Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/163

 of German origin and partly Russian, but the intercourse of both peoples with the Russians is growing closer, and they are subjected more and more to the influence of Russian civilisation and culture.

Then south of the Letts, you have the Lithuanians, in the governments of Vilna and Grodno, and the Suwalki government in the kingdom of Poland. I wish I had more time to tell you about the Lithuanians. They are one of the most interesting peoples in the Russian Empire. Their language is extremely old, with forms as old as Sanscrit, and I have an idea that the Lithuanians have stayed near their original home during the whole course of their existence. There is a curious feeling about them. Their neighbours call them sorcerers and wizards. Up to the seventeenth century they worshipped their gods in groves and had an institution of vestal virgins, who kept the sacred fire burning. There were prophets and soothsayers, and there were curious manifestations of tree-worship. Then the history of Lithuania and its contact with the Teutonic Order is extremely interesting, but all that wonderful story I have no time to tell now. The Lithuanians, too, have lately developed their national movement, with its newspapers, novels, poems, and its apparatus of propaganda.

I have left myself hardly time to speak of one very important question, that of the Jews, but I must ask your very careful attention to this for just a few moments longer. I have not spoken of the Polish question for two reasons: in the first place it has been already admirably expounded to you by Mr Roman Dmowski and other lecturers during the week, and,