Hello

Today I would like to present a very old column, which appeared in London - October 5, 1941 in one of the Polish émigré newspapers: "Wiadomości Polskie" ("Polish News"). Its author was Col. Ignacy Matuszewski - journalist, publicist, politician of the Second Polish Republic (i.e. the one existing in 1918-1939 / 1944), associate of Marshal Józef Piłsudski and organizer of the evacuation of Polish gold to France in September 1939 (so that it would not fall into German or Soviet hands).

Its conclusions are extremely timely and may relate to the present day, and in particular to the war between Ukraine and Moscow tyranny that is taking place in eastern Europe. With a simple pen, Matuszewski indicates where the borders of Western civilization end, what does it mean and ... are all countries - which officially belong to this civilization - really also part of it. Therefore, I invite you to read and at the same time to reflect on certain processes that may seem understandable from the perspective of London, Paris or Washington, but which are in fact nothing more than the reproduction of crimes (or rather their acceptance) perpetrated by totalitarian regimes.


PS: I will be adding my own comments to the text in red.


col. Ignacy Matuszewski



The title of the column is:





"The Will of Poland"

"I persistently recall a conversation from less than ten years ago. An interview I had in Warsaw with Mr. Hamilton Armstrong, editor of the New York "Foreign Affairs". At that time, I did not ask my guest for authorization to announce his views - so I do not feel entitled to repeat them today. However, I am allowed to quote what I said myself then. Moreover, after this conversation, I expressed my views in a more, of course, moderate form - in an article I signed by "Gazeta Polska".
 
It was about Pomerania. - And here is the course of my considerations at the time quite faithfully.
 
- It is a mistake when anyone considers the issue of Pomerania a "minor" matter, a "border mistake" or an "injustice towards Germany". An even greater mistake is that this matter can be settled by some "compromise", i.e. by way of concessions from Poland. The tragicomic naivety are the ideas of "solving" this issue through the votes of the League of Nations, art. 19 of the Covenant, at some conference at some table, by voting by some "statesmen". Moreover, even the possible votes of such honorable institutions as the English parliament, the American Congress or the French House of Deputies, will not change anything here and will not induce us to resign. Though it is peculiar that both Mussolini and Paul-Boncour, the German nationalists and the French radicals, are surprisingly unanimous on this point: the application of Art. 19 to Poland, revising the treaties at the expense of Poland, paying for his own profits - with the land of Poland, but neither the Caesar face of Mussolini, nor the thunderous voice of Senator Borah, nor the fiery speech of Lloyd George, nor even the mysterious whispers of Stalin himself - will not make us do nothing . We will not give in - even if necessity, nobility, obligation to make concessions was put in our heads every morning by all newspapers of the world, even if all cities on the globe manifested in favor of "wronged Germany", even if they were made on this matter - which, surprisingly, is not out of the question - identical resolutions of the Great Fascist Council and the Third International.


Anyway, isn't the world doing just that today? Is it not working to weaken us and Germany to strengthen us? Wasn't Locarno an Anglo-French attempt to buy a room at the cost of the blood and life of those living within "second-tier boundaries"? Aren't you Americans showering almost golden rain on Germany with no bill? Didn't Stalin hug the German war industry? Did England and France not introduce Germany to a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations while we were denied this seat?



(Poland and Germany entered the Council of the League of Nations on the same day - September 16, 1926, but Germany was immediately granted the status of a permanent member of the Council, which also included 4 great victorious powers of the First World War, that is: France, United Britain, Italy and Japan as permanent members and 12 non-permanent members, elected every three years. Poland did not obtain the status of a permanent member of the Council, because - as Boncour replied to the words of Minister Zaleski that: "Poland as a superpower, has the right to decide on its own fate ", he said:" Oh yes, Poland is a superpower. But remember that there are great powers and there is Poland "- these words were said in 1932. Therefore Poland was not granted a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations, but ... something was created an exceptional place - a place that is not permanent, renewed every three years. As a curiosity, I would like to add that Germany was admitted to the Council a few days earlier - which they really wanted - but both countries were officially welcomed in the Council only at the meeting on September 16, 1926).



Or American dollars, Bolshevik war cooperation, the fascist commissar of Gdańsk, Count. Gravina, Mr. Montagu Norman of the Bank of England don't all do the same? Is this not a comprehensive pressure on us to surrender to the Germans? Are we not dealing with facts every day, more dangerous than the most glaring utterances - facts of cooperation with Germany against Poland on the part of the great, most often decisive, fractions of the opinion of England, France, America - and on the part of Italy and Russia.


And yet we did not yield. We could and we can hold out - because we are right. Because Pomerania is Poland. Because without it, we wouldn't be able to live like free people. Finally, because in this deceitful and hypocritical world we, Poles, know where the truth is, because we touch it every day with our wounded hands. And the truth is that it is not Poland - only Germany is a country of imperialism and possessiveness. It is true that whoever wants to plug a wolf's throat by throwing a bone to eat it, even though he holds high offices in the greatest countries, does nothing wise.
 

Russia's position is understandable - the Soviets want a war and they know that weakening Poland is the first step to that. One can understand the position of Italy - because Italy itself is afraid of German pressure and wants to channel it eastwards. The Russian position may be described as unethical, demonic if you choose - but it is comprehensible. The Italian position is short-sighted, cowardly, calculated in the short run, but humanly logical in its human weakness. On the other hand, the position of those who really want to preserve peace and who wish to strengthen it by undermining its foundations is illogical in this matter.


You, happy people of the wide world, understand perfectly well the importance of points like Singapore and Panama. You do not understand, however, that Poland lies geographically and politically in a place so important that its shape and strength are perhaps even more important to the history of the world.
 
Poland lies between two huge peoples possessed by demons. And Poland - by its very existence - paralyzes two imperialisms, imperialisms, the strength of which cannot be assessed from a distance. The gloomy gray of Russian imperialism, the imperialism of negation and poverty, the imperialism of finding one's worth in the degrading of others, an imperialism based on the deification of number and space, plurality and boundlessness - and contrasting this innumerable sad quantity with all quality. And shiny, predatory, cunning, efficient as a machine German imperialism - the imperialism of idolatry organizations, the imperialism of the exemplary prison, modern barracks ... Poland knows both of them.
 
