The Polish nationalists of Russia and Prussia feel very bitter about the indifference of the Galicians to the nation at large—or rather in captivity. They claim that the lack of national feeling among the Austrian Poles is due to the fact that they have been bribed by the Austrians to desert not only their brethren of Russia and of Prussia, but also their fellow-Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have heard this criticism ably and feelingly presented, but I do not think it just. Since national aspirations are awakened and sustained by the effort to secure political equality and justice, the enjoyment of these takes away need or desire to plot against the Government. The Poles of Austria are like the French of Canada. Their nationalism is literary and religious in character. There is no reason for its being anti-governmental.
Of late years, however, there has been a national Polish agitation in Galicia. It is directed not against the Government, but against the Ruthenians, who, to the number of three millions—nearly forty per cent. of the total population—inhabit the eastern section of Galicia. This local racial conflict, which has strengthened rather than weakened the attachment of the Poles to the Vienna Government, arose after the introduction of universal suffrage, when eastern Galicia began to send in large numbers Ruthenian deputies to the Galician Diet and to the Austrian Parliament.
On April 12, 1908, Count Potocki was assassinated by a Ruthenian student, whose death sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment. With the complicity of wardens, the assassin escaped from jail after three years. There has never been peace between the Poles and the Ruthenians since that time. After serious disorders at the University of Lemberg, where the Ruthenian students were treated disgracefully, Polish and Ruthenian leaders tried to find common ground for reconciliation in December, 1911. The Ruthenians demanded electoral reform with greater representation, and the creation of a Ruthenian university. The imperial government communicated to the representatives of the two nationalities the project of a decree of public instruction in Galicia in January, 1913. The project was a marvel of ingenuity. A Ruthenian university was to be established after four years, but if by October 1, 1916, the law voting credits for it was not yet passed, a special school for Ruthenians would be attached to the University of Lemberg, until their own university was a reality. The teaching of the Ruthenian language would cease in the University of Lemberg when this "special school" was inaugurated. The Ruthenians were suspicious of a trick in the project. They could not understand its vagueness. It looked as if they would be giving up their present rights in the University of Lemberg, limited as they were, for an uncertainty. Why was no definite date for opening specified, or indication given of the new university's location? Would it be maintained by Galicia with a budget appropriation in proportion to the taxes paid by Ruthenians?
The Ruthenian question in Galicia has been cited here to show how there are wheels within wheels in the complex questions of nationalities. European racial questions seem to follow the law of the animal world. The littlest animals are eaten by little animals, who in turn serve as food for larger animals. Nations which have suffered most cruelly from race persecution are generally themselves relentless and fanatical when the power to persecute is in their hands.
The Ruthenian question shows also how Poles and Austrians work together, and are content with the mutual advantages of their union. I have never met an Austrian Pole, who lived in Galicia and had a settled profession or business there, who was not a loyal—even ardent—supporter of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Austrian Poles are dismayed as they face the terrible dilemma of union with Russia or Germany.
THE POLES SINCE 1870 IN GERMANY
Germany, like Russia, has had a twofold Polish question: The acquisition of Polish territory on either side of the Vistula to the Baltic Sea was as essential to the creation of a strong Prussian kingdom as was the acquisition of Pomerania. The portion of Poland which, before the partition, cut off eastern from western Prussia was fully as much German as Polish,—in fact more so. It became German by logical and natural conquest in the course of Prussia's evolution.
The situation was different in Poznania. This territory of the later partition reverted to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. In 1815, its population was only twenty per cent. German. For fifty years the process of Germanization went on naturally—in no way forced. When the German Empire was formed, nearly half of Poznania was German. Many of the leading Poles had lost their sense of Polish nationality. They had become German in language and in culture. How many families there are in Prussia whose Polish origin is betrayed only by their names!
But the Germanized Poles, for the most part, retained their religion. The notorious Kulturkampf of Bismarck aroused again the sense of nationality which had been lost, not only among the prosperous Poles of Poznania, but even of Silesia. Only the bureaucratic classes were unaffected by this renaissance of nationalism awakened by revolt against religious persecution.
Just after the formation of the Empire, when Prussia needed all her strength and force to preserve her hegemony in the new confederation and to lead modern Germany in the path of progress and civilization, on either side of her kingdom she had to cope with nationalist movements of Danes and of Poles. But she did not fear to undertake also the assimilation of Alsace and Lorraine!