CHAPTER V
THE PASSING OF PERSIA
The weakness of the Ottoman Empire and of Morocco served to bring the colonial and commercial aspiration of Germany into conflict with other nations of Europe. The recent fortunes of Persia, the third—and only other—independent Mohammedan state, have also helped to make possible the general European war.
The first decade of the twentieth century brought about in Persia, as in Turkey, the rise of a constitutional party, which was able to force a despotic sovereign to grant a constitution. The Young Persians had in many respects a history similar to that of the Young Turks. They were for the most part members of influential families, who had been educated in Europe, or had been sent into exile. They had imbibed deeply the spirit of the French Revolution from their reading, and had at the same time developed a narrow and intense nationalism. But to support their revolutionary propaganda, they had allied themselves during the period of darkness with the Armenians and other non-Moslems. As Salonika, a city by no means Turkish, was the foyer of the young Turk movement, so Tabriz, capital of the Azerbaidjan, a city by no means Persian, was the centre of the opposition to Persian despotism.
Young Turks, Young Persians, Young Egyptians, Young Indians, and Young Chinese have shown to Europe and America the peril—and the pity—of our western and Christian education, when it is given to eastern and non-Christian students. They are born into the intellectual life with our ideas and are inspired by our ideals, but have none of the background, none of the inheritance of our national atmosphere and our family training to enable them to live up to the standards we have put before them. Their disillusionment is bitter. They resent our attitude of superiority. They hate us, even though they feign to admire us. Their jealousy of our institutions leads them to console themselves by singling out and forcing themselves to see only the weak and vulnerable points in our civilization. Educated in our universities, they return to their countries to conspire against us. The illiterate and simple Oriental, who has never travelled, is frequently the model of fidelity and loyalty and affection to his Occidental master or friend. But no educated non-Christian Oriental, who has travelled and studied and lived on terms of equality with Europeans or Americans in Europe or America, can ever be a sincere friend. The common result of social contact and intellectual companionship is that he becomes a foe,—and conceals the fact. Familiarity has bred more than contempt.
The Young Persians would have no European aid. They waited, and suffered. Finally, after a particularly bad year from the standpoint of financial exactions, the Moslem clergy of the North were drawn into the Young Persia movement. A revolution, in which the Mohammedan mullahs took part, compelled the dying Shah, Muzaffereddin, to issue a decree ordering the convocation of a medjliss (committee of notables) on August 5, 1906. This improvised Parliament, composed only of delegates of the provinces nearest the capital, drafted a constitution which was promulgated on New Year's Day, 1907. The following week, Muzaffereddin died and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed Ali Mirza, a reactionary of the worst type.
Mohammed Ali had no intention of putting the Constitution into force. A serious revolution broke out in Tabriz a few weeks after his accession. He was compelled to acknowledge the Constitution granted by his father. In order to nullify its effect, however, the new Shah called to the Grand Vizierate the exiled Ali Asgar Khan, whom he believed to be strong enough to overrule the wishes of the Parliament. The Constitutionalists formed a society of fedavis to prevent the return to absolutism. At their instigation, Ali Asgar Khan was assassinated. The country fell into an anarchic state.
Constitutional Persia, as much because of the inexperience of the Constitutionalists as of the ill-will of the Shah, was worse off than under the despotism of Muzaffereddin. There was no money in the treasury. The peasants would not pay their taxes. One can hardly blame them, for not a cent of the money ever went for local improvements or local government. Throughout Persia, even in the cities, life was unsafe. The Persians, no more than the Turks, could call forth from the ranks of their enthusiasts a progressive and fearless statesman of the type of Stambuloff or Venizelos. In their Parliament they all talked at once. None was willing to listen to his neighbour. It may have been because there was no Mirabeau. But could a Mirabeau have overcome the fatal defects of the Mohammedan training and character that made the Young Persians incapable of realizing the constitutionalism of their dreams? Every man was suspicious and jealous of his neighbour. Every man wanted to lead, and none to be led. Every man wanted power without responsibility, prestige without work, success without sacrifice.
It was at this moment that one of the most significant events of contemporary times was helped to fruition by the state of affairs in Persia. Great Britain and Russia, rivals—even enemies—in western and central Asia, signed a convention. Their conflicting ambitions were amicably compromised. Along with the questions of Afghanistan and Thibet, this accord settled the rivalry that had done much to keep Persia a hotbed of diplomatic intrigue like Macedonia ever since the Crimean War.
In regard to Persia, the two Powers solemnly swore to respect its integrity and its independence, and then went on to sign its death warrant, by agreeing upon the question of "the spheres of influence." In spite of all sophisms, this convention marked the passing of Persia as an independent state. Persia is worse off than Morocco and Egypt. For one master is better than two!
Here enters Germany. For many years German merchants had looked upon Persia as they looked upon Morocco and Turkey. Here were the legitimate fields for commercial expansion. Probably there were also dreams of political advantages to be gained later. In their dealings with the three Moslem countries that were still "unprotected" when they inaugurated their Weltpolitik, the Germans had been attentive students of British policy in the days of her first entry into India and to Egypt. There were many Germans who honestly believed that their activities in these independent Moslem countries would only give them "their place under the sun," and a legitimate field for the overflow of their population and national energy, but that it would also be a distinct advantage to the peace of the world. Great Britain and Russia and France had already divided up between them the larger part of Asia and Africa. In the process, Great Britain had recently come almost to blows with both her rivals. If Germany stepped in between them, would this not prevent a future conflict? But the rivals "divided up." Germany was left out in the cold. It is not a very far cry from Teheran and Koweit and Fez to Liège and Brussels and Antwerp. Belgium is paying the bill.