In 1920 Poland stopped Russian imperialism, which was reaching for power over Europe. Reaching for power over Europe at the time with chances of triumph. Nobody helped us in this - and few understood it. But we know, we know from direct contact, that this imperialism wants and will want world domination. As then through Vilnius, Grodno, Warsaw, the road to the reign of Muscovite governors in Berlin, Paris, Madrid - and perhaps in London and Washington, as Moscow already ruled over Budapest, Leipzig and Munich - today through Chojnice, Wejherowo, Kartuzy, through towns that you do not know, sleeping among lakes, slumbering among forests - the German route leads to ruling the world. It is this way and it is necessary. Poland cut off from the sea, Poland knocked down on its knees or Poland pushed to the grave - this is all of Central and Eastern Europe in the hands of Germany. If the Germans manage to take over Pomerania again, if they manage to defeat Poland or force it to surrender, then "Mitteleuropa" becomes a fact, then Germany's sovereignty extends unhindered from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, then a block of almost two hundred million people working under the leadership of German for Germany - it becomes flesh. And this, in turn, opens up endless prospects.
 
The road to Germany's hegemony over the world runs through Pomerania.


Therefore, by not listening to you, opposing you, and standing firm with the fact that we have nothing to yield, we do a thing that also serves you. As long as Poland exists, both German imperialism and Russian imperialism are inhibited. This first rampart must be conquered - so that the further march can begin.
 
The issue of war and peace in Europe is not, as is often thought, a question of one or another of Poland's concessions to one or another of its possessed neighbors. On the contrary - it is an alternative to a sufficiently strong Poland or a weak Poland. Poland is weak, this is the coming war. A strong Poland is a huge strengthening of the chances of peace in Europe. Because then the first step of each of these imperialisms is difficult. Difficult directly in relation to a strong Poland. Difficult further - because on the basis of this strong trunk - other resistances are able to exist. The Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania - all this can only resist violence with the help of Poland.
 
No one else in Europe wants to start a war and no one will start a war - except for one of these two nations, if not both together. But the war of one or both of them against Poland will only be the beginning. It will be about getting starting positions. And if Poland lost the war for its existence - then to your homes, so distant and so peaceful today, at your door, so seemingly safe - death with a bone will soon knock.
 
This is not our megalomania - it is our misfortune. It is a misfortune that we live in the open road of history, at a great crossroads of history. Neither is it our fault nor it is our merit - it is only our fate. But through his bloody trials, he has taught us to understand what others do not yet understand. We have seen up close, over the centuries, how these two police universalisms were born, grew, and made monstrous. Because these are universalisms today - i.e. these are imperialisms that strive to shape the entire world in their own way.
 
This is how it has to be today. Our planet has become too tight for limited hegemony to be created. Whoever wants to rule over rape must rule the world in order to be safe. And that is why Poland is today - a twist of fate - the vanguard, the first trench for all peoples who do not want to live in captivity.
 
Therefore, we reject and therefore have the right to reject any suggestions for concessions regarding Pomerania. Therefore, even if the Council of the League of Nations unanimously passed the revision of Poland's borders, if the international expeditionary force were to invade Poland, if even the combined fleets of England and America would stand by our shores to enforce this provision - then we would also hit your ships with all the cannons, they shot your soldiers from every window. In this way, we would only fulfill our duty to ourselves - and to all mankind. Because in our deepest conviction - with such a protest we would testify to the threefold truth: the first - that Poland is not and will not be an object of trade and will not agree to buy any piece of its land; the second - that freedom must be fully defended even against the ignorance of the world's wealthiest; the third is that we will not be responsible for the catastrophe that must be unleashed by the liberation of German imperialism.


PRESS VOICES TODAY (October 5, 1941)


When I was having this conversation, I was a private man with no dignity. Today I am an ordinary refugee. Is it not necessary now that someone like this, on his own responsibility, does not simply and clearly say what he thinks, and what others probably think?
 
After all, now Mr. H. W. Dawson instructs us further ("Contemporary Review" from April this year) that Pomerania should fall to the Germans. It's "Times" from August 1 this year He said that the leadership in Eastern Europe must fall to Germany or Russia, because tertium non datur. It's "Times" from July 14, writes literally: "Unless Poland were content to become the dependent of Germany - an unthinkable hypothesis whose implications have now been demonstrated beyond the possibility of misunderstanding - close co-operation and association with Russia are essential; and this is a matter of far more vital importance to her than any issue of disputed territorial claims. Russia on her side can afford to be generous"... After all, under the influence of this journalism, every third Englishman with whom today talks, kindly advises us to give up "Russian" territories that are part of the Republic of Poland in favor of Russia in order to gain Russian friendship and support on Russia after the war. And many Englishmen return in the old way to the issue of the "corridor", without which it will be so difficult to live in the future democratic Reich.
 
After all, the recent events caused such a multitude of statements by the English press in a way "opening" the issue of our eastern borders that the official "Dziennik Polski" had to comment on it in the following words: "The view that it will be possible to talk about borders at a peace conference applies, of course, to all countries without any exception whatsoever; it is also clear that Poland considers the issue of its borders to be undisputed "... Vice-president of the National Council, Mr. Mikołajczyk - claiming that the Polish-Soviet agreement is a return to the legal status from before September 1939 - with great temperament , but not without a certain amount of rightness, he exclaimed: "Perhaps only Poland's enemies could comment on this point of the agreement differently."


THE fORGE OF FALSE


I am not accusing any of the English who expresses similar views of bad faith or bad will. I know this nation too well not to doubt the complete internal honesty of even those who say the most painful things. But I see it as a result of ignorance and propaganda.
 
Propaganda! My God - there are long debates in the English Parliament now over this weapon, the power of which was felt so acutely by England itself. And yet almost all views of living English people on Poland were shaped, had to be shaped under the influence of falsehood hostile to Poland. After all, anti-Polish propaganda has been going on continuously for almost two hundred years. After all, it begins with Catherine II and Frederick II - and ends with the Third International and all fifth National Socialist columns in the world.
 
Who is not there among the bought or ideological slanderers? From the idiotic treatise of the genius ignoramus, which was J. J. Rousseau, through the malicious lies of Bakunin, through "L'ordre régne à Varsovie" of the ministers of the red emperor, through the scientific arguments of Kautsky and the female hysteria of Rosa Luxemburg ("Polish independence is a bourgeois invention"), until the daily libel in "Humanité" or the periodic lampoon in the "Daily Worker", the accusation - born in the boudoirs of the most civic autocracy in the world - continues to accuse Poland of obscurantism, painting it as a backward state of the Jesuits, as the seat of the papist inquisition, bullying anyone who thinks or works. And another, no less consistent thread of propaganda runs at the same time. Metternich neighbors Russ, and Count Bakunin. Bekendorf, with Napoleon III - Bismarck, with Kautsky - Ludendorff, with Rosa Luxemburg - Alfred Rosenberg, with "Humanité" - "Völkischer Beobachter". For although Bismarck proves something directly opposite to Bakunin, his goal is the same: to convince the opinion of the world that Poland cannot and should not exist.

