THE PAN-GERMANIC IDEA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 116, 8 July 1911, Page 6

THE PAN-GERMANIC IDEA.

The Pati-Gormailic idea of the absorption of the Austrian part of the sister Empire, may ho dismissed at once as chimeiical (asserts an English critic). It is true that the population question is not nearly so acute there as in Germany. Austria, with its__ area of 115,900 square miles, has a density of 223 persons to the square mile, or ol fewer titan Germany, and the two countries together have «, density/ of 267, while on the. potent.'.".! ratio of Rhineland and Westphalia they would give space lor a population of 179 millions. Here arises the,., obstacle to what may. otherwise be regarded by Germany as an attractice scheme. The Pan-Germans, who never yet faced hard facts seriously, ignore one fatal objection to their pit jiroposa! fordrawing together -the Ger-man-speaking peoples. Of the 26 million or more inhabitants of the Austrian monarchy, only about a third are. German by language, and a far are Gurrna;; by sentiment, while, the remaining two-thirds are-made up of at least a dozen races. It is obvious, then, that the nationality difficulty alone would make any such accession of territory more dangerous for Germany than a Grecian gift, for among the Austrian races are million Poles, and in a present Polish population of far less extent Germany has already in the East of Prussia a larger problem than it can digest; furthermore, the fact that the population of Austria is overwhelmingly Homan Catholic would greatly intensify confessional feuds in Germany.