Page:The Position of the Slavonic Languages at the present day.djvu/22

 matters more complex. In East Prussia, namely, the majority of Poles have been Lutherans since they were invaded and converted by the Teutonic knights in the thirteenth century; to these Lutheran Poles the terms Polish and Catholic are synonymous, and so they regard German as the orthodox language and nationality. This would not be so bad, but it happens that in the midst of these Lutheran Poles of East Prussia there is an enclave of Catholic Poles inhabiting the diocese of Warmia or Ermeland, which has always been Catholic. To these Catholic Poles, surrounded as they are by their Lutheran compatriots, the Polish language and nationality again appear to contain the germs of heresy.

In Russian Poland there are no such confessional complications, and the secular political supremacy of St. Petersburg has not achieved any tangible result in the direction of denationalization. However, what would otherwise be the advantageous dearth of Russian places of education is more than discounted by the difficulty experienced in establishing Polish schools. The Polish language and nationality enjoy the greatest amount of liberty in Austria, which at the partition of Poland acquired Galicia as its share of the spoils. The comparatively small number of its Polish subjects, and the proximity of these latter to the Russian frontier enabled the Government of Vienna to treat them with apparent magnanimity, and to reap the reward of devoted loyalty consistently ever since. Warsaw is still the social centre of the nation, but Cracow is to-day the Polish Oxford and Piedmont in one.

But the intersected fragments of the nation are still united by the indissoluble link of the Polish language. Already in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it produced works, which would of themselves have constituted a great literature; in the nineteenth, sprouting from the grave of political freedom, it has borne fruit a hundredfold; dismemberment of the state and disfranchisement of the people have only intensified the vitality of the nation,