The Anglo-Russian convention of August 31, 1907, was the first of three doors slammed in Germany's face. The Anglo-French convention of April 8, 1904, had been an attempt to do this. But by Emperor William's visit to Tangiers in 1905, Germany got in her foot before the door was closed! In Persia there was no way that she could intervene directly to demand that Great Britain and Russia bring their accord before an international congress.
Germany began to work in Persia through two agencies. She incited Turkey to cross the frontier of the Azerbaidjan, and to make the perfectly reasonable request that the third limitrophe state should be taken into the pourparlers which were deciding the future of Persia. Then she sent her agents among the Nationalists, and showed them how terrible a blow this convention was to their new constitutionalism. Just at the moment when they had entered upon a constitutional life, Great Britain and Russia had conspired against their independence, went the German thesis.
If only there had been a sincerity for the Constitution in the heart of the Shah, and an ability to establish a really constitutional régime in the leaders of Young Persia, the Anglo-Russian accord might have proved of no value. But—unfortunately for Persia and for Germany—the Shah, worked upon skilfully by Russian emissaries and by members of his entourage, who were paid by Russian gold, attempted a coup d'état against the Parliament in December, 1907. He failed to carry it through. With a smile on his lips and rage in his heart, he once more went through the farce of swearing to be a good constitutional ruler. But in June, 1908, he succeeded in dispersing the Parliament by bombarding the palace in which it sat.
It would be wearisome to go into the story of the revolts and anarchy in all parts of Persia in 1908 and 1909. After a year of fighting and Oriental promises, of solemn oaths and the breaking of them, the constitutionalists finally drove Mohammed Ali from Teheran in July, 1909. The Shah saved his life by taking refuge in the Russian legation. A few days later, he took the road to exile. He has since reappeared in Persia twice to stir up trouble in the north. On both occasions, it was when the Russians were finding it hard to justify their continued occupation of the northern provinces.
Mohammed Ali was succeeded by his son Ali Mirza, a boy of eleven years, who was still too young to be anything more than a mere plaything in the hands of successive regents.
The civil strife in Persia gave Great Britain and Russia the excuse for entering the country. In accord with Great Britain, Russia sent an expedition to occupy Tabriz on April 29, 1909. Later, Russian troops occupied Ardebil, Recht, Kazvin, and other cities in the Russian sphere of influence. Owing to the anarchy in the south during 1910, Great Britain prepared to send troops "to protect the safety of the roads for merchants." This was not actually done, for conditions of travel slightly ameliorated. But Persia has rested since under the menace of a British occupation.
Every effort made to bring order out of chaos in Persia has failed. Serious attempts at financial reform were undertaken by an American mission, under the direction of a former American official in the Philippine Islands.
The new American Treasurer-General would not admit that the Anglo-Russian accord of 1907 was operative in Persia. One day in the summer of 1911, I was walking along the Galata Quay in Constantinople. I heard my name called from the deck of a vessel just about to leave for Batum. Perched on top of two boxes containing typewriters, was a young American from Boston, who was going out to help reform the finances of Persia. I had talked to him the day before concerning the extreme delicacy and difficulty of the task of the mission whose secretary he was. But his refusal to admit the political limitations of Oriental peoples made it impossible for him to see that constitutional Persia was any different, or should be treated any differently, from constitutional Massachusetts.
From the sequel of the story, it would seem that Mr. Shuster had the same attitude of mind as his secretary. He refused to appoint fiscal agents in the Russian "sphere" on any other ground than personal fitness and ability. Russia protested. Mr. Shuster persisted. A march on Teheran to expel the Americans was threatened. Persia yielded and gave up the American mission—and her independence.
When Germany saw that the Russian troops had entered northern Persia with the consent of Great Britain, and had come to stay, there was nothing for her to do but to treat with Russia.
In November, 1910, when the Czar was visiting the Kaiser, Russian and German ministers exchanged views concerning the ground upon which Germany would agree to the fait accompli of Russia's exclusive political interests in Northern Persia, and the Russian military occupation. Satisfactory bases were found for an agreement between Russia and Germany concerning their respective interests in Persia and Asiatic Turkey. The Accord of Potsdam, as it is called, was made in the form of a note presented by the Russian Government to Germany, and accepted by her. Russia declared that she would in no way oppose the realization of the project of the Bagdad railway up to the Persian Gulf, and that she would construct to the border of Persia a railway to join a spur of the Bagdad railway from Sadije to Khanikin. In return for this, Germany was to promise not to construct railway lines outside of the Bagdad railway zone, to declare that she had no political interest in Persia, and to recognize that "Russia has special interests in Northern Persia from the political, strategic, and economic points of view." The German Government was to abandon any intention of securing a concession for a trans-Persian railway. On the other hand, Russia promised to maintain in Northern Persia the "open door," so that German commercial interests should not be injured.
The accord between Russia and Germany was badly received everywhere. France feared that Germany was trying to weaken the Franco-Russian alliance. Great Britain did not look with favour upon a recognition by Russia of German interests in Asiatic Turkey. The Sublime Porte felt that Russia and Germany had shown a disregard for the elementary principles of courtesy in discussing and deciding questions that were of tremendous importance to the future of Turkey without inviting the Sublime Porte to take part in the negotiations. Turkey in the Potsdam accord was ignored as completely as Morocco had been in the Algeciras Convention and Persia in the Russo-British accord.
The Potsdam stipulations brought prominently before Europe the possible significance of Germany's free hand in Anatolian and Mesopotamian railway constructions. It also aroused interest in the possibility of an all-rail route from Calais to Calcutta, in which all the Great Powers except Italy would participate.