For 170 years, Russia and Germany - both from the side of reaction and from the side of revolution - have constantly attacked Poland with an indescribable amount of falsehood. Poland for 130 years deprived of the state, deprived of funds, deprived of a voice. For 170 years, some Russian or German reactionary has been leaning over every Tory to accuse Poland of anarchy and proclaim her death as a victory for order, while over every Whig some Russian or German liberal or socialist has leaned over to accuse Poland of reacting and announce her death as a victory for progress. Many innumerable rivulets were seeping and oozing - a lie about Poland to every honest English house?
 
Do the English know about this? Do they realize when they express their views and when they express other people's views? Have they analyzed where the judgments and opinions about Poland come from? Have they verified them? Do they have no doubt that what they are saying is an objective and justified judgment - not the unconscious repetition of the lies they have absorbed without knowing it, over the course of the generations?


THE EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH OPINION


It seems to me that the vast majority of English judgments about Poland are the unconscious result of accepting decades' decades of lies as their own. It is worth reading the speeches of members of the English parliament on Poland from the day of the adoption of the constitution on May 3 until today. I can't do that now. But from the fractions that remain in my memory, it seems to me that I can see how the tone has gradually changed and the understanding of Poland has faded away. For the people of Burke's generation, the annexation of Polish lands was simply lawless; for the people of Lord Curzon's generation - the return of the same lands to Poland was already under a question mark. From the admission of Kościuszko in London after his release from the St. Petersburg casemates - to the anti-Polish strike of workers in English ports, when Russian regiments, like Suvorov's regiments in the past, were approaching Warsaw - long psychological work in successive generations was successfully accomplished by German and Russian propaganda. How differently understood the importance of Poland in Europe by the deputies of the English parliament in 1831 and even in 1863, and how differently in 1918. And later ...
 
The average well-mannered Englishman who opens a magnificent magazine, the Times, every morning, had a chance nine times out of ten for information or for a concealment of Polish issues, coming from reactionary circles and from the red circles according to St. Petersburg and Berlin. In the nineteenth century it was more common than in the eighteenth century, in the twentieth century more often than in the nineteenth century. In the last decades before the outbreak of the previous war, Paris was an ideological time, sometimes a corruptible echo of St. Petersburg, Rome - quite an obedient echo of Berlin. The entire continent seemed to be calling out the same. If I am not mistaken, before the war of 1914 - among the great correspondents of the Times, whom it is fair to call the ambassadors of English opinion in the capitals of the world, only one - really more outstanding - Wickham Steed discovered Poland, Poles and the Polish issue that became then - unpredictably - the main result of the reconstruction of Europe.

Only in this way - with the lack of information or bad information - can one explain the bizarre notion about Poland, which is so often found among the most disposed towards us English. What a country where 100 km north of its capital begins the "German" area, 150 km east of the capital, in Brest, the "Russian" area, 200 km south of the capital, near Rawa Ruska, a "doubtful" area, 200 km west of the capital, near Krzyżbork, again a German area ... ,

And what an amazing miracle this country, composed in the understanding of so many people of goodwill actually from the capital only and "doubts" - can today, fully occupied, still have an army no smaller than some dominions, have an air force many times greater than any other occupied of nations to have among their assets about 10% of all planes knocked down in air combat over England? One of the two must be untrue here: either the Poland recognized only in the outskirts of Warsaw, or the Polish army that England watches every day is the aviation that watches under the skies of London.
 
Once Joseph Conrad, a man who knew and loved England like an Englishman, but who understood Poland like a Pole, acted to correct the mistakes of the English opinion about Poland. Dust covered his words. And yet, had it been heard - who knows, otherwise it would have happened.


THE IRONY OF HISTORY


The irony of history is not just a coincidence. There is always something much deeper about it. Is it not ironic that England entered, that it had to enter - after Versailles, after Locarno, into the war as an ally of Poland. That Gdańsk, created by English statesmen, taken from Poland and favored by its high commissioners, became the formal reason for the outbreak of the cataclysm? Isn't it ironic that after years of "doubt", England drew its sword to defend Polish rights to Pomerania?
 
This is not the case. It is only in the moment of the test that the truth is suddenly revealed. It turned out that Conrad and Chesterton predicted better than English politicians. As England faced German imperialism, it became clear that the only Central European nation that could resist the threat, valued freedom more than peace that was faithful to its historical mission - was Poland. Elsewhere the thunderous words had melted like snow in the sun. Hacha's great shadow passed through central and eastern Europe from Bucharest to Riga. In the days of crisis, England felt that the most homogeneous, most cohesive, most morally strong was the very country it doubted the most, which it had weakened itself for so long. This country, this one, probably, during two years of occupation by the continent's two greatest colossi, by the two most cruel systems of oppression - did not hand over its Quisling in either part of the partition.

For two centuries, England, poisoned by propaganda, denied Poland its strength. And only there, in the hour of the trial, did she find her. All the premises of the English policy towards Poland from 1918 turned out to be false. All of them were canceled by the Polish-English treaty of August 25, 1939
 
But the falsehood that has been believed for too long must finally be cut off with the sword.










BETWEEN RUSSIA AND GERMANY


I admire the honesty of the English press. There is nothing ambiguous about it, nothing shamefully. Polish-Soviet Pact of July 30 this year it has given rise to two different interpretations on the subject of boundaries. The Polish official interpretation claimed, on the basis of "pacta sunt servanda", that the first point of this treaty was the restoration of the legal status from before September 1939, and thus the restoration of the borders established by the Treaty of Riga. The Soviet official interpretation, according to the article "Izvesti" dated On August 3 this year, she took the position that the issue of Polish-Soviet borders was open. In this unpleasant situation, when, the day after the pact was signed, such a serious disagreement on such a serious matter emerged between the old and the new ally - the English press did not show any embarrassment. The vast majority and with all openness supported the Soviet thesis. Moreover, in several cases she advised us to submit to the friendly Russian leadership after winning the war.
 
The honesty of the English press is not only worthy of appreciation but also of gratitude. It allows you to know - and to predict. At the same time, this honesty applies. It is obligatory to mutual honesty.
 
So let me be quite clear that I consider the position taken by most of the English press to be wrong. Should this erroneous journalistic assessment become a political decision, it may be assumed that the consequences of such a misleading attitude could prove disastrous for the future organization of Europe. I consider this position of most of the English press to be the result of ignorance of the history of Central and Eastern Europe. I consider them, what is worse, the result of a complete lack of knowledge of Poland and Poles.

