Since the Kulturkampf, the Polish renaissance in Prussia has thrived in spite of persecution. As in Russia, the Polish language was banished, Polish teachers were transferred to schools in other parts of the Empire, and about forty thousand Poles of Russian and Austrian nationality were expelled from the country. The persecution has been carried on in the schools, in the army, and in the church. School children have been forbidden to pray in the Polish language. Two unconstitutional laws have been passed by the Prussian Diet. The first of these forbade the Poles to speak Polish in public gatherings. The second, sanctioned by the Landtag on March 8, 1908, authorized the Government to expropriate land owned by Poles for the purpose of selling it to Germans.
The Prussian scheme for getting rid of the Poles was to drive them from their lands and instal German colonists. Private enterprise was first tried. A "colonization society" was formed, with a large capital, and given every encouragement by Prussian officialdom. But economic laws are not controlled by politics. The colonists were boycotted. Enormous sums of money were lost in wasted crops. The farms of the colonists had to be resold by the sheriff, and were bought in by Poles. To discourage the buying back of the German farms, a law was passed forbidding Poles to build upon land acquired by them after the date of the colonization society's failure. The Poles got around this law most cleverly. If one goes into Poznania to-day, he will see farmhouses, barns, dairies, stables—even chicken-coops—on wheels. The people live in glorified wagons. They do not build. Will there be a law now against owning wagons?
When the failure of private enterprise was demonstrated, the Prussian Government announced its intention of applying the law of expropriation "for the use of the commission of colonization." This was in October, 1912. At the beginning of 1913, the Polish deputies to the Reichstag brought before their colleagues of all Germany the question of the expropriation of Polish lands in Prussia. They asked the representatives of a supposedly advanced and constitutional nation what they thought of this injustice. Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg tried to keep the question from being debated. He argued with perfect reason that it was a purely internal Prussian matter, which the Imperial Parliament was incompetent to discuss. But the Catholic centre and the Socialist left combined to vote an order of the day allowing the discussion of the Polish lands question.
In the history of the German confederation, it was the first time that an imperial chancellor had received a direct defiance. This vote is mentioned here to show how Prussian dealings with the Poles, just as with Alsace-Lorraine, have tended to weaken the purely Prussian substructure of the German confederation, and to arouse a dangerous protest against Prussian hegemony. Contempt for the elementary principles of justice has been the key-note of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg's career. His mentality is typical of that of German bureaucracy—no, more than that, of German statesmanship. It is possible to have sympathy with German national aspirations, but not with the methods by which those aspirations are being interpreted to the world. To show how little regard he had for parliamentary opinion in the German confederation, the Chancellor forced through the Prussian Landtag, on April 22, 1913, only three months after his rebuke from the Reichstag, an infamous law, voting one hundred and twenty-five million marks for German colonization in Prussian Poland. Shortly before the European war broke out, another unconstitutional law was passed, which makes possible the arbitrary division of large landed properties owned by Poles.
THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT OF THE POLISH QUESTION
During the war with Japan, the Czar and the Kaiser understood each other perfectly on the Polish question. The neutrality of Germany was essential to Russia at that time. The Russians owe much to Germany for her benevolent attitude of those trying days. The Poles have since paid the bill.
As in Prussia, the Poles of Russia have seen their liberties menaced more than ever before during the past decade, and have had to struggle hopelessly against a policy of ruthless extermination. If on the one hand the Prussian persecution is more to be condemned because Germany asks the world to believe that she is an enlightened, constitutional nation, and "the torch-bearer of civilization," while Russia is admittedly reactionary and still half-barbarous, on the other hand there is less excuse for the Russian persecution of the Poles. For in Russia it is not Teuton against Slav, but Slav against Slav.
Germany and Russia have had the common interest of fellow-criminals in their relation to the Polish nation. Russia has not hesitated to co-operate with Germany through diplomatic and police channels in riveting more securely the fetters of the Poles. Her championship of the south Slavs against Teutonic aggression has been supposedly on the grounds of "burning love for our brothers in slavery, in whose veins runs the same blood as ours." The sham and hypocrisy of this attitude is revealed when we consider the fact that Russia has never protested to Germany against the treatment of the Poles of Poznania, nor shown any inclination to treat with equity her own Poles. Here are "brothers in slavery" nearer home. There is ground for suspicion that her interest in the south Slavs has been purely because they are on the way to Constantinople and the Mediterranean. One who reads the recent history of Russia stultifies himself if he allows himself to believe that Russia has entered into the present war to defend Servia from Austrian aggression through any love for or humanitarian interest in the Servians. If Russia gets the opportunity, will her treatment of Servian national aspirations be any different from that of Austria-Hungary? When we try to answer this question, let us think of Bulgaria after 1878 (the last "war of liberation") and of Poland in 1914.
On August 16, 1914, when I read the proclamation of Czar Nicholas to the partitioned Poles, promising to restore administrative autonomy to the kingdom of Poland, and posing as the liberator of Poles now under the yoke of Austria and of Prussia, it was hard to be enthusiastic. For the Jews of Odessa and Kief, and the Finns of Helsingfors, rise up to add their cry of warning to the bitter comments of Polish friends. Only two years ago I saw in those cities subjects of the Czar suffering cruelly from fanaticism and broken promises, and deprived of that which is now being held out as bait to the Poles, and as a sop to Russia's Allies.