Political reflections force themselves on you in this subjugated but by no means pacified country. It is in vain you tell yourself that the constant factors of climate, soil, race, and religion are of greater importance for the true understanding of a country, city, or people than passing political incidents and systems. You cannot emancipate yourself from politics in Poland. This is not a country like German Alsace, where, according to Moltke, a guard must be kept for fifty years, after which, like the German country it originally was, it will again become and remain German. Poland is a country forcibly subjected and conquered, and you feel it when walking the streets and in the fashionable hotel, where the national sorrow is generously moistened with champagne at the tables of the aristocracy even at the early breakfast hour. However, it is not necessary for us to be more passionately patriotic and political than these champagne counts, and we must attempt to secure something of the street scenes without becoming involved too deeply in political problems. Whenever I come to a town I ask myself, Why was it built here and not elsewhere? With the help of a little imagination one can understand even to-day how Warsaw came into existence. It was at the head of a bridge. The word "Warsaw" is believed to be derived from the word "Warszain" (on the height). So the city lies at a height of about forty metres on the bank of the Vistula, fully half a kilometre wide at this place. An elevation of forty metres on the immediate bank of a broad stream offered, at the time of its foundation in the twelfth century, a natural fortification, and the merchants who came up from the sea to sell their wares to the semi-barbarous inhabitants of the plain may have found perhaps on this height a frequent protection from the attacks of the plainsmen. Later the fort became a city and culture and luxury made their appearance, offering to the tamed dwellers of the plains and to the landed proprietors from far and near the opportunity to squander the proceeds of their crops. The numerous churches did not fare badly in the days of penitence then.