The trans-Persian and all other railway schemes in Persia came to nothing. Between 1872 and 1890 twelve district railway projects had received concessions from the Persian Government. One of these, the Reuter group, actually started the construction of a line from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. A French project for a railway from Trebizond to Tabriz had gained powerful financial support. All these schemes were frustrated by Russian diplomacy. In 1890, Russia secured from the Persian Government the exclusive right for twenty-one years to construct railways in Northern Persia. Needless to say, no lines were built. Russia had all she could do with her trans-Siberian and trans-Caucasian schemes. But she deliberately acted the dog in the manger. By preventing private groups from building railways in Persia which she would not build herself, Russia has retarded the economic progress, and is largely responsible for the financial, military, and administrative weakness, of contemporary Persia. By the accords of 1907 with Great Britain and 1911 with Germany, Russia secured their connivance in still longer continuing this shameful stagnation. To this day no railroad has been built in the Shah's dominions.
Just a month before the outbreak of the European war, the boy Shah of Persia was solemnly crowned at Teheran. It was an imposing and pathetic ceremony. The Russians and British saw to it that full honour should be given to the sovereign of Persia. The pathos of the event was in the fact that the Russian and British legations at Teheran paid the expenses of the coronation. The Shah received his crown from the hands of his despoilers. A similar farce was enacted a little while before in Morocco. Turkey alone of Moslem nations remains.
The last effort of Persia to shake off the Russian octopus was made on October 8, 1914, when Russia was requested once more to withdraw her troops from the Azerbaijan. The Russian Minister at Teheran, without going through the form of referring the request to Petrograd, answered that the interests of Russia and other foreign countries could be safeguarded only by the continued occupation. To this response his British colleague gave hearty assent.
The importance of the passing of Persia is two-fold. It shows how in one more direction Germany found herself shut out from a possible field of expansion. Through the weakness of Persia, Great Britain and Russia, after fifty years of bitter struggle, were able to come to a satisfactory compromise. It was in Persia that their animosity was buried, and that co-operation of British democracy and Russian autocracy in a war against Germany was first envisaged. The failure of the Persian constitutional Government was a tremendous blow to Germany. It strengthened the bases of the Triple Entente. For the events of 1908 and 1909 put the accord to severe test, and proved that it was built upon a solid foundation. The agony of one people is often the joy of another. Has Persia suffered vicariously that France may be saved?
CHAPTER VI
THE PARTITIONERS AND THEIR POLES[*]
[*] This chapter has not been written without giving consideration to the Russian point of view. There is an excellent book on Russia since the Japanese War (from 1906 to 1912) by Peter Polejaïeff.
When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, there were at the most six million Poles in the vast territory stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Of these a large number, especially in Eastern Prussia and in Silesia, had already lost their sense of nationality. Poland was a country of feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status of the land in which they lived.
To-day there are twenty million Poles. Although they owe allegiance to three different sovereigns, they are more united than ever in their history. For their national feeling has developed in just the same way that the national feeling of Germans and Russians has developed, by education primarily, and by that remarkable tendency of industrialism, which has grouped people in cities, and brought them into closer association. This influence of city life upon the destinies of Poland comes to us with peculiar force when we realize that since the last map of Europe was made Warsaw has grown from forty thousand to eight hundred thousand, Lodz from one thousand to four hundred thousand, Posen from a few hundreds to one hundred and fifty thousand, Lemberg and Cracow from less than ten thousand to two hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand respectively. These great cities (except Lodz, which Russia foolishly allowed to become an outpost of Pan-Germanism in the heart of a Slavic population) are the foyers of Polish nationalism.
The second and third dismemberments of Poland (1793 and 1795) were soon annulled by the Napoleonic upheaval. The larger portion of Poland was revived in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The Congress of Vienna, just one hundred years ago, made what the representatives of the partitioning Powers hoped would be a definite redistribution of the unwelcome ghost stirred up by Napoleon. Poznania was returned to Prussia, and in the western end of Galicia a Republic of Cracow was created. The greater portion of Poland reverted to Russia, not as conquered territory, but as a separate state, of which the Czar assumed the kingship and swore to preserve the liberties. The unhappiness, the unrest, the agitation, among the Poles of the Muscovite Empire, just as among the Finns, came from the breaking of the promises by Russia to Europe when these subjects of alien races were allotted to her.
The story of modern Poland is not different from that of any other nationalistic movement. A sense of nationality and a desire for racial political unity are not the phenomena which have been the underlying causes of the evolution of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Alsace-Lorraine, in Finland, among the various races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan Peninsula, as well as in Turkey and Persia, the underlying cause of political agitation, of rebellions and of revolutions has been the desire to secure freedom from absolutism. Nationalism is simply the tangible outward manifestation of the growth of democracy. There are few national movements where separatism could not have been avoided by granting local self-government. Mixed populations can live together under the same government without friction, if the lesser races are granted social, economic, and political equality. But nations that have achieved their own unity and independence through devotion to a nationalistic movement have shown no mercy or wisdom with smaller and less fortunate races under their domination. The very methods that European statesmen have fondly believed were necessary for assimilation have proved fatal to it.
The Polish question, as we understand it to-day, has little connection with the Polish revolutions of 1830 and of 1863. These movements against the Russian Government were conducted by the same elements of protest against autocracy that were at work in the larger cities and universities throughout Europe during the middle of the nineteenth century. Nationalism was the reason given rather than the cause that prompted. The revolutions were unsuccessful because they were not supported by the nation. The mass of the people were indifferent to the cause, just as in other countries similar revolutions against despotism failed for lack of real support. The apathy of the masses has always been the bulwark of defence for autocracy and reactionary policies. Popular rights do not come to people until the masses demand them. Education alone brings self-government. This is the history of the evolution of modern Europe.
