* * * * The Sovietisation of more than half
of Poland will mean, among many other changes, the end of the old feudal relation- ship which has lasted on there when it has disappeared from nearly all the rest of Europe. A few years ago I drove out from Vilna to spend a day on a Polish estate on the Lithuanian frontier—the frontier, indeed, ran through the middle of it. The proprietor, now dead, was a leading Warsaw lawyer, who was only able to visit his property at intervals. As we went round the farm buildings and cottages men and women greeted him with manifest warmth by kissing sometimes his hand but more often his sleeve. Being democratic himself he disliked a homage which seemed to savour of servility, but any attempt to check it would have been misunderstood, so he let his people express themselves as they would. Now all that will go, and it may give place to something better. But the feudal relationship at its best, where the landowner cared genuinely for the welfare of his people, was something whose disappearance leaves a good deal to regret.
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