King Matt the First

by Janusz Korczak

  What weak teeth these white boys have, thought Klu Klu.

  She dashed over to the minister’s table, dipped her handkerchief in a glass of water, and placed it under Antek’s nose. “Don’t worry,” she said in a soothing voice, “your hand’s not broken. In Africa, we need only one day to get over a fight like this. You’re more delicate here, but you’ll feel fine in a week. I’m very sorry about your teeth. African children are so much stronger than you people.”

  MATT RETURNED TO his palace, his feelings deeply hurt.

  He would never ever set foot inside the children’s parliament again.

  What horrible ingratitude. That’s the thanks he gets for all his work and plans, for all the dangerous journeys he made, and for defending his country so heroically.

  Make them magicians, give them dolls that reach to the sky—they’re so dumb. It’s too bad I started the whole thing. What complaints! The roof leaks, the food’s no good, there are no games to play at camp. Where’s there another country where children have a zoo like ours? Or such fireworks and brass bands? They even have their own newspaper. It wasn’t worth it. Tomorrow that very newspaper would inform the whole world that Matt had been called a pussycat and a yellow canary. No, it wasn’t worth it.

  Matt announced that he would no longer read the letters from the children, nor would there be any audiences after lunch. And there would be no more presents. He’d had it!

  Matt telephoned the Prime Minister for advice.

  “Please connect me with the Prime Minister’s private apartment.”

  “Who’s speaking?”

  “The king.”

  “The Prime Minister is not at home,” said the Prime Minister, not realizing that Matt would recognize his voice.

  “But I know it’s you I’m talking to,” said Matt.

  “Ah, it’s Your Royal Highness, I beg your pardon. But I can’t come to the palace. I’m sick, and just getting into bed. That’s why I said I wasn’t at home.”

  Matt hung up.

  “He’s lying,” said Matt, pacing his study. “He doesn’t want to come see me because he already knows what happened in parliament. Now no one will respect me any more, people will make fun of me.”

  Just then, the footman announced the arrival of Felek and the journalist.

  “Send them in!” ordered Matt.

  “I have come to ask Your Royal Highness what I should write about today’s session of the Proparl for tomorrow’s paper. If we write nothing at all, that’ll cause rumors and gossip. So we can say that the session was stormy, that Baron von Rauch offered his resignation, which means that he feels offended and no longer wishes to be Prime Minister and will be given a medal by the king.”

  “And what will you write about me?”

  “Nothing at all. It’s not proper to write about such things. But Antek is the most difficult problem. Antek is a delegate, and so he can’t be flogged. The delegates can fight among themselves, but the government has no right to punish them, because they have immunity. Besides, Antek already got a good walloping from Klu Klu, and maybe now he’ll settle down.”

  Matt was so happy that there wasn’t going to be any article about Antek’s mockery of the king that he was even ready to forgive him.

  “Tomorrow’s session will begin at twelve.”

  “That does not concern me in the least, because I won’t be going.”

  “That’s not good,” said the journalist. “They might think that Your Royal Highness is afraid.”

  “But my feelings have been very hurt,” said Matt, with tears in his eyes.

  “A group of delegates will come to beg Your Royal Highness’s pardon.”

  “Fine,” agreed Matt.

  The journalist left, because he had to write his article right away so that it could be printed the next morning.

  But Felek stayed.

  “I told you a long time ago you should stop being called Matt,” said Felek.

  “What of it?” Matt interrupted irritably. “Now you’re Baron von Rauch, but they called you worse names than me.”

  “Sure, but I’m just a minister, and you’re the king. It’s worse when a king is called names.”

  Klu Klu did not go to the next session, but Matt had to. At first, he did not like being there at all, but everyone was so quiet and the speeches were so interesting that Matt soon forgot about everything that had happened the day before.

  The topics under discussion were red ink and grownups laughing at children.

  “Our teachers always correct our homework and tests with red ink, but we have to write in black. Red ink is prettier, and we want to use it, too.”

  “Yes,” said one of the girl delegates, “and they should give us extra paper to protect our books. Book covers can get dirty. And also we should have decals to decorate our exercise books.”

  There was a burst of applause when the girl finished speaking. The boys wanted to show that they were not at all angry at the girls and that yesterday’s hullabaloo had just been the work of a few bad apples. And a few bad apples out of a couple of hundred delegates weren’t all that many.

  They spoke for a very long time on the subject of grownups making fun of children.

  “If you ask them a question or do something wrong, they either get angry and yell at us or make fun of us. That’s not right. Grownups think they know everything, but they don’t. My father can’t name the bays in Australia or all the rivers in America. And he doesn’t know which lake the Nile flows out of.”

  “The Nile’s not in America, it’s in Africa,” said one of the delegates from his seat.

  “I know! I just mentioned it as an example. Grownups don’t know much about stamps and they don’t know how to whistle through their fingers and that’s why they say it isn’t nice.”

  “My uncle can whistle.”