The Poles as a nation began to worry their partitioners in the decade following the last unsuccessful revolution against Russia. To understand the contemporary phases of the Polish question, it is necessary for us to follow first its three-fold development, as a question of internal policy in Russia, Germany, and Austria. Only then is its significance as an international question clear.
THE POLES SINCE 1864 IN RUSSIA
The troubles of Russia in her relationship to the Poles have come largely from the fact that the distinction between Poland proper, inhabited by Poles, and the provinces which the Jagellons conquered but never assimilated, was not grasped by the statesmen who had to deal with the aftermath of the revolution. What was possible in one was thought to be possible in the other. What was vital in one was believed to be vital in the other. In the kingdom of Poland, as it was bestowed upon the Russian Czar by the Congress of Vienna, there were massed ten million Poles who could be neither exterminated nor exiled. Nor was there a sound motive for attempting to destroy their national life. The kingdom of Poland was not an essential portion of the Russian Empire, and was not vitally bound to the fortunes of the Empire. So unessential has the kingdom of Poland been to Russia, and so fraught with the possibilities of weakness to its owner, that patriotic and far-sighted Russian publicists have advocated its complete autonomy, its independence or its cession to Germany. Because it was limitrophe to the territories occupied by the Poles of the other partitioners, there was constantly danger of weakening the defences of the empire and of international complications. Through failing to treat these Poles in such a way that they would be a loyal bulwark against her enemies, Russia has done irreparable harm to herself as well as to them.
The Polish question in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine was a totally different matter. These provinces had been added to Russia in her logical development towards the west and the south-west. Their possession was absolutely essential to the existence of the Empire. Their population was not Polish, but Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and Russian. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the acquisition of these territories made possible the entrance of Russia into the concert of European nations. They had been conquered by Poland during the period of her greatness, and had naturally been lost by her when she became weak. In these portions of Greater Poland, the Poles were limited to the landowning class, and to the more prosperous artisans in the cities and villages. They were the residue of an earlier conquering race that had never assimilated the country. They had abused their power, and were heartily disliked. These provinces were vital to Russia, and she was able to carry out the policy of uprooting the Poles. Their villages were burned, their fortunes and their lands confiscated, the landed proprietors deported to Siberia, and others so cruelly persecuted that, when their churches and schools were closed and they found themselves forbidden to speak their language outside of their own homes, they emigrated. In Lithuania, the Lithuanian language was also proscribed. The Russians had no intention of blotting out a Polish question in order to make place for a Lithuanian one.
Where the Poles were few in number, these measures, which were exactly the same as the Poles had employed themselves in the same territories several centuries before, were successful. The peasants were glad to see their traditional persecutors get a taste of their own medicine. It was not difficult to make these provinces Russian. They have gradually been assimilated into the Empire. In all fairness, one can hardly condemn the Russian point of view, as regards the Poles in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine. Only youthful Polish irredentists still dream of the restoration of the Empire of the Jagellons.
In the kingdom of Poland, the situation was entirely different. This huge territory had been given to Russia by the Congress of Vienna upon the solemn assurance that it was to be governed as a separate kingdom by the Romanoffs. There was no thought in the Congress of Vienna of the disappearance of the Poles as a separate nationality from the map of Europe. But the autonomy of Poland was suppressed after the rebellion of 1830.
After the rebellion of 1863, Russia tried to assimilate the kingdom of Poland as well as the Polish marches. The repression was so severe that Polish nationalism was considered dead. The peasants had been indifferent to the movement. Not only had they failed to support it, but they had frequently shown themselves actually hostile to it.
It was because the nobles and priests were believed to be leaders of nationalistic and separatist movements, not only in Poland but in other allogeneous portions of the composite Empire, that Czar Alexander II emancipated the serfs. The policy of every autocratic government, when it meets the first symptoms of unrest in a subject race, is to strike at their church and their aristocracy. The most efficient way to weaken the power of the nobles is to strengthen the peasants. Alexander himself may have been actuated by motives of pure humanity, but his ministers would never have allowed the ukase to be promulgated, had they not seen in it the means of conquering the approaching revolution in Poland. For the moment it was an excellent move, and accomplished its purpose. The Polish peasants were led to believe that the Czar was their father and friend and champion against the exactions of the church and landowner. Was not their emancipation proof of this?
But in the long run the emancipation of the serfs proved fatal to Russian domination in Poland. For the advisers of Alexander had not realized that freemen would demand and attend schools, and that schools, no matter how careful the surveillance and restrictions might be, created democrats. Democrats would seize upon nationalism to express their aspiration for self-government. The emancipation of the serfs, launched as a measure to destroy Poland, has ended in making it. Emancipation created Polish patriots. It was a natural and inevitable result. The artificial aid of a governmental persecution helped and hastened this result. The Irishman expressed a great truth when he said that there are things that are not what they are.
A flock of hungry Russian functionaries descended upon Poland in 1864. They took possession of all departments of administration. The Polish language was used in courts only through an interpreter, and was forbidden as the medium of instruction in schools. No Polish signs were tolerated in the railways or post-offices. In the parts of the kingdom where there were bodies of the Lithuanians, their nationalism was encouraged, and they were shown many favours, in contradiction to the policy adopted towards the Lithuanians of Lithuania. Catholics who followed the Western Rite were forced to join the national church. There was a clear intention to assimilate as much as possible the populations of the border districts of Poland.
