Wojciech Jaruzelski Quotes
I served the Poland that existed.
Smale, Alison, and Michael T. Kaufman. "Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Last Communist Leader of Poland, Dies at 90." The New York Times, 25 May 2014.
The song was adopted as the Polish national anthem in 1927. At the battle of Macieowice, the great Polish hero, Thaddeus Kosciusko, was seriously wounded and is said to have uttered, “Poland is finished.” The song written by another General was meant to counteract the psychological effect that the Russian enemies of Poland were trying to create by quoting Kosciusko. There are even today, Polish patriots who claim that Kosciusko never made the statement and it was all propaganda.
This quotation was very prophetic. In 1952, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of dual citizenship {629249} and hundreds of thousands of Americans now carry dual citizenship.
Corsican independence was a cause taken up by liberals from France to Poland. Even America before its own revolution had supporters for Corsican Independence. See {612999}.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the pledge became a matter of controversy. The Queen was the Queen of England, and many Australians were secular and objected to the reference to God. Only the flag remained uncontroversial.
Defending his opposition to a League of Nations. He was instrumental in preventing the United States from joining the League of Nations which President Wilson had worked so hard to create. The Senate never ratified the treaty which Wilson had signed.
See Carl Schurz {33636} for an 1872 version and G. K Chesterton for perspective {597471}.
When Jefferson Davis accepted the presidency of the Confederacy, Johnson observed:
For his seditious activities he was sentenced to penal servitude for life. He escaped and came to America where he entered politics
Although Queen Victoria was modern and liberal in many respects, the idea of self-determination by majority vote was unthinkable and certainly undesirable for her. She was not opposed to lands and peoples changing empires and peoples per se. It was how the decision was made that was critical to her. Sovereigns had been buying, selling, and trading lands and peoples for centuries. And after wars, the winners would also reallocate the kingdoms of the loser. But the idea of a democratic plebiscite making the decision was unacceptable. To her and many others of the day, power struggles between factions, politicians, and sovereigns themselves would cause them to inflame the passions of the people and/or bribe the people to vote to change their allegiance. She saw popular but possibly unscrupulous politicians “blackmailing” kings and queens and if payments from the treasury would not be made, the politician would stir up a movement to transfer allegiance to another sovereign who might well be willing to pay.
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was a Polish military officer, politician and de facto dictator of the Polish People's Republic from 1981 until 1989. He was the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party between 1981 and 1989, making him the last leader of the Polish People's Republic. Jaruzelski served as Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985, the Chairman of the Council of State from 1985 to 1989 and briefly as President of Poland from 1989 to 1990, when the office of President was restored after 37 years. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's Army, which in 1990 became the Polish Armed Forces.
