An issue of Polska magazine devoted entirely to Józef Piłsudski on the anniversary of the Marshal's death. Among the memoirs is, of course, the place and illustration of Piłsudski's hometown of Zułów. The whole is about the wider context of Piłsudski's life.

Source: Polska, Warsaw 1936, R: 2, no. 20, after: Jagiellonian Digital Library.

Accessed on-line

A modernised reading of the text

It was the most sacred feeling of love for the Fatherland that made you choose our grey Polish ranks. It was the feeling of love
of the Homeland, present and most vivid in every righteous Pole, that made you overcome all difficulties, come here and fight for the freedom of this land that gave you, your fathers and grandfathers. You have shown the world once again, guided by the example of all our knightly ancestors, that there is no place on the great feast day where the voice of the Homeland does not reach the hearts of Poles, calling them to fight. With struggle and toil, with suffering and blood, we have renewed the knots,
, that bind you to Poland.

Having returned to your homes and to the fields of your former work, spread this love among your countrymen everywhere, which
guided you during the hard years of war, so that, just as in that period, the voice of the Homeland, calling its sons to action, could always reach you and your children and grandchildren across all seas and distances.

In the years of his early childhood he was nourished by the song of the yearning Polish time, singing to almost every tree, every barrow and lonely cross a song of praise to the insurgents fallen in battle against the invaders. And in the family home, with an open heart, the future Marshal of the Republic absorbs the legends and stories from the year of the bloody struggle, the year to which the thoughts of every Pole of that time returned. A tender son, attached with the deepest filial love to his mother, from whom he learned in childhood love of the Fatherland, national pride
and from whom the lust for action was awakened that was to lead him in the future to victory.

His father, preoccupied with his daily farm chores, had less contact with his children, but his mother, a model Polish mother, carefully developed in her sons will and character, nobility and the most sacred feeling - love of the Homeland.

How painfully the ambitious little Ziuk - as Józef Piłsudski was called in his childhood - felt later, when he was already in Vilnius Gymnasium, all the daily harassment from Russian teachers, who insulted the national dignity of Poles in almost every lesson! How rebellious then was the childish heart, accustomed to nobility and dreaming in restless dreams of great deeds, of fighting for the freedom of the Fatherland!

What Józef Piłsudski had learnt from his childhood, what he had learnt from his mother - love of the Fatherland - he carried with him all his life to others, and stirred others with his fervent heart to fight for freedom. The childhood years were therefore the deepest foundation for the future activities and deeds of the Commander, Commander-in-Chief and Marshal.

Later events further strengthened all those "dreams and fantasies", inflamed the future creator of Poland even more to action, and drew more and more clearly before him the images that the most sacred and beautiful, dearest and tender voice - that of his Mother - could evoke in the inflamed eyes of a child. Hence the Marshal's entire life is imbued with a tender love for his Mother, by whose ashes the heart of the greatest
Pole rested. For no one can mould a heart as well as a mother, no one can instil in a child's heart the greatest truths as well as a mother can, which will guide him throughout his life, from his earliest years until his old age.

And for the tasks that awaited Józef Piłsudski, a lot of willpower was needed, a lot of dedication and perseverance in the superhuman work he had to shoulder. Barely had he left the walls of the grammar school he was sentenced to five years' exile in Siberia, where, despite his young age, he not only did not break down, but also further strengthened all those character traits that his mother had developed in the child.

And after five years in exile, the struggle begins, or rather the constant, daily ordeal of fighting; the constant, daily vigilance over himself and those subordinate to him. Sleepless nights spent in the train carriage and eternally tense attention to spotting in time the Russian spies, so many of whom were hanging around everywhere, sniffing out Polish "rebels".

"I consider one of the best moments of my life to be the one in which, going from Warsaw to Krakow, I saw no border, no cordon and no foreign authority," he says.

"In Krakow a handful of youths, workers and peasants stood up to fight, to try, in a desperate moment, to fight not under a foreign banner but under their own Polish banner, to die on the battlefield not as a soldier from a foreign sign but as a Polish soldier."

"The abyssal gates of death for some people do not exist. They testify to the truth that the laws of greatness are different from the laws of love."

This period of internal struggle, a period of constant struggle and agony of slowly conquering one section after another of the intended work, lasted a long time. If we add here that Józef Piłsudski had to fight not only against violence, but also to overcome the indifference and passivity of his own people, his work grows to superhuman proportions. And yet he was not spared the hurdles thrown at his feet, nor was he spared the thorns in his own society,
on which he walked towards his most sacred goal - the Restoration of the Polish State.