After thirty years of repression, Russia had made no progress in Poland. In 1897, Prince Imeretinsky wrote to the Czar that the policy of the Government had failed. Polish national spirit, instead of disappearing, had spread remarkably among the peasant classes. The secret publication and importation of unauthorized journals and pamphlets had multiplied. The number of cases brought before the courts for infraction of the "law of association," which forbade unlicensed public gatherings and clubs, had so increased that they could not be heard. Heavy fines and imprisonment seem to have had no deterring effect.
Could Russia hope to struggle against the tendencies of modern life? Free press and free speech are the complement of education. When men learn to read, they learn to think, and can be reached by propaganda. When men increase in prosperity, they begin to want a voice in the expenditure of the money they have to pay for taxes. When men come together in the industrial life of large cities, they form associations. No government, no system of spies or terrorism, no laws can prevent propaganda in cities. From 1864 to 1914, the kingdom of Poland has become more Polish than ever before in her history. Instead of a few students and dreamers, fascinated by the past glories of their race, instead of a group of landowners and priests, thinking of their private interests and of the Church, there is awakened a spirit of protest against Russian despotism in the soul of a race become intelligently nationalistic.
The issue between Russia and her Poles has become clearer, and for that reason decidedly worse, since the disastrous war with Japan. The Poles have demanded autonomy in the fullest sense of the word. The Russians have responded by showing that it is their intention to destroy Poland, just as they intend to destroy Finland. There is an analogy between the so-called constitutional régimes in Russia and Turkey. In each Empire, the granting of a constitution was hailed with joy by the various races. These races, who had been centres of agitation, disloyalty, and weakness, were ready to co-operate with their governments in building up a large, broad, comprehensive, national life upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But in both Empires, the dominant race let it soon be understood that the Constitution was to be used for a destructive policy of assimilation. In the Ottoman Empire, the Constitution was a weapon for destroying the national aspirations of subject races. In Russia it has been the same.
After the Russo-Japanese War, Czar Nicholas and his ministers had their great opportunity to profit by the lessons of Manchuria. But the granting of a constitution was a pure farce. Blind to the fact that the enlightened Poles were interested primarily in political reforms, and in securing equity and justice for the kingdom of Poland, instead of for the advancement of a narrow and theoretical nationalistic ideal, the Russians repulsed the proffered loyalty of the Poles to a free and constitutional Russian Empire. In the second Duma, Dmowski and other Polish deputies unanimously voted the supplies for strengthening the Russian army. They stated that the Poles were willing to cast their lot loyally and indissolubly with constitutional Russia. Were they not brethren, and imbued with the same Pan-Slavic idea? Was it not logical to look to Russia as the defender of all the Slavs from Teutonic oppression?
But Poland, like Finland, was to continue to be the victim of Russian bureaucracy and of an intolerant nationalism which the Russians were beginning to feel as keenly and as arrogantly as the Prussians. Is the Kaiser, embodying the evils of militarism, more obnoxious and more dangerous to civilization than the Czar, standing for the horrors of bureaucratic despotism and absolutism? Have not the Armenian massacres, ordered from Constantinople, and the Jewish pogroms, ordered from Petrograd, associated Christian Czar with Mohammedan Sultan at the beginning of the twentieth century?
The first deliberate violation of the integrity of the kingdom of Poland was sanctioned by the Russian Duma in the same session in which it approved violation of Russian obligations to Finland. A law separating Kholm from the kingdom of Poland was voted on July 6, 1912. The test of the law declared that Kholm was still to be regarded as a portion of the kingdom of Poland, but to be directly attached to the Ministry of the Interior without passing by the intermediary of the Governor-General of Warsaw; and to preserve the Polish adaptation of the Code Napoléon for its legal administration, but to have its court of appeal at Kief.
The elections of 1913 from the kingdom of Poland to the Duma gave a decided setback to the party of Dmowski, who had so long and so ably pled for a policy of Pan-Slavism through accommodation with Russia. The law concerning Kholm had been the response of the Duma to Dmowski's olive branch. The moderates were discredited. But the failure of the radical nationalists to conciliate the Jewish element caused their candidates to lose both at Warsaw and Lodz.
The birth of an anti-Semitic movement has been disastrous to Polish solidarity during recent years. The Polish nationalists suspected the Jews of working either for German or Russian interests. They were expecially bitter against the Litvak, or Lithuanian and south Russian Jews, who had been forced by Russia to establish themselves in the cities of Poland. Poland is one of the most important pales in the Empire. The Jewish population is one-fifth of the total, and enjoys both wealth and education in the cities. Their educated youth had been courageous and forceful supporters of Polish nationalism. Before the Russian intrigues of the last decade and the introduction of these non-Polish Jews, there had never been a strong anti-Semitic feeling in Poland. The Polish protests against the encroachment of the Russians upon their national liberties have been greatly weakened by their antagonism to the Jews. The anti-Semitic movement, which has carried away both the moderate party of Dmowski and the radical nationalists, as was expected, has played into the hand of Russia.
The Muscovite statesmen, while endeavouring to use the Balkan Wars for the amalgamation of south Slavic races under the wing of Russia against Austria have treated the Poles as if they were not Slavs. During 1913 and the first part of 1914, the policy of attempting to russianize the Poles has proved disastrous to their feeling of loyalty to the Empire. The government announced definitely that the kingdom of Poland would be "compensated" for the loss of Kholm by a law granting self-government to Polish cities. This promise has not been kept. The municipal self-government project presented to the Duma was as farcical in practical results as all democratic and liberal legislation which that impotent body has been asked to pass upon.
