It was evoked by persistent persecution. The attack was first directed against the religion and the education of the Poles. The necessity for starting the Kulturkampf * was 'imposed upon me,' Bismarck himself confessed in his 'Recollections,' 'by the Polish side of the question.' His ultimate aim was to Prussianise and to protestantise the soul of Poland. He began, therefore, with the schools. A law of the 11th of March 1872 took away the inspection of schools from the clergy and placed it in the hands of government officials. In 1873 the German language was made the exclusive medium for secular instruction, and even for religious instruction, when the pupils were sufficiently advanced to understand it. Two years later attempts were made, though without success, to prevent the use of the native tongue at public meetings. But the curious combination of nationalism and ultramontanism proved too strong even for Bismarck. 'We will not go to Canossa,' he had boastfully announced, ' either in the flesh or in the spirit.' Pope Leo XIII. was no Hildebrand; yet in the end Bismarck found himself in the neighbourhood of Canossa, though by a circuitous route, and a compromise was effected. The agreement with the Papacy brought no advantage to the Poles. On the contrary, it enabled Bismarck to take further steps towards the Germanisation of the Polish children. After Bismarck's fall the pressure was relaxed owing to Caprivi's need of the support of the Polish parliamentary party in carrying the Army Bills. But the relaxation was only temporary. The formation, in 1894, of the Deutscher Ostmarken-Verein announced the initiation of a fresh attempt to Germanise the Eastern marches of the Empire. Association has, however, been countered by association. The use of the Polish tongue, so far from being abandoned, has ominously increased. Polish names are more than ever conspicuous on the sign-boards of the shops. Even the children have been driven into revolt. In 1902 the members of the Prussian Landtag learnt, to their disgust, that Polish children had been cruelly flogged for refusing to say the Lord's Prayer in German. In 1906 German was rein

*Cf. Martin. op. cit. p. 171. 'La question polonaise, c'est le culturkampf, qui, sous une forme nouvelle, se survit depuis vingtcinq ans.'

troduced as the medium for religious instruction; as a result, 400,000 children went on strike.' The attempt to capture the schools in the interests of Germanisation' has proved, therefore, not merely a failure, but a ridiculous failure. Contrast the policy of the British Government which pays considerable sums for the teaching of the Irish language, and even bribes Irishmen with State scholarships and prizes to learn the language of their ancestors.

Economic experiments in Poland have met with no better success than educational. Since the year 1886 Prussia has expended some £60,000,000 in an attempt to plant Germans on the soil of Poland; nearly 1,000,000 acres of land have been acquired, and about 450 new villages have been built. But if the effort of the Germanisers has been prodigious, they have been more than countered by that of the Poles. The latter met the policy of colonisation by a policy of co-operation. The work of the Ansiedelungs-Kommission was more than matched by that of the Polish Agricultural Unions, Land Banks, and Credit Societies. The intrusion of the Government into the estate-market sent up the price of land; some Poles took advantage of the artificially-inflated price to sell out and invest the proceeds either in trade or in land elsewhere; but most of the land purchased by the Government was acquired from Germans who were anxious to escape from an ineligible neighbourhood; with the final result that there are said to be more Polish landowners to-day than when Bismarck embarked on the 'plantation' policy in 1886. Well might a Pole declare, 'C'est un vaudeville 'historique'; not without reason did the Polish peasant put Bismarck side by side with Kosciusko and the Pope. The result is a triumph for moral as against material forces. As M. Martin has admirably put it:

'C'est en Pologne surtout que la question sociale est une question morale. Ainsi s'explique, mieux que par les secrets d'une organisation savante, mais fortuite, et à laquelle les allemands peuvent opposer d'autres forces efficaces, la défaite de l'argent prussien par le patriotisme polonais.'

Can the same thing be said of England and Ireland? I submit, on the contrary, that Anglo-Irish relations present not a parallel but a contrast.

* Op. cit. p. 193.

British gold has been poured out in order to transform the Irish tenants into occupying owners and thus root them permanently in their native soil; Prussian gold has been lavishly expended in a futile effort to expropriate the Polish landowners and to plant Germans in their place. England, during the last hundred years, has been making amends for the blunders of the past by admitting Irish Catholics to full civil rights; by endowing Catholic seminaries; by establishing a Catholic University; by disestablishing and disendowing the Church of the Ascendency. Prussia has been engaged in a Kulturkampf which in its origin was admittedly aimed at the Catholics of Poland. The British Government has subsidised the teaching of Irish in Irish schools; the Government of Prussia has done all in its power to eradicate the use of the native Polish tongue.

