Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/203

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HUNGARIAN SYMPATHY
191

In 1831 the Hungarians in an address to the Emperor of Austria offered to fit out at their own cost an army of a hundred thousand men to aid the fighting Poles. The offer was naturally declined; but in 1832, when all was over, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, Polocsy, uttered these words: "If kings and emperors regard themselves as members of one great family, and wear mourning when one among them dies, then with far greater reason ought the destruction of a nation to cause all the other nations to mourn; but the mourning which kings wear on their hats or arms, these nations wear in their hearts." These are fine words, but Poland was no more a corpse in the thirties, than she is now to be regarded as blotted out of the number of nations.