the whole crowd had been driven to the middle of the Krakowskie Przedmiescie, a second detachment of cavalry swung in from a back street and fell on the public with drawn sabres. People ran everywhere, climbed lamp-posts, rushed from one side of the street to the other, were jostled and trampled by the horses and beaten by the soldiers.
I could not disentangle myself from the mass, which surrounded me and surged madly in one direction or another in its frantic efforts to escape the horsemen. Suddenly, as if something had unlocked the crowd, it dispersed so quickly that I had no time to choose whither I should fly; for there at but a short distance away I saw a galloping hussar riding down on me with sabre raised.
"He will strike me," I thought quickly, and hate raised in the depth of my soul. My hand went quickly to my pocket, reaching for my Browning.
"I will not let him strike me," something exclaimed within me and seemed to calm me at once. A moment more and the soldier would have been upon me. Already I had drawn my revolver, when suddenly the cavalryman's mount slid and fell on the slippery pavement, crushing its rider. To the left and right I saw galloping soldiers; but soon the street was emptied, so that I could cross quietly over and turn into a side way.
Such a scene has often been enacted in Warsaw, bent as it was under the yoke of Russia; yet we did not publish our tortures to the world, for we had faith in our destiny, were strong and hoped for the day of our revenge—that revenge which came in 1920 when we checked and defeated the Red Army in the heart of our own land and bought with our blood the rebirth of a free Polish State.
The waves of the Revolution of 1905 rolled farther
