The Polish Party Socialist, besides promulgating and propagating German socialist doctrines, works for the decentralization of the Russian empire. A United States of Russia, with state control and autonomy for Poland. The prime differences between this party and the Social Democrats--the powerful Russian proletariat organization--is that the latter demand an out-and-out republic, modeled on France. And against all of these parties is Russia struggling in her frantic effort to hold Poland subject. It is commonly supposed that the conquest of the Caucasus which has been going on for a generation was without a parallel in the Russian empire. But in Poland the situation is equally grim. Poland carries Russia’s yoke because coerced by merciless force. But never for a day is the fight regarded as finished. The idea of revolution is more universally understood in Poland than in Russia. The Russian peasants want “land and liberty.” The Russian proletariat want a reorganized industrial life. The Poles want freedom from Russian oppression--freedom to worship God in their own way. To-day there are several hundred thousand legally illegitimate children in Poland because the parents were united according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church instead of by the Greek Church, as stipulated by intolerant Russia. They want freedom to choose teachers for their young who are of their own blood and who speak their own tongue. They want freedom to select their own administrative officials, and to make their own laws. And for all these things they are actively and openly fighting. They do not expect to win them by a single _coup_. They are resigned to a prolonged fight. The people of Poland remember that the French Revolution lasted twenty years and the Austrian uprising of ’48 almost equally long. They understand that the progress of revolutions is like unto the onward roll of the sea--a succession of waves. The sea of revolution has washed completely over Poland and now the waves are mounting higher and higher. There are moments of quiet and apparent retreat, but these are growing fewer and briefer. In the grimness of the people is a dire significance that Russia has already recognized. Just now is the reign of chaos. So far as one can see, Poland is in the grip of the old middle-class conception of anarchy--anarchy stripped of all its philosophy and idealism; stark, black, fearful. Yet the great underlying dynamic of this terrible unrest is a great hope. CHAPTER XIV AMONG THE MUZHIKS