elected their rulers. The Poles chose for their king one who was capable of executing the kingly office. At the same time the custom prevailed among their neighboring nations to recognize the "immediate right" of the rulers, and, as a consequence, they often became subject to the rule of one who lacked the essential qualifications of a ruler, and who was better fitted to perform the menial service of a king than to execute the kingly office.

If today a republican form of government is synonymous with governmental competency of a people, and rigid monarchism or despotism denotes political dormancy, and if a republic means today, as it had ever meant, political progress and despotism its lack, it is hard to understand how the republican Poles can consistently be charged with inability to self-govern.

CHAPTER VII.

POLAND MAKES WORLD SAFE FOR DE

MOCRACY.

"In all other states of Europe, sovereign power had not ceased to be on the increase. The European nations, scarcely delivered from feudal tyranny, began everywhere to fear falling under the yoke of a single master. At this epoch, in the year 1573, the Poles alone, through the death of their king and the vacancy of the throne recovered all their rights. They alone, in the entire Europe, without disturbance, without bloodshed and through tranquil deliberations, reformed the form of government to their liking.

Poland, whose constitution never allowed her to be a conqueror, owed only to this tolerance her growth and the annexation of all the neighboring countries."-Rulhiere-History of the Anarchy

of Poland.

The three-fourths of the world, which united in their struggle for Democracy, will gladly recall

that Poland started to "make the world safe for Democracy," back in the fourteenth century, and that, naturally, her cause had, for so many centuries, been the cause of the Allies today. It is interesting to recall today, that the Poles centuries ago, had "a government by the consent of the governed," and that they let every people "free to determine its own policy, its own way to development, unhindred, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and the powerful.”

The government was of that broad and democratic nature which emanates from a liberty and equality loving people. Already in the fourteenth century, Poland had a Senate and the House of Delegates, or the "Upper" and the "Lower House." Here sat dignitaries of the Church, Patatines and Castellans, in all 136 Senators. The Lower House contained delegates and representatives from all the parts of the country. For centuries before her partition, Poland administered the affairs of her State on the principles of Democracy. Judson C. Williver1 draws a vivid picture of the Polish Democracy when he says: "The Pacta Coventa or Contract between 'Poland's Story-Century Magazine, May, 1915.

nobles and the king, deprived the king of almost all real power, save when in war he headed the army. The Pacta Coventa at its full development must strike the twentieth century reader as rather a charter of liberties than an apple of discord. The king was elective; only the parliament could make war, impose taxes or commission ambassadors; parliament must be convened at least biennially; the king's cabinet was to be elected by the Diet once a year."

The Confederation of Lithuania and Ruthenia with Poland is another example of Polish Democracy, and classically brings out President Wilson's idea of how a nation should not seek to extend its own policy over any other nation or people. The two countries constituted with Poland the first voluntary alliance of three independent states in Europe, and were really a United States in Poland. They were governed by the "Crown," or by Poland. Each, however, possessed the fullest local and linguistic autonomy. They had their laws, their representatives, their own government, though, in cer

tain matters, they were governed by the Constitution of Poland. Poland paid deference to their religion, language, their customs and traditions, and respected their dignity as a separate people.

The Polish national conception has never been imbued with a narrow-minded nationalism. There was no discrimination among the various nationalities within the Polish Commonwealth. There was no political preferment, no exclusion from offices of given nationalities. A Pole, a

Lithuanian and Ruthenian were beneficiaries of the vast political community called the Polish Republic. The idea of nationality was with the Poles broad enough to cover ethical and religious differences. The Polish patriotism was anologous to the American one. "Luthuania, my country," thus begins his celebrated poem, Mickiewicz, Lithuanian birth, like so many other eminent Poles. By race a Ruthenian, by nationality a Pole, called themselves the Ruthenians, who claimed Poland as their country and who felt Polish.