Quixotic Dictator

Rain drizzled upon the great Saski Square at Warsaw, drenched a pitiful old sorrel mare which stood sopping amid a shouting throng. Astride the mare sat a big man in an old and faded uniform. The rain trickled from the drooping ends of his mustache. Now and then he soiled his white gloves by patting the mare's neck. Sometimes he bent down to whisper in her ear and she whinnied in reply. . . .

This Don Quixote upon his sagging, sopping Rosinante was Josef Pilsudski, Marshal and Dictator of Poland, astride the 25-year-old mare on which he charged at the head of his Polish Legionnaires in 1914. . .

The day was the eighth anniversary of Marshal Pilsudski's return to Poland from the German prison in which he languished throughout the War; for he was captured amid the first skirmishes of the Legionnaires which he had raised in an effort to free Poland. As he sat last week on his "grand old mare" 30,000 Polish soldiers paraded in review before him. Poles, mindful of their debt to the always temperamental and often foolhardy Marshal, cheered him. From Ostrolenka, near Warsaw, there came an old, tottering Jew who presented Dictator Pilsudski with a handsome bouquet and declared that only since the rise of the Dictator have his people received justice in Poland. . . .

Amid this apparent demonstration of loyalty by all classes 1,000 "doves of peace" (trained army carrier pigeons) were released by order of Marshal Pilsudski and wheeled in three great circles above the square. It was apparent that the Marshal retains his heroic stature in the hearts of his people. By way of showing that he is both a Pole and a true cosmopolitan he appointed last week Mlle. Teiko Kiwa, first Japanese to sing the role of Madame Butterfly at the Polish National Opera, to assist President Ignatz Moscicki of Poland in unveiling a statue of Chopin* close to Marshal Pilsudski's residence in Lazienski Park.

* Frederic Francois Chopin (1810-49) famed pianist and composer, born at Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, son of a French father and a Polish mother. At 15 he published his first composition. At 21 he was already great among such great musicians as Mendelssohn, Liszt; soon outranked them. At 27 he began his curious and celebrated intimacy with Amandine Dudevant ("George Sand"). When he died, at 39, after having composed some 200 major works, his stupendous funeral at Paris was but a feeble tribute to his genius.