33
who instigated the partition of that country. Bismarck formulated the leading aims of Prussian-German politics when he declared the Province of Posen (the part of Poland held by Germany) to be incomparably more important for the Germans than Alsace-Lorraine; The policy of Berlin and the voice of influential German publicists and politicians prove that the push towards the East is still considered by Germany as her traditional aim.
The Hapsburgs, who ruled long over Germany, carried out German policies, and threatened equally the Slav East and South; they oppressed the Czechs and Slovaks, annexed a large part of Poland, pressed against the Jugoslavs, Rumanians and Italians. The Germans, like the Mongolian Magyars, effected a reconciliation with the traditional enemy of Christianity, Turkey, against the Slavs. In this war prussianised Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey formed a league against Europe—an anti-national, undemocratic, dynastic, aggressive league.
The acuteness of the nationality question in Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Turkey (the Balkans)—and the same has been true, to a large extent, of Russia also—lies in this, that these States oppress nations and national minorities that are self-conscious and enlightened, nations that formerly enjoyed political independence, or nations, parts of which now constitute independent States. Alsace-Lorraine, even while it was connected with the old empire, was, in reality, an independent country, and received from France French culture; the Danish minority in Schleswig has likewise been independent, and its degree of cultural development is as high as that of the Germans. Poland, too, has been independent; it was divided in a treacherous manner, and oppressed, although a considerable part of the nation, as far as culture is concerned, was highly developed. The Czechs and Slovaks had likewise been independent; the Czechs de jure still are independent, and their culture is in no manner inferior to that of the Germans; neither are the Slovaks at a lower degree of cultural development than the Magyars, who oppress them. The same is true of the Serbians and Croatians; Serbia and Montenegro are independent, and the Jugoslavs, held down by Austria and Hungary, naturally look to them for the realisation of their ideal; Croatia has maintained a certain degree of independence, and for that reason feels Magyar oppression the more. The situation of the Rumanians and the Italians is similar.
The nations of the Balkans have only in recent years freed themselves from the barbarous yoke of the Turks, and have not yet quieted down. Turkey still holds a part of the Greeks in subjection, and interferes, to the detriment of the Balkans. In the national questions of the Balkans the cultural and political influence of Byzantium still plays a considerable part.
If we compare with these national questions the national questions of the West, we perceive a great difference. In the first place, the West has very few national disputes, the only pressing question in the West being Alsace-Lorraine; but in the East there are at least nine acute questions. In the West disputes turn on relatively smaller minorities (140,000 Danes, 210,000 French), whereas, in the East entire nations of a considerable size are at stake (Poles, 20 million; Czecho-Slovaks, 10 million; Jugoslavs, 10 million; Rumanians, 10 million, etc.).
As far as the dispute between Germany and France is concerned, it is not altogether national. Between the two nations and States the dispute has raged for centuries about a comparatively insignificant territory, and less than two million people. The dispute all turned along on the question of power, not of nationality, which latter was the case between the Germans and the smaller Slav States; the aggressive German colonisation is aimed against the East. Therefore we may say once more, that in the West there really were no national disputes, and that the West, in general, as has been explained, differs politically and nationally from the East, and especially from that peculiar central zone of smaller nations between the Germans and the Russians.
