Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/900

Rh strengthened by the addition of the National representatives from the southern states; out of fourteen representatives from Baden twelve belonged to them, seventeen out of eighteen Württemberger, and a large majority of the Bavarians. It was on their support that Bismarck depended in building up the institutions of the empire. The remainder of the Progressives, the Fortschrittspartei, maintained their protest against the military and monarchical elements in the state; they voted against the constitution in 1867 on the ground that it did not provide sufficient guarantees for popular liberty, and in 1871 against the treaty with Bavaria because it left too much independence to that state. Their influence was strongest in Berlin, and in the towns of East Prussia; they have always remained characteristically Prussian.

These great parties were spread over the whole of Germany, and represented the great divisions of political thought. To them must be added others which were more local, as the Volkspartei or People’s party in Württemberg, which kept alive the extreme democratic principles of 1848, but was opposed to Socialism. They had been opposed to Prussian supremacy, and in 1870 for the time completely lost their influence, though they were to regain it in later years.

Of great importance was the new party of the Centre. Till the year 1863 there had been a small party of Catholics in the Prussian parliament who received the name of the Centrum, from the part of the chamber in which they sat. They had diminished during the years of conflict and disappeared in 1866. In December 1870 it was determined

to found a new party which, while not avowedly Catholic, practically consisted entirely of Catholics. The programme required the support of a Christian-Conservative tendency; it was to defend positive and historical law against Liberalism, and the rights of the individual states against the central power. They were especially to maintain the Christian character of the schools. Fifty-four members of the Prussian parliament at once joined the new party, and in the elections for the Reichstag in 1871 they won sixty seats. Their strength lay in Westphalia and on the Rhine, in Bavaria and the Polish provinces of Prussia. The close connexion with the Poles, the principle of federalism which they maintained, the support given to them by the Bavarian “patriots,” their protest against the “revolution from above” as represented equally by the annexation of Hanover and the abolition of the papal temporal power, threw them into strong opposition to the prevailing opinion, an opposition which received its expression when Hermann von Mallincrodt (1821–1874), the most respected of their parliamentary leaders, declared that “justice was not present at the birth of the empire.” For this reason they were generally spoken of by the Nationalist parties as Reichsfeindlich.

This term may be more properly applied to those who still refuse to recognize the legality of the acts by which the empire was founded. Of these the most important were the so-called Guelphs (Welfen), described by themselves as the Hannoverische Rechtspartei, member of the old Hanoverian nobility who represented the rural districts of Hanover and still regarded the deposed King George V. and, after his death, the duke of Cumberland as their lawful sovereign. In the elections of 1898 they still returned nine members to the Reichstag, but in those of 1903 their representation had sunk to six, and in 1907 it had practically disappeared. A similar shrinkage has been displayed in the case of the protesting Alsace-Lorrainers, who returned only two deputies in 1907. A pleasant concession to Hanoverian feeling was made in 1899, when the emperor ordered that the Hanoverian regiments in the Prussian army should be allowed to assume the names and so continue the traditions of the Hanoverian army which was disbanded in 1866.

The government has also not succeeded in reconciling to the empire the alien races which have been incorporated in the kingdom of Prussia. From the Polish districts of West Prussia, Posen and Silesia a number of representatives have continued to be sent to Berlin to protest against

their incorporation in the empire. Bismarck, influenced by the older Prussian traditions, always adopted towards them an attitude of uncompromising opposition. The growth of the Polish population has caused much anxiety; supported by the Roman Catholic Church, the Polish language has advanced, especially in Silesia, and this is only part of the general tendency, so marked throughout central Europe, for the Slavs to gain ground upon the Teutons. The Prussian government has attempted to prevent this by special legislation and severe administrative measures. Thus in 1885 and 1886 large numbers of Austrian and Russian Poles who had settled in these provinces were expelled. Windthorst thereupon raised the question in the Reichstag, but the Prussian government refused to take any notice of the interpolation on the ground that there was no right in the constitution for the imperial authority to take cognizance of acts of the Prussian government. In the Prussian parliament Bismarck introduced a law taking out of the hands of the local authorities the whole administration of the schools and giving them to the central authority, so as to prevent instruction being given in Polish. A further law authorized the Prussian government to spend £5,000,000 in purchasing estates from Polish families and settling German colonists on the land. The commission, which was appointed for the purpose, during the next ten years bought land to the amount of about 200,000 acres and on it settled more than 2000 German peasants. This policy has not, however, produced the intended effect; for the Poles founded a society to protect their own interests, and have often managed to profit by the artificial value given to their property. It has merely caused great bitterness among the Polish peasants, and the effect on the population is also counteracted by the fact that the large proprietors in purely German districts continue to import Polish labourers to work on their estates.

In the general change of policy that followed after the retirement of Bismarck an attempt was made by the emperor to conciliate the Poles. Concessions were made to them in the matter of schools, and in 1891 a Pole, Florian von Stablewski (1841–1906), who had taken a prominent part in the Kulturkampf, was accepted by the Prussian government as archbishop of Posen-Gnesen. A moderate party arose among the Poles which accepted their position as Prussian subjects, gave up all hopes of an immediate restoration of Polish independence, and limited their demands to that free exercise of the religion and language of their country which was enjoyed by the Poles in Austria. They supported government bills in the Reichstag, and won the commendation of the emperor. Unfortunately, for reasons which are not apparent, the Prussian government did not continue a course of conciliation; in 1901 administrative edicts still further limited the use of the Polish language; even religious instruction was to be given in German, and an old royal ordinance of 1817 was made the pretext for forbidding private instruction in Polish.

All these efforts have been in vain. The children in the schools became the martyrs of Polish nationality. Religious instruction continued to be given to them in German, and when they refused to answer questions which they did not understand, they were kept in and flogged. In 1906, as a protest, the school children to the number of 100,000 struck throughout Prussian Poland; and, as a result of a pastoral issued by the archbishop, Polish parents withdrew their children from religious instruction in the schools. The government responded by fining and imprisoning the parents. The efforts of the government were not confined to the forcible Germanization of the children. Polish newspapers were confiscated and their editors imprisoned, fines were imposed for holding Polish meetings, and peasants were forbidden to build houses on their own land. The country gentlemen could not have a garden party without the presence of a commissary of police.

The climax, however, was reached in 1907 when Prince Bülow, on the 26th of November, introduced into the Prussian parliament a bill to arm the German Colonization Committee in Posen with powers of compulsory expropriation. He pointed out that though the commission had acquired 815,000 acres of land and settled upon it some 100,000 German colonists, nearly 250,000