THE POLES SINCE 1867 IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
The disappearance of Austria from Germany after the battle of Sadowa led to the organization of a new state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We must divorce in our mind the Austria before 1867 from the Austria-Hungary of the Dual Monarchy. The political situation changed entirely when Austrians and Hungarians agreed to live together and share the Slavic territories of the Hapsburg Crown. Austria no longer had need of her Galicians to keep the Hungarians in check. But there was equally important work for them to do.
The Austrians have always treated the Poles very well. Galicia, which had been Austria's share in the partition of Poland, was given local self-government, with its own Diet, and proper representation in the Austrian Reichsrath. Poles were admitted in generous numbers to the functions of the Empire.
The Polish nationalists of Russia and Prussia feel very bitter about the indifference of the Galicians to the nation at large—or rather in captivity. They claim that the lack of national feeling among the Austrian Poles is due to the fact that they have been bribed by the Austrians to desert not only their brethren of Russia and of Prussia, but also their fellow-Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have heard this criticism ably and feelingly presented, but I do not think it just. Since national aspirations are awakened and sustained by the effort to secure political equality and justice, the enjoyment of these takes away need or desire to plot against the Government. The Poles of Austria are like the French of Canada. Their nationalism is literary and religious in character. There is no reason for its being anti-governmental.
Of late years, however, there has been a national Polish agitation in Galicia. It is directed not against the Government, but against the Ruthenians, who, to the number of three millions—nearly forty per cent. of the total population—inhabit the eastern section of Galicia. This local racial conflict, which has strengthened rather than weakened the attachment of the Poles to the Vienna Government, arose after the introduction of universal suffrage, when eastern Galicia began to send in large numbers Ruthenian deputies to the Galician Diet and to the Austrian Parliament.
On April 12, 1908, Count Potocki was assassinated by a Ruthenian student, whose death sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment. With the complicity of wardens, the assassin escaped from jail after three years. There has never been peace between the Poles and the Ruthenians since that time. After serious disorders at the University of Lemberg, where the Ruthenian students were treated disgracefully, Polish and Ruthenian leaders tried to find common ground for reconciliation in December, 1911. The Ruthenians demanded electoral reform with greater representation, and the creation of a Ruthenian university. The imperial government communicated to the representatives of the two nationalities the project of a decree of public instruction in Galicia in January, 1913. The project was a marvel of ingenuity. A Ruthenian university was to be established after four years, but if by October 1, 1916, the law voting credits for it was not yet passed, a special school for Ruthenians would be attached to the University of Lemberg, until their own university was a reality. The teaching of the Ruthenian language would cease in the University of Lemberg when this "special school" was inaugurated. The Ruthenians were suspicious of a trick in the project. They could not understand its vagueness. It looked as if they would be giving up their present rights in the University of Lemberg, limited as they were, for an uncertainty. Why was no definite date for opening specified, or indication given of the new university's location? Would it be maintained by Galicia with a budget appropriation in proportion to the taxes paid by Ruthenians?
The Ruthenian question in Galicia has been cited here to show how there are wheels within wheels in the complex questions of nationalities. European racial questions seem to follow the law of the animal world. The littlest animals are eaten by little animals, who in turn serve as food for larger animals. Nations which have suffered most cruelly from race persecution are generally themselves relentless and fanatical when the power to persecute is in their hands.
The Ruthenian question shows also how Poles and Austrians work together, and are content with the mutual advantages of their union. I have never met an Austrian Pole, who lived in Galicia and had a settled profession or business there, who was not a loyal—even ardent—supporter of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Austrian Poles are dismayed as they face the terrible dilemma of union with Russia or Germany.
THE POLES SINCE 1870 IN GERMANY
Germany, like Russia, has had a twofold Polish question: The acquisition of Polish territory on either side of the Vistula to the Baltic Sea was as essential to the creation of a strong Prussian kingdom as was the acquisition of Pomerania. The portion of Poland which, before the partition, cut off eastern from western Prussia was fully as much German as Polish,—in fact more so. It became German by logical and natural conquest in the course of Prussia's evolution.
The situation was different in Poznania. This territory of the later partition reverted to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. In 1815, its population was only twenty per cent. German. For fifty years the process of Germanization went on naturally—in no way forced. When the German Empire was formed, nearly half of Poznania was German. Many of the leading Poles had lost their sense of Polish nationality. They had become German in language and in culture. How many families there are in Prussia whose Polish origin is betrayed only by their names!
But the Germanized Poles, for the most part, retained their religion. The notorious Kulturkampf of Bismarck aroused again the sense of nationality which had been lost, not only among the prosperous Poles of Poznania, but even of Silesia. Only the bureaucratic classes were unaffected by this renaissance of nationalism awakened by revolt against religious persecution.
Just after the formation of the Empire, when Prussia needed all her strength and force to preserve her hegemony in the new confederation and to lead modern Germany in the path of progress and civilization, on either side of her kingdom she had to cope with nationalist movements of Danes and of Poles. But she did not fear to undertake also the assimilation of Alsace and Lorraine!
Since the Kulturkampf, the Polish renaissance in Prussia has thrived in spite of persecution. As in Russia, the Polish language was banished, Polish teachers were transferred to schools in other parts of the Empire, and about forty thousand Poles of Russian and Austrian nationality were expelled from the country. The persecution has been carried on in the schools, in the army, and in the church. School children have been forbidden to pray in the Polish language. Two unconstitutional laws have been passed by the Prussian Diet. The first of these forbade the Poles to speak Polish in public gatherings. The second, sanctioned by the Landtag on March 8, 1908, authorized the Government to expropriate land owned by Poles for the purpose of selling it to Germans.
