THE NEW GERMAN AND SLAV QUARREL.
NOTHING is more curious in contemporary politics than the disuse of the formulas which a generation ago were supposed to express the permanent convictions of men imbued with the modern spirit. The most striking instance, of course, is the change in the ideas about war. Five-and-thirty years ago it was regarded by sanguine people as an extinct evil, and even by those who prided themselves on their practical good- sense as a survival which, though it might die hard, was not the less bound to die. To-day, everywhere but in England war is accepted as the one contingency against which every State has to make unceasing provision ; while even in England, though we do not do much in the way of making pro- vision for it, we are constantly engaged in it. The Con- tinental Powers have certainly been able "to clear their minds of cant." Whether Europe is any better off for the frank- ness with which the Powers have carried out the process, is another question. There are some delusions which, if people could only makc-believe hard enough and long enough, might in time cease to be delusions ; and the notion that civilised man is capable of living at peace with his neighbour is one of these.
Prussia and Russia at this moment are examples of another reaction towards primitive ideas. It used to be held that the extension of trade, and the gradual intermingling of populations that comes of it, were guarantees for the maintenance of good relations between the States concerned. There was even a scheme on foot, if we remember rightly, for making education more of an international affair, in the hope that it would help to render men of business more cosmopolitan. The more English- men came to settle abroad and the more foreigners came to settle in England, the more human and friendly the intercourse between ourselves and other nations would become. A man who lives in one country while he remains a citizen of another, has every reason to desire that the Government to which he owes the obedience of a citizen shall remain on good terms with the Government to which he owes the allegiance of a subject. He does not wish to have to make his choice between them. His object is that the dividing-line between the obligations he owes to each should become more and more obscure, until, in practice, he is equally at home in the country in which he lives and in the country to which he belongs. The news that comes to us from the Eastern provinces of Prussia and the Baltic provinces of Russia is in strange contrast with these once popular ideas. Both Governments are busy in driving out each other's subjects, not as a measure of punishment, but because the permanent occupation of their territory by foreigners is dis- tasteful to them. Their ambition is to deserve that highest com- pliment that the English poor can pay to a neighbour, by keeping "themselves to themselves." In Prussia especially, though merely because she had the advantage of beginning earlier, the banishment has been attended with very great cruelty. It may sound but a trifling matter to make a man return to his own country ; but if all his means of subsistence are in the country of his adoption, it is to him just as bad as exile. The Pole who has long been settled in Prussia has his land or his trade, and the latter is probably quite as immoveable as the former. His business connections, his private friendships, his opportunities of doing well by his children, are all in Prussia ; and to drive him back to Poland is to deprive him of all these. He will, at the best, have to begin life over again, and he will be fortunate if he has the energy or the capital to do this. It is difficult to imagine a decree which carries greater misery with it than one which uproots a full- grown man from the associations of half a lifetime, perhaps of two generations, and sends him to a land in which there is probably no room for him, and which he, or probably his father, has voluntarily abandoned.
Yet the end they hope to gain seems to Prince Bismarck and to the Russian Government worth the infliction of all this misery. They both wish not only to be masters in their own dominions, but to have none but their own countrymen to be masters over. They do not want to see the line of demarca- tion between natives and foreigners effaced ; on the contrary, it is to be drawn sharper than ever. It is not easy to assign any common motive for this policy, because it seems to be justified in the two cases by quite opposite reasons. The Poles are hated by the Prussians because they belong to a lower type of civilisation; the Germans are hated by the Russians because they belong to a higher type of civilisa- tion. The Pole supplies cheap labour, the German sup- plies organisation and efficient superintendence ; and both seem to be held in equal detestation by the country which might be supposed to profit by the importation. In both cases, the population among which the strangers have settled, think themselves the sufferers by their rivalry. The German workman holds a Pole in much the same estimation as that in which the Californian or the Australian workman holds a Chinaman. He hates to be undersold by an inferior race which has no right to throw itself across his path. The Russian employer hates the German employer because he is a better man of business than he is himself, can get more out of his workmen, and turn over his capital more quickly. From the commercial point of view, all this is only another form of Protection. It is of no use, the advocates of expulsion argue, to keep out foreign goods if foreign men are per- mitted to come over the frontier and make native goods. This would be a quite sufficient reason in the eyes of the two Governments for taking the question in hand, for trade is more and more the chief object of international rivalry. But there are probably other reasons which weigh with them quite as much. They like the sharply defined frontier-line. The notion of an intervening district in which the contrasts between the two nations are softened down until they almost escape recognition, is altogether distasteful to them. In part, too, the question is one of creed. The decay of religious distinctions in England has no counterpart in these more primitive lands. There, religious unity is still looked upon as the natural accompaniment and most effectual safeguard of political unity. The Prussian Government is glad to be rid of the Poles because they are Catholics. The Russian Government wishes obedience to the decrees of the Holy Synod to be co-extensive with obedience to the Czar.
Prince Bismarck's part in these transactions has been marked by another unexpected, but characteristic feature. The creator of the German Empire has been the first to forbid an exten- sion of Imperial supervision over the separate States, if it promises to run counter to his plans. More than once since the expulsion of the Poles, their friends have tried to bring their case before the German Parliament, but each time Prince Bismarck has refused to be drawn into any discussion of it. It is a matter, he maintains, which does not concern the Imperial authorities. How Prussia shall deal with its own de facto subjects, is for Prussia alone to decide. He will answer for what he has done in the Prussian Parliament, where he speaks as a Minister of the Prussian King ; but he will not defend his acts in the German Parliament, where he only speaks as the Chancellor of the German Emperor. When it suits his purpose, Prince Bismarck can be as great a Particularist as Herr Windthorst himself. The Legislature he esteems is the Legislature that gives him what he wants. If the Prussian Parliament were opposed to the expulsion of the Poles, and the German Parlia- ment in favour of it, he would probably insist on treating it as a measure that could only be challenged in the latter. Because he knows that the German Parliament would give, indeed has already given, a majority against his anti-Polish policy, he is determined to deny it any competence in the matter, and poses as the representative of a King who, as regards one of the highest of all international questions, is independent of the Empire.
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