laborers, and other humble folk because they sang Danish songs, and in other simple ways proclaimed their Danish sentiments, and only recently the Minister of the Interior has implied threats that such expulsions may be resumed. The Hanoverians have never been reconciled to the union of the old kingdom of Hanover with Prussia, and the Guelph party still elects half a dozen members of the Reichstag. In the last session of the Diet, Herr von Hammerstein, the Prussian Minister of the Interior, declared that the Guelphs, next to the Socialists, were the element most dangerous to the existence of the state.
All these racial discontents are nothing, however, compared with the race problem in the Polish provinces. In the province of Posen, some parts of East Prussia, and in the mining districts of Silesia, the Government meets one of the most serious of all its difficulties, and one that seems to become more serious with time. The Poles have lately been growing more radical, and instead of working in political harmony with the Clerical party, as they once did, they have drawn political lines strictly in accordance with their racial aims, and have even put candidates in the field against their old allies, the Clericals, and that with occasional success. Even the Polish Socialists, unlike the Socialists elsewhere in Germany, show a strong disposition to pursue paths of their own, rather than act with the Social-Democratic organization.
The pacification of the Poles has called forth enormous effort from the Prussian Government, and astonishing expenditures, but all, apparently, to little purpose. The scheme in which the Prussian Government put greatest faith, and for which it has made unstinted appropriations, has been the purchase of large estates in the Polish provinces for the purpose of dividing them into small holdings and settling Germans upon them, with the hope of thus Germanizing the country. Bismarck started the policy in 1866 with a fund of 100,000,000 marks; in 1898 that was increased to 200,000,000 marks, and in 1902, the appropriation being nearly exhausted, a further vote of 150,000,000 marks was made, with an additional grant of 100,000,000 marks for the purpose of acquiring Polish estates to be turned into state domains and forests. There has thus been an authorized expenditure of $112,000,000, with results that leave the population to-day as antagonistic to the Government as it was when Bismarck conceived the scheme.
The Poles are by no means poor, and they met this policy of “pacification by Reichsmarks” with a private organization. A great Landbank, provided with ample capital, has been established with the purpose of undoing the work of the Government. The Landbank buys land from the thrifty German settlers and returns the native Poles to till it. The Settlement Commission, which has charge of the Government’s scheme for settling Germans on these Polish lands, meets with the greatest difficulty in buying land from Poles, but on the other hand, it is forced to buy out every German holder who wishes to sell, else his land will again fall into Polish hands. The commission bought more than 100,000 acres of land last year, and only about 7,000 acres of that was acquired from Polish owners, while well over 90,000 acres were taken over at high prices from Germans who wanted to leave the country or wished to abandon the farm for the town.
The Government has settled about 50,000 Germans upon these Polish lands since the policy was inaugurated. This artificial competition for land which has been going on between the Government Settlement Commission and the Polish Landbanks has resulted in absurd advances in prices. For some years after the Settlement Commission began its operation, land was bought at an average of $54 an acre. By 1902 the price had risen to $87 per acre, and last year to $111.
The two races have come to a deadlock in their relations with each other. Every year there is a great Polish debate in the Reichstag, but it only serves to bring out in bold relief the irreconcilable antagonism. between German and Pole.
The significance of the language question is well understood by the European monarchs. In the Park Club in Budapest, the club of the Magyar aristocrats, which cannot be matched for artistic beauty of furnishing by any of the marble halls of our gaudy American clubs, there hang two portraits, and only two. One, of course, is that of the Emperor Franz Josef; the other is William II.