The Prussian scheme for getting rid of the Poles was to drive them from their lands and instal German colonists. Private enterprise was first tried. A "colonization society" was formed, with a large capital, and given every encouragement by Prussian officialdom. But economic laws are not controlled by politics. The colonists were boycotted. Enormous sums of money were lost in wasted crops. The farms of the colonists had to be resold by the sheriff, and were bought in by Poles. To discourage the buying back of the German farms, a law was passed forbidding Poles to build upon land acquired by them after the date of the colonization society's failure. The Poles got around this law most cleverly. If one goes into Poznania to-day, he will see farmhouses, barns, dairies, stables—even chicken-coops—on wheels. The people live in glorified wagons. They do not build. Will there be a law now against owning wagons?
When the failure of private enterprise was demonstrated, the Prussian Government announced its intention of applying the law of expropriation "for the use of the commission of colonization." This was in October, 1912. At the beginning of 1913, the Polish deputies to the Reichstag brought before their colleagues of all Germany the question of the expropriation of Polish lands in Prussia. They asked the representatives of a supposedly advanced and constitutional nation what they thought of this injustice. Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg tried to keep the question from being debated. He argued with perfect reason that it was a purely internal Prussian matter, which the Imperial Parliament was incompetent to discuss. But the Catholic centre and the Socialist left combined to vote an order of the day allowing the discussion of the Polish lands question.
In the history of the German confederation, it was the first time that an imperial chancellor had received a direct defiance. This vote is mentioned here to show how Prussian dealings with the Poles, just as with Alsace-Lorraine, have tended to weaken the purely Prussian substructure of the German confederation, and to arouse a dangerous protest against Prussian hegemony. Contempt for the elementary principles of justice has been the key-note of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg's career. His mentality is typical of that of German bureaucracy—no, more than that, of German statesmanship. It is possible to have sympathy with German national aspirations, but not with the methods by which those aspirations are being interpreted to the world. To show how little regard he had for parliamentary opinion in the German confederation, the Chancellor forced through the Prussian Landtag, on April 22, 1913, only three months after his rebuke from the Reichstag, an infamous law, voting one hundred and twenty-five million marks for German colonization in Prussian Poland. Shortly before the European war broke out, another unconstitutional law was passed, which makes possible the arbitrary division of large landed properties owned by Poles.
THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT OF THE POLISH QUESTION
During the war with Japan, the Czar and the Kaiser understood each other perfectly on the Polish question. The neutrality of Germany was essential to Russia at that time. The Russians owe much to Germany for her benevolent attitude of those trying days. The Poles have since paid the bill.
As in Prussia, the Poles of Russia have seen their liberties menaced more than ever before during the past decade, and have had to struggle hopelessly against a policy of ruthless extermination. If on the one hand the Prussian persecution is more to be condemned because Germany asks the world to believe that she is an enlightened, constitutional nation, and "the torch-bearer of civilization," while Russia is admittedly reactionary and still half-barbarous, on the other hand there is less excuse for the Russian persecution of the Poles. For in Russia it is not Teuton against Slav, but Slav against Slav.
Germany and Russia have had the common interest of fellow-criminals in their relation to the Polish nation. Russia has not hesitated to co-operate with Germany through diplomatic and police channels in riveting more securely the fetters of the Poles. Her championship of the south Slavs against Teutonic aggression has been supposedly on the grounds of "burning love for our brothers in slavery, in whose veins runs the same blood as ours." The sham and hypocrisy of this attitude is revealed when we consider the fact that Russia has never protested to Germany against the treatment of the Poles of Poznania, nor shown any inclination to treat with equity her own Poles. Here are "brothers in slavery" nearer home. There is ground for suspicion that her interest in the south Slavs has been purely because they are on the way to Constantinople and the Mediterranean. One who reads the recent history of Russia stultifies himself if he allows himself to believe that Russia has entered into the present war to defend Servia from Austrian aggression through any love for or humanitarian interest in the Servians. If Russia gets the opportunity, will her treatment of Servian national aspirations be any different from that of Austria-Hungary? When we try to answer this question, let us think of Bulgaria after 1878 (the last "war of liberation") and of Poland in 1914.
On August 16, 1914, when I read the proclamation of Czar Nicholas to the partitioned Poles, promising to restore administrative autonomy to the kingdom of Poland, and posing as the liberator of Poles now under the yoke of Austria and of Prussia, it was hard to be enthusiastic. For the Jews of Odessa and Kief, and the Finns of Helsingfors, rise up to add their cry of warning to the bitter comments of Polish friends. Only two years ago I saw in those cities subjects of the Czar suffering cruelly from fanaticism and broken promises, and deprived of that which is now being held out as bait to the Poles, and as a sop to Russia's Allies.
Austria-Hungary has been able to use the Russian treatment of Poland as a means of strengthening her own hold on the border regions of the Empire. It was at the instigation of Ballplatz that the Galician deputies, on December 16, 1911, made a motion in the Reichsrath, inviting the Minister of Foreign Affairs "to undertake steps among the Powers who signed the conventions at Vienna in 1815 to assure the maintenance of the frontiers of the kingdom of Poland, of which Russia, in violation of her international obligations, was threatening the integrity. For the separation of Kholm from Poland is an attack upon Polish historic and national consciousness." It was tit for tat with the two Eastern Powers. Russia burned with indignation for the feelings of Servia when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary burned with indignation for the feelings of her own loyal Polish subjects, when Russia separated Kholm from Poland. Both had violated international treaties. Russia had no genuine interest in the Servians, and Austria none in the Poles. They merely seized upon weapons with which to attack each other.
