THE REVOLT OF THE CHILDREN IN POLAND.
THE "insurrection of the children" in Prussian Poland may produce notable consequences, and must already be a perplexity both to the German Emperor and to the Roman Curia. In pursuance of its steady policy of Germanising its Polish provinces, the Government of Prussia has ordered that the Polish children in the schools shall receive their religious instruction in the German language. The Poles are furious, and their clergy, who, like the Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, consider it politic to be Nationalists as well as religious teachers, have instructed their congregations that religion should always be taught in the national tongue which is loved, and not in a foreign language which is detested. This advice, which from the priests' point of view is certainly wise, the early teaching of the mothers being naturally conveyed in Polish, is peculiarly acceptable to the Poles, who think that the one object of Berlin is to undermine their nationality, and they have therefore encouraged their children in a " rebellion " which is half comic and half fraught with mischief to German ideals. The little ones quietly but obstinately refuse to receive their religious instruction in any language but the Polish, and the teachers, under instructions, of course, from the Department, consequently hold them guilty of a breach of discipline, and punish them by "keeping them in" for two hours a day. A controversy is accordingly raging width must be referred for final settlement to both Emperor and Pope. Neither of those potentates will know exactly how to decide. If the Government gives way, all Prussians will think it feeble, and feel that the Germanising policy, to -which they attach great importance, has been in part abandoned, while the discipline of the schools has been grievously relaxed. It is probable, too, that that policy, as one of the steady policies of his house, is dear to the Emperor-King .himself. On the other hand, the Emperor's authority in the German Parliament rests in a great degree on the support of the Centre or Roman Catholic Party, and the wrongs of Roman Catholic children may be avenged by a refusal to vote supplies for the extension of the Navy,— supplies which are already voted by the South German representatives with a certain reluctance, they not seeing quite clearly- how the pursuit of -" ships, colonies, and commerce" is to benefit them. Per contra, the Emperor has made a kind of informal alliance with the Papacy, which, he thinks, will, in the event of a European conflagration, take a great deal of heart out of any Roman Catholic Powers which may regard his secular policy with distrust. Austria, for instance, will be bound to Germany by the whole influence of the Clericals, Who have so long swayed the action of the Court of Vienna. In such circumstances, the Pope, who is always requiring temporal help, and who is fully convinced that his only trustworthy ally on earth, now that the French Republic is so Radical, is the German Emperor, will be most reluctant to give any decision which may personally annoy his powerful friend, and so endanger'an amity which must always require the most dexterous management of the Roman Curia. Protestant and Roman Catholic are always liable to jar, and can never at best do more than extend to one another kindly tolerance. At the same time, the Poles have always relied upon the Papacy to support them in their age-long conflict with their conquerors, whether Greek or Lutheran, and, if too much exasperated by what they will think a desertion, may express their anger by taking steps towards a schism, which in many respects would improve their political position. Like most of the Roman Catholic peoples of the Continent, they feel an instinctive aversion to Protestantism, as both too uncertain and. too bare a creed, which is not altogether based upon religions argument;' but they have been for centuries in contact with the Greek Church, which does not seem to them so different from that• of Rome as it seems to us, which has for them the charm of antiquity, which gives to the Sacraments the iame kind of reverence and validity, and which, in fact, in the eyes of the less educated differs from their own chiefly in denying the supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome and in dispensing with the celibacy of the clergy,—a question, it must never be forgotten, of discipline rather than of creed. The Prussian Poles, if provoked too far, might, we are told, accept the (reek Church en masse, and so terminate one of the greatest difficulties of their political position. Every Russian, for example, would consider that the Poles had become "Christians," and were entitled to those evidences of brotherhood which, in the absence of racial difference, they are not instinctively reluctant to concede. The Poles are Slays, and as Orthodox Slays would be entirely within the range of Pau-Slavic sympathies.
How will it end ? We suppose that, as great states- men are at one end of the telephone and great clerics at the other, after a good deal of squabbling and demand for explanations, some sort of modus vivendi will be arrived at. The priesthood will be instructed from Rome not to be too bitter in their comments on a. " useful " Power, and the officials will be instructed not to punish recalcitrants pending an "inquiry," which a clever bureaucracy can protract over many years. Or possibly religious education in, the schools may be suspended in certain districts, and the children left as regards their creed to the instruction of their pastors outside the schoolroom. A Prussian official is, however, apt to be stubborn as well as efficient, and a great many Prussians consider any concession to Poles which may interrupt Germanisation equivalent t.o a surrender of the vital principle of the Prussian Monarchy, which is that scientifically complete discipline in all departments is essential to the organisation which, pursued through centuries, made of Prussia the most effective kingdom of the Continent. The present Pope, too, is not very apt at compromise, believing, as we see in France, that if he says non possumus, forces now apparently powerful will in the end shrink back before his divinely protected pertinacity, —an idea supported by the history of the collision between the French Revolution and the Papacy. Though Bishops were sent to the block by the Terrorists for being Bishops. France still regards Bishops as important functionaries. ,It has no doubt ceased to be the habit of Englishmen to expect great religious changes anywhere in
Europe; but man is, after all, what man has always been, and such changes, therefore, can never be described as beyond the limits of possibility. Else why do we believe in missionary work? The change which has debarred all European communities from persecuting with any energy or any complete content is, after all, if we will only look back at what has happened within the last few centuries, a very great one, and we perhaps exclude the chance of religious revolutions too completely from our calculations
as to political change. Suppose that the sceptical wave
which has entered, though it has not submerged, all Western Europe should extend itself through Russia, or that Southern Europe, already restless upon all religious subjects, should finally adopt the Austrian cry, Los von Rom? The minds of men sometimes move in great blocks, and though statesmen can never accept such possible movements as grounds of action, observers who wish to see an inch into the future should never leave such possi- bilities out of their previsions.
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