What does history teach us? It teaches that in the last millennium only in 135 years that passed from the first partition of Poland to its resurrection - a large area of ​​lands adjoining the Baltic Sea and the Carpathians has lost its own political physiognomy. He lost his own political physiognomy, divided and occupied partly by Germany, partly by Russia. In the many centuries before that, during all the centuries of historical life of these areas before the partition of Poland - the tribes and later the peoples and nations living there defended themselves bloodily, stubbornly and effectively both against being absorbed by Russia and against being absorbed by Germany.
 
How strong is the reluctance to succumb to either German or Russian culture among the peoples living in this area - is indicated by the undeniable fact that after 135 years of Poland's captivity, which were also years of captivity by other peoples - when Poland was rebuilt, they returned to a free life. And they returned to free life, not as a result of the decisions of distant conferences - but probably against those decisions. In the battles which, for example, Latvia and Estonia waged against Germany and Russia in 1918 and 1919 at the same time, there is a lot of real epic, an epic that teaches that in these areas the word Russia and the word Germany are actually the same word: slavery.
 
Anyone who wishes to think historically cannot remember only the last - or, in fact, the penultimate - 135 years from the almost 1,000-year period. It cannot be the more that despite the passage of those 135 years, the first shock restored a political arrangement in these areas, much more reminiscent of the previous long centuries, than those special years 135.


As a result of the previous great war, as a result of unexpected and unsearchable by anyone who started the war and led the war - most of the areas that made up the former Polish-Lithuanien Commenwealth returned to their own lives, separating from Russia and separating themselves from Germany. This was what they only wanted - the then defenseless and the slaves, who had lived for centuries in the areas stretching from the Baltic to the Carpathians and the Black Sea. Apparently they wanted it badly, since that's what happened. A deep, insurmountable spiritual strangeness that separates the Slavic and non-Slavic tribes, grown on the West Roman culture, from the Byzantine-Mongolian culture and the Russian psyche, from the beginnings of historical life in these areas; the deep, insurmountable racial and psychological alienation that separates these tribes from the Germanic race and the possessive German psyche - found here a political expression almost unexpected by no one. This word was not identical to the legal system of relations that prevailed in these areas for many centuries when the Republic of Poland was a union state of these peoples. But the actual system of relations did not differ much from the old patterns. In fact - as for many centuries before, from the fifteenth century, already undivided - in the twentieth century Poland again became the center of resistance of all these peoples against the pressure from the east and the west. With her fall - and their freedom melted like smoke.
 
If the past teaches that from the beginning of historical life of the areas located between the Baltic and the Carpathians and the Black Sea, the peoples inhabiting these areas resisted both being absorbed by Germanism and flooded by Russia, if it further indicates that one permanent political form in which they expressed its will, independence, was the Polish state - the history of those special years also teaches something. They seem to prove that only in the case of a combined effort of Germany and Russia can these vivid racial, spiritual and cultural differences be subdued and overpowered. Only a brutal division and the brutal extermination carried out by the united forces of Germany and Russia were able to take away the external expression of the will of the peoples of this area, alive for centuries. On the other hand, no attempt to absorb or subdue this, not only geographic but primarily historical area, by one of the partitioners - has never been successful. Russia, neither personified by Catherine II, nor personified by Alexander I, nor personified by Lenin, by not succeeded. The Germans failed neither during Ludendorff's crude attempts, nor during the - the greatest in panache and style - attempt undertaken by Hitler in the period 1936-1939.
 
In the face of each of such attempts, Poland, designated by history as the mandate of all these areas, resisted. The resistance to each of the partitioners was so effective that they had to join together to break it.
 
Therefore, from a historical point of view, the "Times" opinion that "leadership" in Eastern Europe may belong to either Germany or Russia is one of the greatest absurdities that could be written.
 
For only together Germany and Russia were able to conquer the free peoples who lived in a multi-million belt between them. It was possible to subdue it by division. This is because these peoples do not want to submit to either the German or the Russian leadership. The Times alternative to either Russia or Germany sparked the same indignation - be it visible or invisible - from Constantinople through Warsaw to Stockholm. For a thinking observer - Poland's September fight on two fronts, against Germany and Russia at the same time, and the long-lasting Turkish neutrality in this war - are two forms of the same phenomenon. It is a negative and a positive of the same image, two poles of the same will - the will to maintain true independence from both the Russian and the German will to rule. It is a tragic and serene version of the same ancient fairy tale. It is a pity that the British ambassador's explanations, rightly dismissing the Times alternative, have only been submitted where the tragedy of this alternative has not been lived. It seems - which does not offend Turkey - that in this case there was a moral privilege of the wall protruding from the stumps of the demolished walls towards the just sky of Warsaw over the still cheerful Ankara.


POLAND AND THE WEST EUROPEAN COMMUNITY


The most astonishing is why the logical writer of the Times did not think why such a simple and logical thing as the allegedly inevitable choice of "either Russia or Germany" - why this did not happen, although it took about a thousand years to become ? Why the hell did Poland not voluntarily submit to German or Russian leadership for a thousand years or an hour? Why has she never entered into "in close association" with this or that of these neighbors? Why did she fight without stopping even in the most difficult period of 135 years of captivity? Attributing this only to the perverse nature of Poles is indeed too shallow.
 
If Poland, over the course of so many centuries, has not joined the Russian community or the German community, it is because it has not been able to join them. It could not be because from the beginning of its historical existence Poland belongs to a different community.
 
Poland belongs to the Western European community, although it is located in the east. Who knows if this antinomy is not the main cause of the tragedy of its fate. But the tragedy of the fights of this far advanced avant-garde gave Western Europe - in the battles of Legnica (1241) and Cecora (1620) and Smolensk (1611), Vienna (1683) and Warsaw (1920). .) and on a hundred other battlefields - freedom to grow and develop.

Poland belonged and belongs to the Western European community ... It means that from the beginning of its historical existence Poland lived on the same general issues as the Western European community. Because the "Commonwealth" of the peoples of Western Europe does not begin with the emergence of the League of Nations. Before the Reformation, Western Europe was - despite all regional differences - a much more complete spiritual community than ever before. Poland lived - from afar - the same life as England, France and Italy; Poland was educated on the same books, the same models, the same Bible and the same Plutarch. It is no coincidence that the University of Krakow was established at the same time as the Sorbonne, Oxford, and Padua - and many centuries earlier than the University of St. Petersburg. It is also no coincidence that in Vilnius and Lviv a traveler from the West will be greeted by the familiar Gothic, true Gothic and Renaissance - which he would have searched in vain in Byzantine Moscow, in copied St. Petersburg. Poland lived the life of the Western European community spiritually and politically. As in every nation of this community, these processes which we call the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment - proceeded in their own way. But they were the same processes. Each of the great spiritual currents from the Crusades and St. Francis, through the Reformation, flowed through Polish brains and hearts until the Enlightenment. In the political forms there were in Poland, as well as in England, differences perhaps greater than in the spiritual life - for example, there was no period of enlightened absolutism. It can be assumed that the underdevelopment of the feudal and liberal-capitalist period in Poland - i.e. the periods of which the former shaped the sense of hierarchy as a natural phenomenon, and the latter the sense of individual responsibility - is the main cause of the imperfections of the political life of contemporary Poland. Despite all the differences, however, also here the line of development ran analogously to the main line of development of Western Europe.


