PRUSSIANS AND POLES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 89, 11 October 1913, Page 12

PRUSSIANS AND POLES

The Berlin Post remarks that the entire trend of Prussian policy in regard to the Polish population of Posen and the Eastern Provinces has done little to reconcile the Poles to their fate. "Whether the severities of Prussian rule are justifiable is a question frequently debated in the German press. A large section of public opinion in thi6 country, including circles of whose patriotism there can be no doubt, condemns this policy as wantonly brutal. In their opinion there can be no excuse, for example, for the compulsory purchase of Polish estates and the parcelling-out of these estates among German settlors drawn from other partß of the country. "There can be no excuse for the arbitrary methods employed in suppressing the Polish language, and none for the harsh school laws, making German compulsory at religioufi instruction; and the German Government, after a generation of compulsory treatment, is faced to-day with the facts that the spirit of Polish nationality burns as brightly as in former years, that there is as much land in Polish possession as ever, and that the Polish population is increasing at a rate higher than that prevalent among Germane."