Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/174

Rh whole situation in East Europe—and it is a fact which cannot be too clearly laid to heart at the present moment—is the German claim to dominance over the Slav. Vienna and Berlin, just beyond the boundary of West Europe, stand already within territory that was Slav in the earlier Middle Ages; they represent the first step of the German out of his native country as a conqueror eastward. In the time of Charlemagne the rivers Saale and Elbe divided the Slavs from the Germans, and to this day, only a short distance south of Berlin, is the Circle of Kottbus, where the peasantry still speak Wendish, or the Slav tongue of all the region a few centuries ago. Outside this little Wendish remnant, the Slav peasantry have accepted the language of the German Barons who rule them in their large estates. In South Germany, where the peasantry is truly German, the land is held by small proprietors.

No doubt there is a difference of impression made on foreigners by the Austrian's and by the Prussians of noble birth; that difference comes, no doubt, from the fact that the Austrians advanced eastward from South German homes, whereas the Prussians came from the harsher North. But in Prussia and Austria alike, the great landowners were