A COUNTRY OF NOT ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM


What kind of community of such a country can be with Russia? With a Russia that has lived a different, distant life throughout its history? How to find a spiritual connection between Poland and a country whose medieval Tatar era, which knows no revival, in which "enlightenment" radiates from Peter's enormous fist, tearing the boyars beards? What can the political coexistence of peoples who knew the excess of liberties and the excess of freedom be like - with a country where from the dawn of time, without interruption, without change, until today the system of unenlightened absolutism continues? Almost theocratic absoluteism, because the deification of the tsar and the overthrow of God is actually the breaking of the masses so that they can give what is divine to Caesar as well. Where in the history of the Western European community can we find figures analogous to Ivan the Terrible, to Łża-Dmitri, to Peter I, to Nicholas II, to Rasputin, to Savinkov, to Trotsky, to Stalin? There are no similarities - because elsewhere any, even the greatest of these characters would be impossible. Cultural England must read and rave about Dostoyevsky. Rightly. But reading it is not enough. You have to understand that what he writes that his "Devils" - this is reality. It has not only an aesthetic one, it has a political existence. Sometimes it seems to me that to this day no one in Western Europe believes that these are not exotic stories - only that it is naked and living truth. Perhaps this is a beautiful, wonderful, tragic truth - but a man of the Western European community cannot live in it. (as exemplified by de Custine, Depardieu or Seagal - who praised Russia so much, they liked it so much, and when they moved there, they were unable to live there and they fled from there very quickly). I would like every English politician, especially those who advise us to "close connection with Russia", to imagine whether he could personally move to "Siel Stepanchikov", live in St. Petersburg with "Guilt and Punishment", and really exist in the world of Stavrogins, Verkhovynskis , Myshkin, Raskolnikov, could he agree to remain forever not as a tourist, not as a spectator, but as a human being in the atmosphere of the Karamazovs?
 
Perhaps most of the English politicians who offer the whole nation friendly advice to immerse themselves in this reality for centuries - do not know Dostoyevsky at all. But then their opinion on Russian affairs is worth as much as the opinion of a four-year-old child on astronomy. This is not a paradox.
 
I do not want to enter into an evaluation, into an evaluation of Polish-Russian differences. I just want to say that these are differences that have grown up over the centuries, differences that cannot be broken over centuries. The Polish-Russian "Association" is the suicide of one of these nations. Four centuries ago, when the Polish army camped in the Kremlin - Russia, contrary to the political calculations of part of the militia, resisted the Romanization, which would be the inevitable result of the Polish dynasty. It was from this resistance that the own Romanov dynasty grew, and this is the basis of its meaning and the sense of its permanence. Several hundred years later, Poland resisted, more than once, the political calculations of those Poles who tried to organize a Polish-Russian community. She resisted, guided by the same self-preservation instinct. The tragic fate of Stanisław August, who met a sad death in a shabby gilded prison in St. Petersburg; the fate of Adam Czartoryski, dethroning the brother of his imperial friend, during the war with Russia, which was the final result of all his attempts; the fate of Wielopolski, a man like Cavour, pushed away by his own nation - in one century three terrible examples that there is no wisest political calculation that could be carried out against the instincts of the nation. And finally - so recently - the life of Dmowski, removed until his death, despite all his values ​​and strengths, from the real power in resurrected Poland - is it not another testimony that even an unrealized program of rapprochement with Russia cannot be played in Poland? The doubling of the national current and the thousands of weaknesses that have resulted from it for us, it is from this source that it begins again. It took an entire generation to be finally liberated from this antinomy.


The coexistence of Poland and Russia is possible only through separation. Only when one country is separated from another, one nation from another is separated by a clear, impassable line, when life does not penetrate each other, when from other origins on different, independent tracks - only when both countries are separated by a clear border separating from the dawn of historical life not only two nations, but two different worlds - only then is a good neighborhood possible. Any blurring, any questioning of this line is a struggle. So it means war.
 
So many centuries of history teach this. It means war.
 
Politicians may not like history. But they should remember it.


DEATH CROSS OVER EUROPE


In the simplistic logic of people for whom politics - art, deciding about the whole system of human life - is a thing that requires less skill than pharmaceuticals or veterinary medicine, the conclusion will be simple: "if not with Russia, then with Germany". There are no longer these differences there - the same Gothic churches are erected in Kraków and Nuremberg, in Vilnius and in Aachen, similar town halls are in Zamość and Salzburg. If one can argue that Copernicus and Wit Stoss belong to Germany or Poland - this is proof that there must have been a deep parallelism in cultural life and in spiritual currents ...
 
There would be nothing fake than this "logical conclusion". For Poland is waging the same struggle in the east and in the west.
 
Of course, Germany belongs to the Western European community. Of course, they are its co-creators. But they don't want to belong to it.
 
The misappraisal of this fact is the reason for the repeated and repeated mistakes in the policy of Western powers. For so many centuries the West has become accustomed to considering Germany as members of its community that it can neither understand nor believe what has happened. The supposition is constantly recurring that it is just an evil clique - former Prussian junkers, today National Socialists - that inexplicably captured 80 million Germans and forces them to commit incomprehensible crimes. It would be enough, then, to free the "good Germans" from the rule of a clique of madmen so that they would return to their former community. And then - in order to satisfy their understandable ambitions, to satisfy their needs - it is possible, and who knows whether or not they should not be given the mandate of the entire Western community in relation to Eastern Europe (we had an example of this and visible consequences before February 24, 2022).
 