Arrest, escape, illegal border crossing, constant straining of nerves and will to the ultimate extremes - that was the atmosphere in which Józef Piłsudski was building the new Poland, many years before it came into being.

Today, every Polish child knows the life of the Greatest Pole, every child knows about the Marshal's enormous effort of thought and heart, but on the day of the gravest mourning it is necessary to be acutely aware of the constant fight, the daily struggle against adversity, and the consequent overcoming of it with enormous will and sacrifice. For the victory of the Marshal is only the fruit of this struggle, from which all Polish generations must learn the lesson of the necessity
of conquering obstacles, of the necessity of breaking difficulties and of the will to win, without which it cannot be achieved.

We saw this magnificent will to win when the Bolshevik horde, occupying the territories vacated by the Germans, advanced ever closer to the heart of Poland. We saw then how, in the "agony of creation", a plan was formed in the brilliant mind, how not only did Marshal not once lose faith in victory, but even when the Nation began to doubt it, Marshal spread that faith.

And he won his own Nation. He kindled the flame of action. Whoever was able to lift a rifle at that time went into battle. Thousands of young breastworks sheltered Warsaw from the enemy, waiting for the assault from the Wieprz River to begin under the Marshal's personal command.

"Everything that is in me with heart and feeling pulls to where they are, dear soldiers and comrades-in-arms," he said.

"The history of the army - is the history of the order. The order is the life of the army, the order going from man to man, compelling this and not that action and work. It is the eternal life of the army - the command and the must, bound to the command. And the command reaches deepest where it goes not only for the manifestation of life, but where it contradicts being - and goes for life itself. Command and obedience, command and must - this is the sphere in which the military revolves. The command comes from the human being; it does not dress itself up in any abstractions. The epitome of command can practically be found in an equal human being - even in one who is despised by others; and yet the command works.".

"There are times coming whose mark will be the race of labour, as before there was the race of iron, as before there was the race of blood. Whoever will be more prepared for this contest, whoever will give greater evidence of endurance in this race, will be able to keep what he has gained or to make up what he has lost.".

"Every leader must stifle all doubts within himself and keep them only for himself, and give others the confidence, the strength to persevere in the hardest moments."

"The element of happiness is laughter. And the more empty and sincere it is, the more we call it childish, the more heaven on earth there is in it. I knew how, like a good soldier, to laugh merrily when danger threatened in life.".

And there came an onslaught that drove the enemy far away. There came the assault and the pursuit of the fleeing. Poland emerged victorious from the war against the Russian colossus, even though not even two years had passed since its inception. His Genius made it happen. His work and His indomitable will to win.

We stand today in the face of the Nation's most sacred relic, in the face of the sarcophagus of Him - the Victor. And from here we look beyond ourselves, to the path traveled in just one year.
- Have we been able to fulfil the vow of steadfastly building Polish greatness?
- Have we been able to overcome difficulties as He taught us by the example of a great life? Have we been able to relegate personal matters to the background and subordinate them to the common good?

May this day of the most painful anniversary be a day of examination of conscience. An examination of conscience made all the greater by the fact that we pass it before the Spirit who looks down upon Poland from the heights of the royal Wawel Castle - before the Spirit to whom we have solemnly vowed to guard the great legacy and to assume the honourable responsibility before the future for the fate of the Great Homeland.

"For the guidance of younger children, even for boys, it seems to me that in the work of physical education the best is a woman, who by nature has the gift of the right approach to children and the ease of dealing with them.

"We have the White Eagle skimming over our heads, we have a thousand reasons to gladden our hearts. But we beat our breasts. Do we have enough inner strength? Do we have enough of this power? Do we have enough of this material power to still withstand the trials that await us? The great question before Poland is whether it is to be a state on a par with the great powers of the world, or whether it is to be a small state in need of the protection of the mighty.".

Before the Grand Marshal was laid to rest in his glassy grave, there came a moment when he could finally think of himself too.
So he summoned his friends with a sad nod of his hand, a sad look in his eyes, and said with a sigh:

"My weary heart has already given its sowing, let it rest after death in the cemetery on Rossa, let this heart, loving so strongly, rest in the feet of the most beloved Mother, in my beloved Vilnius.".

The great Marshal died in Belvedere in the spring, mournful bells were ringing, mournful tears were flowing, and this heart, which loved Poland so supremely, removed from the Commander's corpse, was lulled in an urn, and rests on the Rossa, in the feet of the dearest Mother.
Only the wind hums over it, only God is silent over it.