ear comrade," he writes in the first weeks of war to one of his
deputies, "those who have begun the Rising are in this determination:
either to die for our country or to deliver her from oppression and
slavery. I am certain that to your soul, your courage, I need say no
more. Poland will certainly touch your sensitive heart, dear
comrade."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Letters of Kosciuszko_.]

The same tone is conspicuous in Kosciuszko's many proclamations to the
nation. In these, too, he addresses the people of whose destinies he was
the ruler, who were under his obedience, as his "dear comrades," his
"fellow-citizens," his "brothers." He regarded himself in no other light
than that of: the servant of his country, equally ready to command or to
resign his authority, according as her interests demanded. Lust of power
and personal ambition were unknown to him. He was, if we may use the
expression, out for one object: to save his country; and any interest of
his own was in his scheme nonexistent. "Let no man who prizes virtue,"
he wrote, "desire power. They have laid it in my hands at this critical
moment. I know not if I have merited this confidence, but I do know that
for me this power is only a weapon for the effectual defence of my
country, and I confess that I long for its termination as sincerely as
for the salvation of the nation."[1] He yearned not for the sword, but
for peace and the "little garden" of his dreams, as he tells a friend.
Given that temper of his mind and the inherent nobility of his nature,
and we have the explanation how it is that not one unworthy deed, not a
single moral stain, disfigures the seven months that Kosciuszko stood at
the head of the Polish state, beset though he was by internal and
external problems under which a man of less purity of aim and
single-heartedness than his might well have swerved.

But for all his native modesty Kosciuszko was too conscious of his
obligation to his country to brook any infringement of the power he
held. Writing a sharp rebuke to "the whole principality of Lithuania and
especially to the Provisional Council of Wilno," which he had reason to
believe was arrogating to itself his functions, he declares that he
would be "unworthy of the trust" that his nation had confided to him if
he did not "know how to use and maintain" his authority.[2] A little
later, desirous to mitigate this sternness with the suavity more
congenial to him, he spoke to his native district in