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Show Poland WHEN history began to take form in southeastern south-eastern Europe, out of the myths a legend came of a people that a thousand years ago lived in peace in the valley of the Vistula; a superior people that had a patriarchal government of their own. They had gardens and cultivated fields, had sheep and cattle and superior horses, descendants descend-ants of the blood horses that had come from central Asia; such horses as had grown and been nurtured in the stables of kings from a time long before any history had been written. But they were surrounded by semi-barbarous peoples on every side the Russ still dominated by the old fierce Asiatic instincts; the Goths but half regenerated from barbarism; the Huns; the race of whom Atilla was the highest type. All these by turns made war upon their richer neighbor, neigh-bor, but all were in detail beaten and for hundreds hun-dreds of years this people maintained their little kingdom intact and with them the lamp-(of civilization civili-zation which they kept lighted in the window of their kingdom shed a steadily growing softer and brighter light. But as they steadily increased in wealth and influence their neighbors more and more coveted their possessions. In the meantime gunpowder and gung had been invented, the nations na-tions around them began to maintain larger and larger armies and finally by strength and superior means of destruction began to encroach upon and absorb their territory, until finally a hundred years ago, three surrounding powers combined in war against them and by sheer force divided the little kingdom among themselves. But they did not divide the spirit of the people and they, through the century have been vexing the ear of the Infinite with prayers for justice. At last the big bruisers that dismembered their land fell out and for a year past have been waging wag-ing a war of extermination upon each other. Strangely enough one of the chiefest of their battle bat-tle grounds has been upon the soil of this littlo former kingdom. The land has been rent by shot and shell, disfigured by trenches and loaded with dead. The land has been devastated, the cities rent by war's missies, the sufferings of the people peo-ple have been Incalculable, but we suspect that amid their sufferings there has been a solemn joy over the thought that their prayers have been heard and that a just God is answering them in His own way, and that they are nursing a belief in their souls, that after the earthquake, trie storm 111 and the fire shall have passed, a still small voice III will proclaim for them a restoration for their III country and that they will attain to their old III place among the nations of the earth. III |