Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 145, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1915 — TWO NOBLE POLES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TWO NOBLE POLES

Not to be outdone by Prance or Germany, “bleeding Poland,” today a nation only In the wonderful unity of its people the world over, and In revolutionary times In last throes of involuntary dissolution, sent her sons to wage in America the struggle for freedom that had gone against them at home. So Count Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko came to this country. To tell of the life of Kosciuszko would be to tell of a wonderful oldworld romance, of love and hardships, of discouragements and great triumphs. Son of a Lithuanian noble, he came to this country as a result of a love affair with one of higher rank than he, bearing with him, it is said, a bloodstained handkerchief, the only memento of the gbi who had won his heart, only to be snatched away from him by force, at the conclusion of a dramatic attempt to elope. The couple were overtaken and Kosciuszko was left all but dead, the for gotten kerchief on his breast. But his youth and iron constitution brought

him round and, Poland having no further attraction for Idm at that time, be came to aid the struggling colonists in America. Through Franklin’s aid he was given a place on Washington’s staff, and afterward made colonel of engineers, a position for which he was eminently fitted by a careful military training in the best schools of Europe. He was with Gates at Saratoga, with Greene in the Carolines, and again in charge of the' fortification of West Point on the Hudson. When he had finished at West Point that place was considered the strongest fortress in America, and Washington took pains to pay tribute to Koaciuszko’s genius. At the end of the war he was a major general in the Continental army. Then he went back to Poland U> fight for his own people. His efforts were unsuccessful, and, after a checkered career, he died in 1817 at Soleure, Switzerland. Hie heart was buried under a monument there, mud his body embalmed and afterward laid at rest at Cracow.