SLAVONIC EUROPE.*
ONCE the whole of Eastern Europe was Slavonic, and if that mighty power has become sundered and considerably obscured under other administrations, it is to be remem- bered that the Slays remain one of the great influences in Europe. If one of the electric currents of racial or political aspiration ran through the scattered members, they might some day become reunited in a common ideal, or, more likely, in a common enmity ; and millions of people who shortly before had lived anonymously under the rule of others would declare themselves as though a new first-class Power had been created in Europe. Every- where the Slays have a remarkable tenacity of their old traits of .character and temperament,—they are not easily absorbed and transformed like Germans. A kind of freemasonry in the. memory of suffering and oppression has been offered to the detached portions of the race, and it would not be wonderful, if this were accepted and employed as an instrument of • (1) Slavonic Europe: a Political History of Poland and Russia from 1447 to 1796. By R. Nisbet Bain. Cambridge at the University Press. [Ss. 6d. net. J — (2) Poland: the Knight among the Nations. By Louis E. Van Norman. Illustrated. London The Fleming H. Revell Company. [6s. net.]---(3) The Hungarian Question from a Historical, Economical, and Ethnographical Point of View. Translated by Ilona and C. Arthur Ginever. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. [2e. 64. net.]
reprisal. Most Slave have an élan iu fighting, and even in concerted political movements, which, is the not unnatural counterpart of a brooding melancholy, artistic in its sensibility.
This, however, needs to be aroused. But for occasional provoca- tion to Slavonic pride, outsiders might be scarcely aware of the existence of a spirit which is the same as that which inspired the Pole, Kosciuszko, in his glorious resistance to the wrongers of his country. There is some reason to ask ourselves whether the provocation Europe is offering to the Slav is not to be read as a danger-signal at this moment. At a time when Czechs, Moravians, Croats, Slovaks, and others are conscious of the advance of Slavonic influences and the decline of the German population within Austria-Hungary, the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs seizes the occasion to affront Slavonic sentiment by his railway policy in the Balkans.
And in Prussia the provocation is much more direct and deliberate, for Prince Billow pursues the Bismarckian policy of artificially colonising Prussian Poland in order to " snow under" its natural inhabitants. To the foreign spectator it seems strange indeed that Germany should be concerned about the safety of her Russian frontier, and yet alienate more and more the Slavonic fringes of her population, which would need no tempting to transfer their allegiance to an invader. It may be said that if Germany has oppressed Poland, so also has Russia, and that the Poles—to take only one Slavonic race—would not throw off one master to aid another nearly as bad. That is probably an unsound argument, for hatred has its effectual degrees no less than love ; and it is well worth while to change a master heartily disliked for one merely disapproved of. In spite of persecution, the Poles have always been conscious of their affinity to the Russians, and have easily forgiven them; as to Austrian Poland, the Galicians remember that the Austrians were the most reluctant of the three partitioners of the ancient Common- wealth of Poland, and now they have received such liberty from Austrian hands that they do not pretend to much bitterness; but the rancour against Germany is unmollified, and perhaps unalterable. If ever "Slavonic Europe" were conjured back to conscious life, there would be a hundred million people to confess attachment to the principle of race.
Mr. R. Nisbet Bain has given us a book which was long wanted. It is a political history of Poland and Russia from the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century,—to the time when the Polish Republic disappeared from the map and the Russian Empire took its place as the head of the Slavonic world. The neglect of the history of Eastern Europe is no doubt to be accounted for, as Mr. Nisbet Bain says, by the unfamiliarity of our scholars with the two leading Slavonic languages, yet a knowledge of that history is indispensable to an understanding of the history of Germany, not to mention Sweden. As an example of the recurrence to-day of very old difficulties we may quote Mr. Bain's words on the " Northern Question" as it presented itself to Catherine II. of Russia and her Minister Panin
"Panin was the inventor of the famous Northern League or Accord' which aimed at opposing a combination of Russia, Prussia, Poland, Sweden, and, if possible, Great Britain, against the Bourbon-Hapsburg League, so as to preserve the peace of the North. Such an attempt to bind together, indissolubly, nations with such different aims and characters was doomed to failure. Frederick the Great, in particular, deeply resented what he regarded as an attempt to fetter his liberty of action ; while Great Britain could never be persuaded that it was as much in her interests as in the interests of Russia to subsidise the anti- French faction, the Caps,' in Sweden. Yet the idea of the Northern Accord,' though never realised, had important political consequences, and influenced the policy of Russia for many years. It explains, too, Panin's strange tenderness towards Poland. For a long time he could not endure the thought of destroying her, because he regarded her as an indispensable . member of his Accord,' wherein she was to supply the place of Austria, especially in case of Oriental complications. There can also bo little doubt that, if the plan could have been realised, it would have been good for Poland. It might even, perhaps, have saved her from being partitioned, and given her a chance of re- establishing herself."
