Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/135

 their schools, and then came the occupation, of Poland by the Germans in this war. The Germans published an order that German teaching should be introduced into the schools because the Protestants were assumed to be Germans. I was told an interesting story about that. The Protestants of Warsaw sent a deputation to the Governor-General of Warsaw. At the head of them was a Doctor of Protestant Theology of a German University. The deputation told the Governor-General, "We are Poles and we want Polish teaching in our schools." Then the Governor-General said, "Allow me to say, my Government consider all Protestants in Warsaw as Germans," whereupon the Doctor of Protestant Theology answered, "Oh! if that is so it will be very easy for us to become Roman Catholics"; and the German governor made the concession asked for. On that struggle for the organisation of Polish civilisation, public opinion against the Central Empires was at one. In this war, four-fifths of the public opinion of the Poles is on the side of Russia and against Germany and Austria, as can be proved by the experience of the Russian army in Poland. The Poles understood, first, that their national existence is threatened by Germany and that the only chance for their future is the German defeat, and, secondly, that their national rôle is that of a barrier against the progress of Germany in the east. The power of Germany comes not from the west but from the east, from Prussia, from the country built nearly on the Slavonic side, and every progress in the east means a new increase of the German power, and the first thing for Europe to do in the future if she wants to have Germany