals
and States, should seek its prosperity in aggressive action or in moral
violence against that part of its once fellow-citizens who are Ruthenians
or Lithuanians. The only influence that cannot be restrained is simply
the influence of time, which disengages truth from all facts with a
merciless logic and prevails over the passing opinions, the changing
impulses of men. There can be no doubt that the moral impulses and the
material interests of the new nationalities, which seem to play now the
game of disintegration for the benefit of the world's enemies, will in
the end bring them nearer to the Poland of this war's creation, will
unite them sooner or later by a spontaneous movement towards the State
which had adopted and brought them up in the development of its own
humane culture--the offspring of the West.



A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM--1916


We must start from the assumption that promises made by proclamation at
the beginning of this war may be binding on the individuals who made them
under the stress of coming events, but cannot be regarded as binding the
Governments after the end of the war.

Poland has been presented with three proclamations. Two of them were in
such contrast with the avowed principles and the historic action for the
last hundred years (since the Congress of Vienna) of the Powers
concerned, that they were more like cynical insults to the nation's
deepest feelings, its memory and its intelligence, than state papers of a
conciliatory nature.

The German promises awoke nothing but indignant contempt; the Russian a
bitter incredulity of the most complete kind. The Austrian proclamation,
which made no promises and contented itself with pointing out the Austro-
Polish relations for the last forty-five years, was received in silence.
For it is a fact that in Austrian Poland alone Polish nationality was
recognised as an element of the Empire, and individuals could breathe the
air of freedom, of civil life, if not of political independence.

But for Poles to be Germanophile is unthinkable. To be Russophile or
Austrophile is at best a counsel of despair in view of a European
situation which, because of the grouping of the powers, seems to shut
from them every hope, expressed or unexpressed, of a national future
nursed through more than a hundred years of suffering and oppression.

Through most of these years, and especially since 1830, Poland (I use
this expression since Poland exists as a spiritual entity to-day as
definitely as it ever existed in her past) has put her faith in the
Western Powers. Politically it may have been nothing more than a
consoling illusion, and the nation had a half-consciousness of this. But
what Poland was looking for from the Western Powers without
discouragement and with unbroken confidence was moral support.

This is a fact of the sentimental order. But such facts have their
positive value, for their idealism derives from perhaps the highest kind
of reality. A sentiment asserts its claim by its force, persistence and
universality. In Poland that sentimental attitude towards the Western
Powers is universal. It extends to all classes. The very children are
affected by it as soon as they begin to think.

The political value of such a sentiment consists in this, that it is
based on profound resemblances. Therefore one can build on it as if it
were a material fact. For the same reason it would be unsafe to
disregard it if one proposed to build solidly. The Poles, whom
superficial or ill-informed theorists are trying to force into the social
and psychological formula of Slavonism, are in truth not Slavonic at all.
In temperament, in feeling, in mind, and even in unreason, they are
Western, with an absolute comprehension of all Western modes of thought,
even of those which are remote from their historical experience.

That element of racial unity which may be called Polonism, remained
compressed between Prussian Germanism on one side and the Russian
Slavonism on the other. For Germanism it feels nothing but hatred. But
between Polonism and Slavonism there is not so much hatred as a complete
and ineradicable incompatibility.

No political work of reconstructing Poland either as a matter of justice
or expediency could be sound which would leave the new creation in
dependence to Germanism or to Slavonism.

The first need not be considered. The second must be--unless the Powers
elect to drop the Polish question either under the cover of vague
assurances or without any disguise whatever.

But if it is considered it will be seen at once that the Slavonic
solution of the Polish Question can offer no guarantees of duration or
hold the promise of security for the peace of Europe.

The only basis for it would be the Grand Duke's Manifesto. But that
Manifesto, signed by a personage now removed from Europe to Asia, and by
a man, moreover, who if true to himself, to his conception of patriotism
and to his family tradition could not have put his hand to it with any
sincerity of purpose, is now divested of all authority. The forcible
vagueness of its promises, its startling inconsistency with the hundred
years of ruthlessly denationalising oppression permit one to doubt
whether it was ever meant to have any authority.