“I accept it as a great sin; even our Rus I do not love at least as our patented patriots do or pretend to do. What is there to love in it? To love it as a geographical conception, I am a foe of empty phrases and I have seen too much of the world to be able to say that there is no such beautiful nature as in Rus. To love its history, I know it well and I love too warmly the general human ideals of justice, brotherhood, and freedom not to recognize how few examples there are in the history of Rus of real community spirit, just sacrifice, true love. But it is important to love this history, for at every time it is necessary to weep over it. Why can I love Rus as a race--this race which is hard, intractable, sentimental, a race without temper or strength of will, so little adapted for political life on its own behalf, and so fertile in producing renegades of every kind? How can I love the bright future of this Rus, which I do not know, when I cannot see any basis for this bright future? “But if on the other hand, I feel myself a Rusin and with all of my strength I work for Rus as the honored reader will see, it is not from reasons of a sentimental nature. I am guided before all by a feeling of a canine obligation. The son of a Rusin peasant, reared on black peasant bread, the work of stout peasant hands, I feel myself bound by the labor of my whole life to repay those coins which a peasant hand has expended, so that I can ascend to the heights, where one can see clearly, where freedom is poured out richly, where universal ideals shine. My Rusin patriotism is not sentiment, not national pride, but a great yoke placed by fate upon my shoulders. I can protest, I can quietly curse my fate, for placing that yoke upon me, but I cannot throw it off, I cannot seek another country, or I would be base against my own doubts. And if anything lightens for me the burden of this yoke, it is the sight of the Rusin people, that, although bent, deafened and demoralized for long centuries, although today poor, awkward, and joyless, yet is gradually advancing and perceives somehow in the widest circles the feelings of light, truth, justice and is seeking approach to them. It is worth while to work for this people and no honorable work for it is lost.”