Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/64

52 have simultaneously initiated a persecution of the Polish nationality, which comes very near to abuse.

At the beginning of this year, after a few days' warning, Prince Bismarck drove out of Prussia fifty thousand Poles, men, women, and children, helpless creatures who had to seek a shelter or perish. His political motive seems to be twofold. He is afraid of the Polonicising of the German-speaking parts of the country; for it appears that the Polish language, in spite of everything that is done to root it out, continually gains ground. And he would like to secure the best possible conditions in a forthcoming war, and have as few hostile elements in the country as he can. He is not only driving out of Prussia all foreign Poles, even if they have long been settled there—and this so rigorously, that on the 1st of February a woman ninety-one years old arrived in Warsaw, who was exiled from Posen as dangerous to the State—but he is also proposing measures that will make the ownership of the soil as burdensome as possible to the Prussian Poles who reside in Posen and possess land there. He wishes to buy out the Poles from their old land, and has asked for 300,000,000 marks towards colonisation, just as if some region either uninhabited or inhabited by savages were in question. And it is not even to be permitted to every German to buy Polish land unconditionally; no one who has married a Polish woman can get permission; for experience teaches, says Bismarck, that such a wife makes her husband a Polish patriot in the twinkling of an eye. In future no Prussian Pole is to be allowed to settle in Posen, unless he has married a German wife; for only in this event can there be any hope of Germanising him and his children.