That England's past record in Ireland is clean no candid student will affirm; but the attempt to find a parallel with Prussian policy in Poland must, to be successful, involve remote historical research. There was 'plantation' in the seventeenth century; there were persecution and proscription in the eighteenth; but the nineteenth was in the main devoted, sometimes with lack of tact, though never of good will, to the task of atonement and reparation.

So far Prussia has not even pretended that she means to embark upon a similar policy in Poland. The failure of Bismarckian ruthlessness has never been acknowledged. The Kaiser has not announced any reversal of his Polish policy. All that the proclamation of the 5th of November does is to promise some form of independence to Russian Poland under a German monarch. The status of Prussian Poland remains unchanged.

J. A. R. MARRIOTT.

N

VOL. 225. NO. 459.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH GENIUS

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines du Cosmopolitisme Littéraire. Étude sur les relations littéraires de la France et de l'Angleterre au xviiie siècle. Par JOSEPH TEXTE. Deuxième édition. Paris: Hachette.

1909.

2. Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England. BY PROFESSOR CHURTON COLLINS. Murray. 1886.

IN

N a well-known passage of his 'Littérature Anglaise ' Taine says:

'There are different varieties of men just as there are different varieties of bulls and horses, some brave and intelligent, others timid and limited, some capable of superior creations and conceptions, others reduced to rudimentary ideas and inventions, some more particularly adapted to particular occupations and more richly provided with certain instincts—just as we see some breeds of dogs better endowed than others for coursing, fighting, hunting, for the guardianship of houses and flocks.'*

For Taine these varieties of humanity were ultimately, if not exclusively, determined by differentiation of race. The Italian was passionate and lyrical, the Frenchman pleasure-loving and positivist, the Englishman proud and bilious by the action of the same causes as those which make the greyhound swift or enable the collie to count sheep. It is the fashion not to take Taine too seriously to-day. One of his own compatriots has said of him that, though he was a magnificent pointer, he unfortunately lacked scent.

This, like most epigrams, is an exaggeration; but it is the exaggeration of a truth. Taine's objectivism was at times very naively personal, and he was essentially an esprit simplificateur. The world contains various kinds of men, but, on the whole, races are more mixed than aptitudes. Race is no doubt an important factor in the constitution of the various groups of men, and in certain matters, as we shall see, a dominant factor. But there are others. Political and climatic conditions, to mention nothing else, have a great deal to do with the variations of aptitude observable. Nevertheless, these

*Introduction of La Littérature Anglaise.

variations, however we analyse them, are, at all events in our present state of development, ultimate facts which we can in no way evade: with which we must inevitably reckon in that exploitation of experience which in some form or other is our proper function.

It

If reason guided the collective energies of humanity the different varieties of men would co-operate for this purpose. 'L'exploitation complète du globe terrestre exige le travail 'combiné des hommes blancs, jaunes, noirs,' * says Anatole France. As things are, difference begets sometimes only indifference, but frequently hatred. We dislike our neighbour because he is taller or shorter, darker or fairer, than we are. We dislike him because he takes his meals at different times, because he drinks wine instead of tea for breakfast, because he worships other gods than ours. Individuals may overcome this dislike by the use of reason, but it has to be overcome. is an instinctive feeling, and strong in proportion to the weakness of the individual's mentality. Politicians coerce this instinct in the national interests by alliances and treaties with foreign nations, by means of which danger from the hostility of other foreigners may be guarded against. Thus in Europe we used to have the 'balance of Power.' Alliances are usually geographical in basis and purely political in object. Sometimes, however, they spring out of some more genuine affinity often due to mixture of race between the parties, or to similarity of policy, religion, or idea. The Anglo-French alliance, which has been so often broken and renewed and which stands to-day on so firm a basis, has in its time reflected all these characteristics. It has been at one time merely political, at another merely ideal, and on occasion both.

On April 29, 1572, Charles IX. signed at Blois, on the advice of Coligny, a treaty with Elizabeth of 'confederation and 'alliance' by which the two sovereigns promised each other 'un secours mutuel contre toute attaque faite sous n'importe 'quel prétexte sans exception.' The treaty of Blois was directed against the European hegemony of Philip II. Coligny explained to the English agent, Middlemore, that 'ce prince 'n'avait d'autre but que de s'emparer de la monarchie uni'verselle de la chrétienté.' Elizabeth, however, would not hear

*Sur la Pierre Blanche, p. 230.