The feeling (lost for reasons incomprehensible to England or France) of community - lies equally at the sources of favoring the Weimar republic, credits for Germany, the early evacuation of the Rhineland, the Treaty of Locarno, the Anglo-German naval agreement, the Reich's invitation to the League of Nations, the draft pact of four , the Munich Agreement. The same feeling was expressed in the conduct of war - starting from the dealing withof R.A.F. with the scattering of proclamations that were to awaken the "good Germans", through the French "armistice", based on the belief that the victor in the general interest of the community can moderate his triumph - until to the Anglo-Russian agreement organizing the war alliance in relation to the "National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei" - and not in relation to the German state (after all, in the media in the USA, Great Britain, France or other European countries and these countries that grew up on the European Occident - the word "Germany" is automatically replaced with the word "Nazis" when the subject goes down to the period of World War II, as if every German soldier who murdered because he was ordered by the leader in the name of the future of the Great German Reich of the German Nation, yes as if each soldier would automatically belong to the Nazi Party. How shallow and pathetic it is!).
 
There is a certain amount of rightness in all of this. It must be microscopic - but it is. Undoubtedly, each of the currents in Western Europe has its own people among the Germans. Undoubtedly, every English or French, Italian or American can find "his" German, with whom he will speak a common language.
 
What happened is that in less than a century, the Reich invades Europe for the third time, unleashes a world war for the second time, breaks solemn commitments for the tenth time, rejects the most attractive offers as insufficient - this is not, it cannot be a coincidence. We, the people of Western Europe who live in the East, have known this for a long time.


The German nation rose up arms in hand against the community of the West precisely because it belonged to it and did not want to belong to it. It was not only for pathological reasons that the cruelty with which the Germans terrified the world arose - before it got used to it. Not only sadism is destroyed unnecessarily royal castle in Warsaw, not only barbarism is turned into the royal bedroom of St. Jadwiga in Wawel, a waste place for soldiers. There is a symptom of the decision to burn books in city squares, which teaches children to denounce their parents. Hitler is talking about the new millennium, not with a joke and not with bragging. The German nation does not want to be a member of the Western European community - as it would have to be "inter pares" ("among equals"). Therefore, he must murder this community. Without matricide, he cannot rule. If a certain community is recognized - some common rights, the same for all its members, must be recognized. Then you can only co-rule - not rule. Therefore, the destruction of the entire Western European culture - from the tablets of Moses, from the Justinian code, through all the commandments of Christianity, through all the years of common history and joint work, to the destruction of material traces of it on earth - is the condition of the true victory of Germany, the condition of the essential beginning of the new millennium.
 
This fight, before it became a fight for ruling the world, was a fight for domination over the soul of the German people. It took a long time to break with the West. We know her from the beginning. We know what our allies do not know and do not understand, because we have watched from close up, from a seed, how the heads of this hydra grew. We cut its first throat half a thousand years ago (in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410).


(English translation)






 
Today a threat hangs over every English city, over every woman, over every child there is the same gloomy shadow. Not the swastika, the imperishable mark of the party - but the age-old black cross of conquest, the black cross of death on each wing with the night flying over England's peaceful homes - this is an old sign of war with the community of the West. In the shadow of this cross, the Elbe, Lithuanian and Masurian cemeteries stretched out. East Prussia grew up under this emblem - an iron-gloved fist inserted into our insides. These signs hummed on the banners of war when Bismarck proclaimed the second empire at Versailles. With this sign, the missiles marked a quarter of a century ago fell on London like a faint prediction of what has happened now. And today, what really unites the German nation - this is that old, full of history, full of memories, covered with a laureate of victories, bloodied in the rivers of someone else's blood - the cross of death.
 
England has known it as a tangible reality for seven quarters. We have known him for seven centuries.
 
If Poland did not enter into a closer relationship with Germany - it was because it could not enter. Not only because of racial differences, because - like her - other peoples, tribally completely different, like Lithuania, resisted uniting with Germany. What did not happen in the course of almost a millennium - clearly could not happen - because Germany in the East has always been what Nazi Germany is for the world today.
 
This is not the place to analyze how a small order grew into a power reaching for the entire globe. But one thing is certain: the same slogans, the same methods, the same principles that terrify the Western world today - have always been a weapon of Germany in the East. A strange mixture of virtue and crime, deceit and heroism, cruelty and order, falsehood and obedience, cynicism and elation, perseverance and insanity, perjury and piety - characterized the Brandenburg electors as well as Frederick II and his successors, such as Bismarck, as well as Ludendorff, Hitler. It only changed that at each stage the Teutonic Order grew more and more in Germany itself, changing its form - it saturated everything German with its own content. Until today he has become Germany. The war for Germany was ultimately lost by the Western community. Today you have to win the war with Germany. War for Europe. A war for something more: a war for the very existence of European culture.
 
There is no doubt that Germany is this culture's greatest, conscious enemy. They strike not blindly, but skillfully. Matricides find it easier to find their mother's heart than for an alien murderer.



WHAT IS WEST CULTURE?


The basis and essence of Western culture is fidelity to the word, it is - created by ancient Rome - the sanctity of the contract, the inviolability of the obligation concluded in good faith. In this simple, irreplaceable phenomenon that a person can trust another person's word - and not be disappointed in it - the content of Western culture is closed.
 
Christianity made it complete and universal. From the words: "Give Caesar what is imperial, and what is divine - to God" - from these words a free man is born on earth. A man with a conscience. From that moment on, the omnipotence of power is lifted from people and the burden of responsibility towards something beyond the authority of the higher one is placed on them, and in their own hearts, constantly conscious.
 
From that moment on, the word, given to man by man, obtains a supernatural sanction which cannot be waived by any authority. The basis of interpersonal relations becomes the inviolable contract of free people.

Perhaps it is ridiculous to try to close in two sentences a phenomenon as powerful as Western culture. One thing, however, confirms the correctness of these statements. Namely, that it is against these principles - against the transcendental value of commitment and against the sovereign independence of conscience - that the spiritual effort of Germany is directed. The advancement of the rights of the German nation above the value of the most solemn promises, the abolition of the direct relationship between man and God and the return to the pre-Christian deification of the all-powerful state, rejection of the universal and unconditional value of those principles - this is both the cause and effect of Germany's abandonment and opposition to the Western community.
 
In September 1939, after desperate defense, the most eastern rampart of this culture, attacked from two sides and flooded with armed forces and masses of new barbarians, collapsed. Barely two years have passed since that September morning, when people gave their first blood there - and now the culture of the West continues only in the last small scraps of Europe, defends itself in the last - through the defensive sea - stronghold of old England ("The Island of Last Hope" - as it was then said), and now she lives freely outside Europe on the lands of America, Africa and Australia. Apart from that, from the eastern shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, there is a huge space from which culture has actually been banished. This means that hundreds of millions of people live in these areas and with the daily test of ordinary experience, he checks that it is possible to exist even when what seemed to be as necessary for life as air, water and bread was rejected, when God was rejected, the sanctity of the human word was mocked. conscience crossed out.


