Page:Future of England - Peel.djvu/152

140 But, of course, Pan-Germanism is the main instance of a racial movement tending to strife. Pan-Germanism was born at the same time as Pan-Slavism, but in the humiliation of defeat at the hands of Napoleon, not in the pride of victory. Its first-fruits was the battle of Leipzig, and its first classic was Arndt's song, "" The poet answered his own question by saying that the German's fatherland exists "where'er is heard the German tongue," a revolutionary saying on the basis of which a whole literature has arisen to-day.

The main practical result of Pan-Germanism has been the determined attempt of Germany to stamp out the Poles of her eastern province. In his great speech of 1886, Bismarck opened the question, declaring that since 1814 Prussia had treated the Poles kindly, but "I do not care a straw for the pledges of those days." Germanism was being extinguished in Prussian Poland no less than in Hungary and Bohemia. "Let the Poles go to Paris or Monte Carlo." "We must stand on feet not of clay, but of iron." Thus the persecution began. Over twenty years later, in 1907, Prince Bülow reviewed the whole policy in Poland, and disclosed a rather melancholy state of affairs from a German point of view. In spite of all the government's efforts, more land was passing into Polish hands than vice versa. Expropriation must be resorted to, for, indeed, there was no possibility of preserving German nationality in