THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1908. OBLITERATING A NATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13724, 14 April 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1908. OBLITERATING A NATION.

The intensity of the Prussian Government's determination to obliterate Polish nationality from the Prussian share of the divided provinces of the lost kingdom may be gathered from the appearance of Prince Bulo\v at Rome. 'The struggle for the moment is over an Expropriation Bill by which authority would be given to the Government to expropriate land in the provinces of West Prussia and Posen for the purpose of planting German inhabitants in the place of Polish. A compromise on the question was arrived- at on the second reading of the Bill in the Upper House of the Prussian Diet, by which the area to be thus acquired was limited to 173,000 acres, and church property was exempted. But though this was carried by a considerable majority, so influential and representative was the minority that the Government is seeking the good offices of the Vatican to conciliate the Clerical Party to the official proposals. The Poles are generally Roman Catholic, and the great dignitaries of the Church, who sit in the Prussian Upper House, cast their great influence with the Opposition. If the Prussian Chancellor can make terms with the Vatican the organised clerical resistance to the measure will cease and the Government be left comparatively free to carry out its policy in provinces where, it Is formally set forth in the Bill, " the safety of the endangered German element cannot be ensured in any other way than by strengthening and rounding off German settlements by means of additional allotments to German settlers." The Polish Party, which still survives as a political entity and sends a score of members to the German Reichstag, regards the measure as the heaviest blow which has yet been dealt at them, though it is only one of a series openly aimed at Polish nationality. During the past two years the Government has been engaged in the herculean task of making German the language of the Polish public schools, and another Bill is already before the Reichstag prohibiting the use of any language but German at public meetings. The intention of the Government is to bring to a

successful issue the long resistance of the conquered Poles to the laws and language of the conquering Prussians, and to obliterate all national distinctions between the two by the complete and radical Germanising of Poland. In contemplating the slow stranj gulation of a nation which is divided I among three of the greatest of Euroi pean Powers, and has no name on i the map, although its people still [ number thirty millions—as many as ■ | the whole population of England | Proper—the civilised world can j never forget that the%ime was when Poland stood first of the defenders of Western civilisation against the common enemy, and when the terrible tide of Turkish invasion was rolled back by the heroic courage of its warriors and the ability of its king. For this civilisation owes Poland a debt which has been poorly repaid. It has long been clear that j in the Mid-European plain there j cannot be room for any but great ! and powerful States, and the moI ment that Poland began tq decline I in energy and to lose solidity I her doom was sealed. There was j little sympathy between her nobles ! and her peasantry ; trade fell into j the hands of Jews and Germans: ! the elective monarchy was the | source of endless broiling : and to i crown her misfortunes the configur- ! ation' of the country gives no natural ! boundaries. She was essentially j one of the countries which could be sliced up, and she was sliced up. For to the east was the rising power of the barbaric Muscovite ; to the south were the Hapsburgs, who for a thousand years have held Austria, and who soon forgot that they owed to John Sobieski the shattering of the Turkish strength under the very walls of Vienna ; and to the north were the Branden burgers, the. Prussians, that sturdy German tribe whose chiefs, alone of Teutonic leaders, have planned for the distant future and built up, stone by stone, the wonderful German Empire of to-day. Prussians and Poles were neighbours during generations when all the material advantages were with Poland. Bit the hereditary monarchy proved its superiority over the elective, as a system for troublous times, when each Hohensollern stepped quietly to the seat, of his ancestor and bent himself to the task of making the bounds of the little electorate of Brandenberg wider and wider still. That this task was unscrupulously performed goes without saying, for the scrupulousness of private life has little to do with diplomacy and statescraft. In any case the end of it all is, that what between Prussians, Russians, and Austrians, instead of Poland being now the great barrier of the West against the East in Middle Europe, the German Empire is the barrier, and all of Poland, excepting the fragments that fell to Prussia and Austria, has been taken into the maw of Russia—and is Polish yet. Austrian Poland is still Polish also, thanks to the multiplicity of nationalities in the Austrian Empire. It is Prussia which says that there shall bo nothing Polish in her dominions, and she began to say it a hundred ye«>rs ago. Possibly Prussia might turve acquired the Austrian indifference to common language and common law and common nationality had it not been for the passionate hopes which the coming of Napoleon awakened ! in the hearts of the Poles. Frederick the Great had commenced the partition of Poland and Frederick William of Prussia had followed steadfastly in his footsteps, both kings having to be contend with the smallest share of the thrice repeated spoiling, Russia taking by far the greatest share and Austria comparatively little. When Napoleon came the Poles believed implicitly that he would restore their independence, and were with him to a man, a, natural sentiment never forgiven by the Prussians, whose pride had suf- j fered—as only a vigorous national ! i pride can suffer—under the Napo- | leonic heel. The stern and relentless spirit of the Hohenzollerns has never faltered since in its Polish policy. That West Prussia and Posen have been incomparably better governed than Russian-Poland need not be said, for the Prussian is no malicious tyrant and has - a keen sense of official duty and of personal responsibility. But his very virtues have made denationalisation possible, and his inability to recognise failure has made him the deadliest foe of a national instinct which survives unmodified under Russian rule and dies more than hard under German. • There are some five million people of Polish descent in Prussia, of whom about half are said to be denationalised while the rest continue the struggle for national existence as a people who have language, history, and national hope, -even if they have notpolitical existence and national laws. They have been greatly assisted by the Clerical Party, which receives in return the unvaryingsupport of the Polish Party. If the German Government could persuade the Vatican of the advisability of leaving the Polish provinces of Prussia to their fate and could offer the compensatory considerations which ecclesiastical organisations rarely despise, it would not only deprive the Polish Party of the legislative encouragement it has recently received but might so discourage the depressed Polish people of West Prussia and Posen as to be able to, take the final steps for the obliteration of an alien nationality from Prussian territory.