AGAINST CAPITULATION


When - at such a moment - from the walls of the last fortress of Europe comes a voice saying that "in the future, there, in the east, where the present war began, where our farthest rampart, the watchtower of our faith, lasted for centuries - there are to reign in the future or strangers or enemies "- such a voice is not only a proof of the lack of awareness of the purpose of the ongoing struggle, but also a proof of a lack of moral strength. In selfishness, which makes us abandon our distant brethren, in selfishness, which avoids obligations beyond the immediate interests, which renounces the community when it requires effort - there is more to this than error. There is weakness.
 
Those who, like the author of the "Times" article, offer an alternative to eastern Europe, "either Russia or Germany", are defeatists. Australia giving up Singapore "for the sake of peace" is a hopeless and unsuccessful surrender. Britain giving up Suez is capitulation. The western community that denies Poland is capitulation.
 
This is how we see it and that is what we will call it.


THE WILL OF POLAND


Finally, it should not be forgotten that we, Poles, are also taking part in this war. That we have our goals for this war and that we do not intend to renounce them.
 
Any argument can be questioned, but apart from reasoning and evidence, there are also facts. One of such facts is the will of Poles.
 
Like any other of us, I can say exactly what each Pole feels, thinks, wants and what he will fight for.
 
It would seem a terrible thing to us if we were to leave this war diminished or cut back after the victory over Germany, if we were to pay us with harm for all the years of struggle and suffering (this is what happened).
 
There is no Polish land for sale, there is no Polish land to give up, not a piece, not a coin, neither for enemies, nor for the love of allies.
 
The Poland which the last war found is a small Poland, it is the smallest Poland that has ever existed as an independent state. The borders of this state, laid out and recognized in a period of the almost absurd excess of the ethnographic and linguistic principle over the laws of history, over the guidelines of strategy, even over common sense - are the borders in which the Polish nation can hardly breathe. These are the limits of compromise - not annexation. The limits of compromise in the west - because the English delegates watched in Versailles, so that Poland did not go too far. The limits of a conscious compromise in the east, made for the sustainability of peace - because when the Treaty of Riga was written off, Polish troops stood much further east of the line that Poland was voluntarily taking.
 
Poland accepted this compromise and Poland respected it. It is the others who have crossed these lines. They met resistance which will last and will last until the end - it will last until victory or until the extermination of the Polish nation.

Poland rejected temptations. She refused to let the Soviet troops into Germany when it seemed, after the Kapp attack, that outside help might bring victory to the German communists. She rejected the temptation of a joint march to Russia with Germany, rejected the role of Italy in Eastern Europe, and did not give up independence at the cost of someone else's land. But that's why she feels that her own land is inviolable, that her borders are sanctified not only by contracts but also by her good faith.
 
Finally, these lands are Polish. Lviv is Polish, for which - from Tatar arrows, from Turkish sabers, from Austrian bullets, from Russian bayonets - more Poles died than today in this city. Vilnius is Polish, with the Mother of God in the Gate of Dawn, with Piłsudski's heart asleep on the Ross. Ours are the Polesie plains and marshes, from where Traugutt set off to fight, which ended on a high Warsaw gallows. Poland is white Krzemieniec, bent with Słowacki over the Ikwa river, Polish Nowogródek between two moons, Polish cemeteries and forests and every breath of this land, just as here as in Poznań, as in Toruń in Copernicus. We collected all this after 135 years of captivity from Poland many times greater. That's all, this little, the smallest Poland, Poland rebuilt after so many years of underground existence most modestly, most restrainedly, most carefully. After all, when she was born - we were taught modesty and sensibility, like an adolescent girl. How they prescribed degrading laws to a naughty child...


But over the 20 years, through the war won without help, and over the history of recent years, we have learned many things. Today we know that our mistakes are great, but the mistakes of others are no less, perhaps greater. We know that we are giving way to more than one number and wealth - we are not inferior to anyone in terms of courage and quality.
 
Therefore, the present Poland will not agree to guardianship. She will not accept any limitation of sovereignty that would extend to her without affecting others.

The more and the more Poland will not agree to discuss its territories. Today, the Polish soldier and aviator fights for the entirety of the British Empire, without considering whether and where the borders of this Empire are drawn according to his personal preferences. - We demand the same for ourselves.


More needs to be said. Poland will not give way. As long as there is a Polish soldier, he will shoot at the heads of the invader in the same way near Lviv as near Grudziądz, as well as in Zbąszyń as in Stołpce - it doesn't matter whether there will be a steel helmet on this head or a pointed cap. This is not why we rejected Nazi proposals for a "road through Pomerania", plebiscites in Pomerania - to discuss similar topics with anyone other than with machine gun fire.
 
France was defeated because she considered herself defeated. England will not be defeated because she will not consider herself defeated, even if this war lasted a century.
 
We are not defeated. What's more - we know from our own history that we can fight against all counts, for decades, suffer defeat after defeat - and finally win. There is only one way to force the Polish nation to renounce its freedom or land - to exterminate this nation. There is no other way (and this is what the Germans did and spoke about it openly, without hiding. Such Obergruppenführer SS - Arthur Greiser, governor of the "Land of Warta", that is Greater Poland, said in September 1940: "The Führer did not send me to Poland to he stroked a few priests, but for the DESTRUCTION of the Polish nation, so that the German nation could live. ”And after the war, when he was captured by the Americans and handed over to the Polish side, all his German shoe and contempt left him. He was a completely different man, he prayed a lot. - especially when it became clear that he would be sentenced to death, although he still believed that he would manage to avoid it, he wrote pleading letters asking for his life to be spared to the communist satrap - Bolesław Bierut, who was in charge of Poland y; but it did not help him much, although he explained himself as "obeying orders" and he blamed everything on Hitler, Himmler and Goering. He was hanged in Poznan and on July 21, 1946, watched by a crowd of Polish onlookers whom he wanted to murder a few years ago).
 
For 135 years we have fought - unarmed, underground, forgotten, lonely. The day after the liberation, lonely again, we faced one of the invaders victoriously. 20 years later - aware of what we are doing - we took up, the only one in the other side of Europe, the challenge of the greatest military power in the world. In view of these terrible facts - it would be childish naivety to suppose that the Polish nation could be "persuaded" to surrender. Until any surrender.
 
Poland considers itself an equal ally of England. Poland, like England, has goals in this war and must demand that they be respected. These goals are modest - there is nothing possessive about them. Poland demands that freedom, integrity and sovereignty be restored to all its lands. Poland must demand that its security be ensured in the future by repairing the borders with Germany, primarily by cutting off the fist tucked into our guts: East Prussia. Finally, Poland cannot agree that the fate of neighboring peoples, and today conquered or incapacitated, should be settled without or against it.
 