  “But not through his fingers.”

  “Maybe he can, how do you know?”

  “You’re a dummy.”

  Another quarrel might have started, but the chairman rang his bell and said that delegates could not be called dummies and anyone who did so would be expelled from the hall.

  “What does that mean, expelled from the hall?”

  “That’s a parliamentary expression. In school we’d say thrown out the door.”

  And so the delegates were gradually learning how to behave in parliament.

  One delegate arrived late, near the end of the session.

  “Excuse me for being late,” he said, “but my mother didn’t want to let me come at all, because yesterday I came home with a scratched nose and bruises from the fight.”

  “That’s against the law. A delegate has immunity, and his parents cannot forbid him to attend parliament. What sort of system would that be? He was elected a delegate, and he has to attend. You can get your nose scratched in school, too, but parents don’t forbid you to go to school.”

  This was the beginning of the quarrel between the children and the grownups, but only the beginning.

  Now I must tell you something which neither Matt nor the delegates knew yet: the foreign newspapers had started writing about the children’s parliament. And all the children in other countries had started talking about rights and reforms both in school and at home. And if they were given a bad grade unfairly or if someone grew angry at them, they would say right away: “That would never have happened if we had our own delegates.”

  In Queen Campanelli’s little country in the south of Europe, something had made the children angry and they had gone on strike. They knew that the children’s flag was supposed to be green. And so they marched beneath a green flag.

  The grownups were very angry.

  “A fine kettle of fish. We don’t have enough trouble with the workers and their red flag, now the kids are starting up. That’s all we needed.”

  This news made Matt very happy, and there was a long article about it in the children’s newspaper, entitled “The Movement Begins.”

  The ar
ticle said that Queen Campanelli’s country had a warm climate and the children there were hot-blooded, which was why they had been the first to demand their rights. It also said:

  It won’t be long before all the children in the whole world are marching under the green flag. Children will realize that people shouldn’t fight. And there will be peace in the world. People will love each other. And there will be no more wars. Because if children learn not to fight when they’re little, they won’t fight when they grow up.

  King Matt was the first to say that children should have a green flag. That was King Matt’s idea, and so he should be the king of all the children in the world.

  Princess Klu Klu is returning to Africa and will explain everything to the native children. That will be good.

  Now children will have the same rights as the grownups and be real citizens. Now children will not be obedient out of fear of punishment but because they want a good and peaceful world.

  The paper had many other interesting things to say. Matt was very surprised that the sad king had said it was hard to be a reformer, that, more often than not, reformers came to a bad end and it was only after their death that people saw that they had been right and built monuments to them.

  But everything’s going well for me, thought Matt. I’m not in any danger. Sure, I’ve had plenty of worries and troubles, but you have to expect that if you’re going to run a country.

  AT THAT VERY moment, a group of young people, meaning people over fifteen, had gathered in front of parliament. One of them climbed up a streetlight and shouted: “They’ve forgotten all about us. We want to have delegates, too. The grownups have their own parliament, the children have theirs, what’s wrong with us? We won’t allow those squirts to order us around. If the kids get chocolate, we should get cigarettes. It’s not fair.”

  The delegates arrived for a session, but the big boys would not let them in.

  “Fine delegates you are! You don’t even know your multiplication tables yet, and you think ‘mouses’ is the plural of ‘mouse.’”

  “And some of them don’t even know how to write.”

  “They’re supposed to govern the country?”

  “Down with their government!”

  The prefect of police telephoned the palace to say that Matt should stay home because there was trouble brewing. At the same time, he sent out the mounted police, who began to disperse the crowd. But most of the boys began throwing their books and lunch boxes at the police. Some of them even started tearing up the cobblestones from the street. Just then, the prefect of police came out on a balcony and shouted: “If you don’t leave here now, I’ll call in the army. And if you throw stones at them, they’ll shoot in the air first, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll open fire on you.”

  The boys paid no attention and grew even more furious. They broke in the doors and burst into the hall where parliament met.

  “We’re not budging until we get the same rights the children have.”

  Everyone had lost his head and had no idea what to do next. Then suddenly Matt appeared in the royal box. He had not heeded the prefect of police and had come himself to find out what the trouble was.

  “We want a parliament, too, we want delegates, we want rights.” First they shouted, then they started hollering so loud you couldn’t make out a word of it.

  Matt stood in silence. He was waiting. When they saw that shouting wasn’t going to get them anywhere, they began to shush themselves: “Quiet, enough, stop.” Finally, someone cried: “The king wants to speak.” The room grew still.

  “Citizens,” said Matt. “Your demands are just. But you’ll be grownups soon and can run for the grownups’ parliament. I began with the children because I’m still little myself and I know what children need. You can’t do everything all at once. I have too much work as it is. When I turn fifteen, if everything’s all set with the children, I’ll make reforms for people your age.”

  “But we won’t need your help, because we’ll already be in the grownups’ parliament by then.”

