A well-known literary
critic and writer on economical subjects said to me: "War seems a
material impossibility, precisely because it would mean the complete ruin
of all material interests."

He was wrong, as we know; but those who said that Austria as usual would
back down were, as a matter of fact perfectly right. Austria did back
down. What these men did not foresee was the interference of Germany.
And one cannot blame them very well; for who could guess that, when the
balance stood even, the German sword would be thrown into the scale with
nothing in the open political situation to justify that act, or rather
that crime--if crime can ever be justified? For, as the same intelligent
man said to me: "As it is, those people" (meaning Germans) "have very
nearly the whole world in their economic grip. Their prestige is even
greater than their actual strength. It can get for them practically
everything they want. Then why risk it?" And there was no apparent
answer to the question put in that way. I must also say that the Poles
had no illusions about the strength of Russia. Those illusions were the
monopoly of the Western world.

Next day the librarian of the University invited me to come and have a
look at the library which I had not seen since I was fourteen years old.
It was from him that I learned that the greater part of my father's MSS.
was preserved there. He confessed that he had not looked them through
thoroughly yet, but he told me that there was a lot of very important
letters bearing on the epoch from '60 to '63, to and from many prominent
Poles of that time: and he added: "There is a bundle of correspondence
that will appeal to you personally. Those are letters written by your
father to an intimate friend in whose papers they were found. They
contain many references to yourself, though you couldn't have been more
than four years old at the time. Your father seems to have been
extremely interested in his son." That afternoon I went to the
University, taking with me _my_ eldest son. The attention of that young
Englishman was mainly attracted by some relics of Copernicus in a glass
case. I saw the bundle of letters and accepted the kind proposal of the
librarian that he should have them copied for me during the holidays. In
the range of the deserted vaulted rooms lined with books, full of august
memories, and in the passionless silence of all this enshrined wisdom, we
walked here and there talki