fort to the ninth. They never unite for the common good—it is only that they may at the moment feel a common hatred for some third race strong enough to bring them together in an attempt to harass the common enemy.
The economic importance of these racial antagonisms is enormous. With our homogeneous population it is hard for us to understand what a drag and a block an efficient government must follow when sentiment instead of sense must be appealed to in the legislative chambers. The government machinery of Hungary was practically paralyzed for a year because there was a deadlock over the question of whether the army should march to the command of “Vorwärts, marsch,” or “Elöre, indulj,” whether the word of command should be in the Magyar tongue or in the German.
The language question in itself is of enormous importance, and there seems no tendency toward it becoming less so. The most earnest efforts are made to continue separate schools for all the varied tongues that confuse and make difficult the life of Europe. The persistence of each type of language is in itself of great economic moment, for it is a most difficult barrier against that free commercial intercourse—intercourse where there is mutual understanding and confidence—which does so much to permit the rapid expansion of trade. A Europe with one language and without the barrier of internal tariff walls, a Europe which offered such a field for the free and natural expansion of commerce as does the United States, would be a Europe whose economic force was so increased that no one could say how vast the gain would have been.
The struggle between the two races in Bohemia—that is, between the Czechs and the Germans—is probably the most acute and typical example of the racial difficulties throughout Austria. There are in Bohemia 9,300,000 inhabitants, who are divided into 5,800,000 Czechs, 3,300,000 Germans, and 200,000 Poles. According to the budget of 1901, German Bohemia pays 250,542,000 crowns for taxes to the state; that is, 66 per cent. of the total for Bohemia; but the state expends only 32,992,000 crowns in the German districts, while it expends 104,945,000 crowns in the Czech part of the country, which pays only 128,494,000 crowns of taxes. The figures are so juggled, both by the Germans and the Czechs, that it is almost impossible to get a fair estimate of the real number of each in the country, of the amount they pay in taxes, or what they receive.
The Czechs say that the language struggle in Bohemia was provoked by the Germans, who placed over their shops and restaurants inscriptions such as “Forbidden to talk Czech” or “Entrance is Forbidden to Beggars, Dogs, and Czechs”; whereas the Germans say that although Prague is the capital of a bilingual country, the town councils do not allow German names to be used in the streets; and an amusing feature of the struggle is that the Slav Congress held in 1898 at Prague was obliged to use German as the official language of debate, as it was the only tongue which all the delegates understood.
Throughout Austria the struggle between Czechs and Germans is particularly keen over the schools. Two rival school associations, one German and the other Czech, use every means in their power, the one to Germanize the Czech children, and the other to teach them the cult of the Czech language and nationality.
Austria-Hungary and the Balkan countries we recognize as the home of racial antagonisms. Such a great percentage of the political life there is absorbed in these controversies that commercial and social interests have but scant recognition. But we are not so apt to remember that in Germany one of the fundamental problems of government, and one of the most perplexing and important, has to do with the discontent of the fragments of the nationalities which are still unreconciled to the Imperial Government. These are the people of Alsace-Lorraine, the Danes of North Schleswig, the Hanoverians, and the Poles. In the conquered French provinces there has been some real headway in breaking down the old antipathies, but nowhere else is there much progress. The discontent along the Danish border is gaining in importance, thriving on the unwise policy of the Prussian Government in guarding too zealously against all petty demonstrations of Danish sympathy. The Government acted with great harshness a few years ago in expelling Danish house servants, farm