  Matt saw that he had taken the wrong tack. “But why pester us? You already have mustaches and smoke cigarettes. Go to the big people’s parliament. They should take you in there.”

  The older boys, who already had little mustaches, began to think: It’s true. What do we need this sissy parliament for? We can be in a real parliament.

  And the younger ones were ashamed to admit that they didn’t smoke cigarettes yet, and so they said: “All right.”

  They left. But on their way to the grownups’ parliament they ran into soldiers with fixed bayonets, who stopped the procession. Some wanted to go back, but there were soldiers behind them, too. So they split up—some went down one street to the right, and others to the left. Then they split up again, but the soldiers attacked them from behind, chasing after them. And when they had split them up into little groups, the police began arresting them.

  When Matt learned of this, he was very angry at the prefect of police, because it looked as if the king had deceived the boys. But the prefect explained that there was no other way. And so Matt ordered that a proclamation be posted on the street corners requesting the boys to choose the three smartest among them to come to the palace for an audience with Matt.

  That evening, the king was asked to come to a council of ministers.

  “Things are bad,” said the Minister of Education. “The children won’t study. They laugh when the teachers tell them to do something. ‘What will you do to us? We can do whatever we want to. We’ll complain to the king. And tell our delegates.’ The teachers don’t know what to do. The older children are completely out of hand. They say: ‘Brats rule the country while we work like dogs? We’re no dummies. Since we don’t have our own delegates, we can do without schools, too.’ The older boys never used to fight with the younger ones, but now they pester them and tease them all the time. ‘Go on, go complain to your delegates.’ They pull their ears and hit them. The teachers say they’ll wait two more weeks, but they’ll quit if things don’t quiet down. Two have already left. One opened a soda-water stand, and the other one started a button factory.”

  “Most of the grownups are very dissatisfied,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs. “Yesterday, in a café, a man said that the children have gotten swelled heads, think they can do whatever they want to, and make so much noise it can drive you crazy. They jump on the sofas, they play soccer in the house, they roam the streets without permission, and their clothes are so torn that soon they’ll be walking around half-naked, like savages. The man said other things as well, but I can’t repeat them. I ordered him arrested for lèse-majesté.”

  “Now I know what to do,” said Matt. “Everyone who goes to school will be considered an office worker. They’ll keep on doing their reading, writing, and arithmetic at school. School will be their office. Children should be paid for the work they do. And so we’ll pay them. What difference does it make whether we give them chocolate, skates, dolls, or money? And the children will know they have to work or else they won’t receive their salary.”

  “We can try it,” agreed the ministers.

  Matt had totally forgotten that the country was now ruled by parliament, not by him, and he ordered that the proclamation be written and posted on every street corner.

  Early the next morning, the journalist came rushing in, mad as a hornet, and said: “If Your Royal Highness is going to plaster the latest news all over the city, what do we need newspapers for?”

  Then Felek, who had followed the journalist in, said: “What’s the point of parliament if Your Royal Highness is going to make new laws himself?”

  “Yes,” agreed the journalist, “Baron von Rauch is right. The king can say what he wants, but the final decision rests with the delegates. And they might even have a better idea.”

  Matt could see that he had been in too much of a hurry. But what should be done now?

  “Your Royal Highness should telephone instructions that, for
the time being, chocolate will continue to be distributed. Otherwise, there’ll be a revolution. And today we will discuss this issue in parliament.”

  Matt had a premonition of trouble, and trouble there was. The delegates wanted the problem examined by a subcommittee. But Matt objected. “If it goes to a subcommittee, that means a long wait. But the teachers said that they’d only wait two weeks for things to change before walking out.”

  The journalist went over to Felek and whispered something in his ear. Felek grinned and asked for the floor when Matt was finished.

  “Delegates, gentlemen,” said Felek. “I used to go to school and I know what goes on there. One year I was sent to the cloakroom seventy times, had to stand in the corner a hundred and five times, and was kicked out of school one hundred and twelve times, and all for no reason! And do you think that school was anything special? Forget it. I went to six different schools, and it was the same everywhere. Grownups don’t go to school, and so they don’t know how unfair everything is there. If the teachers can’t wait and really don’t want to teach children, we can make a law that they have to teach grownups. And when the grownups see how lousy school is, they won’t always be after us to do our homework. And when the teachers find out that they can’t boss grownups around, they’ll stop crabbing about us.”

  Then out came everybody’s complaints about teachers and school. One delegate had been kept back unfairly, one had made only two mistakes and had still gotten a D, one was late to school because of a bad foot and he still had to stand in the corner, and one hadn’t been able to memorize a poem because his little brother had torn out the page, but the teacher said that was just an excuse.

  When the delegates were tired and hungry, Felek put the proposal to a vote. “The subcommittee will consider how to make things fair in school, and also if the children are to be paid like office workers. In the meantime, the grownups will attend school. All those in agreement, raise your right hand.”