That's all. It's not much. But there is nothing left to go down here.
 
This is the will of Poles. All Poles. Moreover, this is also right.
 
Whoever signed the alliance with Poland accepted this will, not hidden at all.
 
Little, the tiniest Poland entered this war. It may come out enlarged or not come out at all. But it cannot be diminished. Because he defends against such a verdict will not postpone."




A bit long, but so true. Poland was betrayed both in 1939, in 1943 (in Yalta), and in 1945 in Potsdam. It was under Soviet "guardianship" and the West, satisfied with the end of the war, organized a victory parade in May 1946, to which ... Poles were not invited (because the Soviets did not want it). Those Poles who gave their lives in the fight for Great Britain, France and common victory, and of course for the entire European culture. But in the understanding of an American (which is understandable, because the USA actually lies behind "Big Water") or an Englishman, Poland is some kind of antipode, some distant land, unknown, incomprehensible - so why bother with it.





But the fight in the occupied and enslaved country continued - a hopeless fight, a fight from above doomed to defeat, but for many this fight was the only option (although they really wanted peace), because they could not live in the shitty world that the Soviets were building in Poland. so the argument: "Our world is no more" was answered: "But we are!" There is also a phrase: "Apparently hope dies last. But what to do when it has long died and we are still alive?"


"We will fight until the last drop of blood - for Free Poland" - Steadfast Soldiers







It's the same as Ukraine today. Also distant, unknown - why help her? German politicians said openly to the request of the Ukrainian ambassador for help in the first hours of the Russian attack on February 24, 2022: "Why should we help you, you will be gone in a few hours". This is probably the European culture, this German culture ?! But somehow the Ukrainians are fighting further and here we should definitely praise both the USA and, above all, Great Britain, which countries provide Ukraine with the greatest aid (in the rankings the USA is in the first place, then Poland, Great Britain, then long, nothing for a long time...

And that's pretty much what I wanted to write today.

That’s a remarkable article Sigbert. Most striking is its date - the 5th of October 1941. At that point, it must have seemed to many observers that the taking of Moscow by Napoleon Bonaparte 129 years earlier, or by Stanisław Żółkiewski 200 years before that, was about to be emulated by German general Fedor von Bock. Just 2 days after Matuszewski’s article was published, however, snow fell in the Moscow region, which even by Russian standards was an early arrival of wintry weather. From the 7th of October onwards things would begin to change to the detriment of the German army.
 
Yet at the time of publication, it did indeed look as though the war in the east might be settled in Germany’s favour. Any thoughts of Poland regaining Pomerania at that time would have appeared fanciful in the extreme. Yet that was precisely what Matuszewski envisioned. His comparison of the strategic importance of Pomerania with that of the likes of Panama and Singapore would also have seemed peculiar. Co-incidentally or otherwise, however, Singapore did indeed fall to the Japanese just 4 months later.

The question as to where the borders of Western civilization are, depends upon how the term Western civilisation is defined. The term ‘the West’, for instance, is casually bandied about by journalists and others often without precision. 

Sometimes the term Western civilisation is used to denote any democratic country. In the 1980s, for example, Margaret Thatcher referred to Japan as being one of the ‘Western countries’. She probably meant that it was a non-communist democracy. Such terminology would have been in keeping with the mindset of the ongoing Cold War. Although Japan and India etc are democratic countries, they would probably not describe themselves as ‘Western’.

Sometimes the term Western civilisation is used to denote European civilization. In pre-history this would see the development of the Minoan civilisation and the building of the city of Knossos in Crete as marking a starting point. In recorded history, the Siege of Naxos in 499 BC (whereby the Greek inhabitants of that island resisted an attempted conquest by forces of the Persian Empire) is sometimes pointed to as marking the beginning of a distinct European identity. In east Asia today, the term ‘a Westerner’ refers to anyone of European ethnic appearance whether they be from Australia, Rumania or Argentina. This usage is problematic, however, as it seemingly excludes African-American and Afro-Caribbean people etc from being described as Western. 

Sometimes the term Western civilisation is used to denote any Christian civilisation be it Coptic, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant or Non-Conformist. This usage, however, begs the question as to why use the word ‘West’. There are many people in Armenia, Lebanon, Egypt and Ethiopia etc who are Christian but are not Western Christians.

Sometimes the term Western civilisation refers to Western Christianity. That is, those countries whose law and calendar stem from Roman Catholic or Protestant tradition. Dating the start of ‘Western Christianity’, however, is tricky. The most obvious date would be 1054 when the Great Schism saw the Latin church in Rome split from the Greek church in Constantinople. Yet this would exclude centuries when states in Europe were already Western Christian in civilisation. For instance, there is the Carolingian hypothesis which sees the coronation of the Frankish king Charlemagne as ‘emperor of the Romans’ in 800 as marking the start of Western civilisation. Then there is the Hibernian hypothesis. This points to Ireland, which was outside the Roman Empire, but which nevertheless remained Western Christian kingdoms after the Western Roman Empire had disintegrated at the end of the 5th Century and had been replaced by pagan states. Another view sees the term ‘Western Roman Empire’ as being the origin of Western civilisation. The year 312 when the Western Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity is sometimes pointed to in this respect, while others suggest the year 286 when the emperor Diocletian partitioned the Roman Empire into East and West. Then there is the Papal primacy hypothesis. This sees the establishment in the 1st Century of the Bishop of Rome as supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church as marking the beginning of Western civilisation.   

What is clear is that the terms ’democratic civilisation’, ‘European civilisation’, ‘Christian civilisation’ and ‘Western Christian civilisation’ are not interchangeable. The concepts do often overlap with one another but the borders of each are distinct.

The column you mentioned offers valuable insight into the complex and often fraught relationships between nations and civilizations, and highlights the need to continuously reevaluate our understanding of these relationships in light of current events. Col. Ignacy Matuszewski's thoughts on the borders of Western civilization and the meaning of membership in it are particularly relevant in light of the ongoing conflict in eastern Europe between Ukraine and Russia.
His observation that the actions of totalitarian regimes can be perpetuated and even accepted by those in positions of power is a sobering reminder of the dangers posed by such regimes and the need for vigilant protection of democratic values and institutions. The relevance of his writing more than 80 years after it was first published underscores the timelessness of the issues it raises and the importance of continued reflection and analysis.
I would definitely agree with the sentiment that it is important to read and reflect on the writing of individuals like Col. Matuszewski, as they can offer valuable perspectives and insights into the complexities of the world and the issues that we continue to face as a society. For more info about civilization, or American civil rights continue reading this article.