Much of the history of Eastern Europe is still unexplored ; and we cannot give Mr: Bain's work higher praise than to say that out of the tangle he has produced a singularly compact, clear, and well-proportioned history that ought to be a safe and welcome guide) to thousands of readers.
Victor Hugo once said that if France was the missionary, Poland was the knight among nations, and Mr: Louis E. Van
Norman has taken the title of his book, which now reaches a second edition, from that saying. We need not do much more than mention the progress of this book, which is picturesque and enthusiastic. Internal evidence makes us question the depth of the author's learning, but that must make us respect the more his industry in observing what met his eyes in his tour of Poland.
The book which has been translated by Mr. and Mrs. Ginever was written by a distinguished Hungarian publicist to make Hungarian opinion on economic and military questions as they concern the Dual Monarchy comPrehensible to English readers. Information from Vienna,. they remark, generally has an Austrian colour, and little else reaches England. The figures given of the rate of increase of the various races in Austria are very instructive. In 1850 the Germans exceeded the Czechs and Poles together by half-a-million, but to-day the latter outnumber the Germans by more than a million. The increase of the Poles is much faster than that of the Czechs, while the Germans steadily decrease. " Austrian statistics," we are told, "do their best to conceal this decline." When the Census is taken the classification is not made on the basis of a person's mother-tongue, but on that of the language ordinarily used in conversation. The classification, moreover, is only made as regards Austrian subjects. The half-a-million foreigners, only a fourth of whom come from German territories, are not classified. Between 1850 and 1900 the percentage of increase has been :—Germans, 354; Czechs and Moravians, 49; Poles, 95. When we remember that Austria. has received universal suffrage, we cannot be blind to the obvious tendency. Austria a few years hence is much more likely to be distinctively Slavonic than distinctively German. As for Hungary, the writer says :—" It is true that the Hungarian element has not reached an absolute majority even to-day (although omitting Croatia it has done so), but its relative condition is so strong, and the disunited condition of the other races is so pronounced, that the four strongest races, Wallachian, German, Slav and Croatian, do not together equal the Hungarians." According to the conclusions of this book, which, however, we must warn our readers, are by no means indisputable, especially in the matter of population statistics, Austria is working towards a federation of dissimilar elements, but Hungary towards a national solidarity. Yet the writer assures us that Hungary should cherish her union with Austria at all costs, for a Great Power to resist Russia and Germany is needed in the valley .of the Danube. We doubt whether, if there were a grand struggle between Slav and Teuton in the South-East of Europe, the Slays of Austria could be expected wholly to resist the capillary attraction of race. We are inclined to disagree, therefore, with the writer. Hungary looks forward to universal suffrage, and when every race has freedom to bid for political control we shall be surprised if the Slays do not multiply and prosper even more than in the past at the expense of the Magyars. Everywhere else, at all events, the same story may be read. Where the line of Germanised Europe touches Slav races, it is found that the people are Slav in reality and only German in name or form. If Russia should ever have cause to strike a blow at Germany, it is believed by many that all the Slav tribes in North Germany would be as good as hers from the moment hostilities began. And let us not forget, in thinking of Russia, that it is only one hand which has been paralysed in the Far East. She has always had another hand in Europe, even though it has remained nearly idle in recent years because all her attention was bestowed elsewhere. At this very moment Russia shows that she is ready to engage as hotly as ever in. the immemorial tug-of-war between herself and Austria in the Balkans. We advise our readers not to overestimate the war-weariness of Russia, nor to cease to watch the wonderful power Slavonic peoples have of
• reappearing with all their ideals and characteristics intact after a long apparent absorption. Prince Billow would not have resorted to compulsory expropriation now if the Prussian Poles had not always displayed. a trick worth two of those of the German Colonisation Commission. We have implied that there is much very admirable in the Slavonic character; yet the Poles, who have long and tearfully deplored oppression, have not, we fear, been guiltless of oppression themselves where they were , able to practise it. Take, for instance, the. Galicians who have at their mercy the long-suffering- Ruthenes.
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