THE ANTI-POLISH POLICY OF PRUSSIA.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] Stn,—A tenth part of the population of Prussia is Polish. Nevertheless the Poles are to most Germans " mere names and abstractions "; to the Prussian Government they are not even these—for names can be the germ-bearers of pro- ductive ideas—they are at best skeletons to be vivified by Germanic breath and soul! Regardless of the guarantees of its former kings, the Prussian Government considers the Germanization of the Poles a task undertaken under celestial authorization. This was manifest in the 'nineties when the " Eastern Marches Union " professionally raised a panic- stricken cry of a Polish danger—just as its Pan-German twin association, the " Flottenverein," has since done concerning a so-called oversea peril. Germanization became a dogma, which was to remain in propelling force whatever the cost—and it cost, in fact, considerable sums, increasing in almost geometrical progression since 1886.
Germanization is a systematical enterprise of which the most remarkable phases have been: the progressive removal of Poles from civil and communal services throughout the nineteenth century ; the attack on religious life commencing 1872 ; the expulsion of forty thousand Polish labourers from their homesteads in 1886; the gradual banishment of the Polish language from all schools; and the measures prohibiting Poles from building houses on their own land under Billow's rule in 1904. The tarnished side and negative result of this policy was the seed of hatred sown broadcast ; the bright side and positive result was increase in the Polish ranks of invigoration and of attachment to their nationality. In spite of all these exceptional laws and administrative provocations, the Poles never committed high treason (a lack of character often criticized by Prussian authorities), but even professed State-upholding principles. As therefore the Government could not proceed to imprisonments and confiscations, and as the new method of colonization (1886) proved much less remunerative than that—long obsolete—of Frederic the Great, the Prussian Ministry in March, 1908, passed, with the aid of its Pan-National satellites, the Expropriation Bill, which per- mitted the Royal Colonization Commission to acquire private Polish properties by compulsion.
This law remained unenforced until October, 1912, when the Government expropriated four Polish landlords whose fore- fathers had lived for centuries on the land of Posnania. The Government had been awaiting an opportunity. The Balkan crisis gave it. The moment was a favourable one; Germany was secure against European attention, concen- trated on the South-Eastern problem ; she was, besides, in a position to present to Austria the alternative of proving staunch if willing to follow Bismarck's Oriental policy of 1878. The Dual Monarchy confessed her creed clearly enough, in fact too clearly—for the German Ambassador in Vienna was obliged to put a damper on matters—by her amazing policy towards Servia, by her equally amazing premature renewal of the Triple Alliance, likewise by her tacit consent to the German anti-Polish policy. (Austria has at present three Polish Ministers and, in the Reichsrat, over seventy Polish deputies, whose countrymen Germany, the faithful ally, is now expropriating.) As the concatenation of Prussia with Germany is perfect—. the Prussian Prime Minister being simultaneously the only responsible Minister for the German Foreign Office—the knowledge of all that concerns Prussian policy must be of the greatest importance to England. But the trails of German politics are now more closely wrapped in mystery than those of her ally Austria-Hungary. There are nevertheless tokens that Germany is inclined to continue the part played already in the Berlin Congress. If fresh hostilities arise in Europe, they are bound ultimately to be fought on Polish ground. In this case, the Polish problem may before long crop up once more in Europe. Germany will then be willing, in a pacific manner or not—we refer to the general interpretation of Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg's December speech—to sweep everything before her just as she did in the Berlin Treaty, of which the unhappy result was the long-lasting intricate position in the Balkans. It may be well to remember the statement made by Prince Billow early in his Chancellorship, that the Polish problem is as truly the most important question of Prussian internal politics as "one" of the most important of German foreign politics. But even as Germany forfeited through her unrelenting policy of 1878 the privilege of arbitership in Southern Slav concerns, just so has she lost every title to refereeship in a possible future Polish question through Prussian misrule of the Poles. Therefore English public opinion, which has always shown sympathy towards oppressed nations, and its " Consules " whose statesmanlike acuteness has done such splendid work from Canning's days onwards in matters concerning the Near East," caveant " also for the Nearer Near East, "ne quid detrimenti caplet res
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