The English often accuse themselves of failure in assimilating or
conciliating the Irish, but the Germans succeed no better with the Slays. The Czechs of Bohemia, though completely surrounded by the dominant Germans and Magyars, remain irreconcileable, and even in Polish Prussia the races maintain a hidden war. In recent years the " Germanization " of East Prussia has received a check from a large immigration from Russian Poland, and the Government has for the last few months been trying a desperate remedy. It is expelling Russians and Russian Poles by the thousand, conveying them by force to the frontier—often, of course, to their pecuniary ruin, and occasionally to their destruction. The Russians are bitterly angry, and talk of expelling all Germans in reprisal ; but the Government of St. Petersburg, acting, it is believed, on some secret agreement, remains quiet. The bitterness between the races is, of course, greatly inflamed, so much so that the Austrian Poles refuse to vote for their Government until it interferes ; but both Berlin and St. Petersburg consider this a gain. The antagonism of race does not wear away with civilisation. The Americans have just been massacring Chinese for accepting work on the Pacific Railway; and at the last workmen's meeting in Marseilles a resolu- tion that the immigration of Italians should be limited by law was carried by a large majority. The last fact is most ominous, as the French not only accept the equality of races in theory, but actually grant it within France, and are willing even to obey Arab Generals, which Englishmen will not do.
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