It is a mystery how French and British public opinion, always so traditionally favourable to downtrodden races, and especially to the Poles, can hail the Russian entry into Lemberg as a "victory for civilization." To the Austrian Poles, the coming of the Cossacks is as the coming of the Uhlans to the Belgians. They look upon the Russian invasion of Galicia as a calamity to their national life. Fighting with the Austrians are thirty thousand young Poles who call themselves Sokols (falcons). Their organization is something like the German Turnverein, but more purely military. The Poles of Austria-Hungary are a unit against Russia.
One can make no such positive statement about the attitude of the Poles of the other two partitioners. They have little hope of any amelioration of their lot from a change of masters through the present war. As I write, the thunder of German cannon is heard at Warsaw, and the unhappy kingdom of Poland is the centre of conflict between Russia and Germany. The Poles are fighting on both sides, and Polish non-combatants are suffering from the brutality of both "liberating" armies. The situation is exactly expressed by a Polish proverb which is the fruit of centuries of bitter experience: Gdzie dwóch panów sie, bije, ch[l-tilde]op w skur[e-cedille], dostaje—"When two masters fight, the peasant receives the blows."
CHAPTER VII
ITALIA IRREDENTA
Irredentism grew inevitably out of the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, whose members were subjected to two influences in making a new map of Europe. The first consideration, so common and so necessary in all diplomatic arrangements, was that of expediency. The second consideration was to prevent the rise of liberalism and democracy. The decisions on the ground of the first consideration were made under the pressure and the play and the skill of give and take by the representatives of the nations who fondly believed that they were making a lasting peace for Europe. The decisions on the ground of the second consideration were guided by the idea that the checking of national aspirations was the best means of preventing the growth of democracy.
The decisions of Vienna, like the later modifications of Paris and Berlin, could not prevent the development of the national movements which have changed the map as it was rearranged after the collapse of the Napoleonic régime.
During the past hundred years, ten new states have appeared on the map of Europe: Greece, Belgium, Servia, Italy, the German Confederation, Rumania, Montenegro, Norway, Bulgaria, and—possibly—Albania. With the exception of Albania (and is this the reason why we have to qualify its viability by the word possibly?), all of these states have appeared upon the map against the will of, and in defiance of, the concert of the European Powers. They have all, again with the exception of Albania, been born through a rise of national consciousness preceded and inspired by a literary and educational revival. The goal has been democracy. None of them, in achieving independence, has succeeded in including within its frontiers all the territory occupied by people of the same race and the same language. Irredentism is the movement to secure the union with a nation of contiguous territories inhabited by the same race and speaking the same language. It is the call of the redeemed to the unredeemed, and of the unredeemed to the redeemed.
If we were to regard the present unrest in Europe and the antagonism of nations from the standpoint of nationalism, we could attribute the breaking out of contemporary wars to five causes: the desire of nations to get back what they have lost, illustrated by France in relationship to Alsace-Lorraine; the desire of nations to expand according to their legitimate racial aspirations, illustrated by the Balkan States in relationship to Turkey and Austria-Hungary, and Italy in relationship to Austria-Hungary; the desire of nations to expand commercially and politically because of possession of surplus population and energy, illustrated by Germany in her Weltpolitik; the desire of nations to prevent the commercial and political expansion of their rivals, illustrated by Great Britain and Russia; and the desire of nations to stamp out the rise of national movements which threaten their territorial integrity, illustrated by Austria-Hungary and Turkey.
The irredentism of the Balkan States led, first, to their war with Turkey; second, to their war with each other; and third, to Servia becoming the direct cause of the European war. The aspirations of none have been satisfied. Rumanian irredentism has stood between Rumania and the Triple Alliance. The irredentism of Italy has not yet led to anything, but it is so full of significance as a possible factor in bearing upon and changing the whole destinies of Europe during the winter of 1914-1915, that it cannot be overlooked in a study of contemporary national movements and wars.
The entrance of Italy into an alliance with the Teutonic Powers of Central Europe was believed by her statesmen to be an act of self-preservation.
The opposition of the French clerical party to the completion of the unification of Italy during the last decade of the Third Empire destroyed whatever gratitude the Italian people may have felt for the decisive aid rendered to the cause of Italian unity at Solferino. On the part of the moving spirits of Young Italy, indeed, this gratitude was not very great. For the first great step in the unification of Italy had been accompanied by a dismemberment of the territories from which the royal house of Piedmont took its name. Young Italy felt that the French had been paid for their help against Austria, and paid dearly. The cession of his birthplace, at the moment when the nation for which he had suffered so terribly and struggled so successfully came into being, hurt Garibaldi more than the French bullets lodged in his body eight years later at Mentana. When the French look to-day with joy upon Italian irredentism as the hopeless barrier between Italy and Austria-Hungary, they should not forget that, even though fifty years have passed, Italian irredentism includes also Savoy and Nice.
After the Franco-German War, there were two tendencies in the policy of the Third Republic to prevent an understanding between France and Italy. The first of these was the recurrence in France of the old bitter clericalism of the Empire. Italy feared that French soldiers might again come to Rome. The second was the antagonism of France to the budding colonial aspirations of Italy. When France occupied Tunis, Italy felt that she had been robbed of the realization of a dream, which was hers by right of history, geography, and necessity.
So Italy joined the Triple Alliance. It is argued with reason in France that the alliance of Teuton and Latin was unnatural. Since Italy had become wholly Guelph to realize its unity, why this sudden return to Ghibellinism? The alliance of Italy with Germany and Austria-Hungary, however, was not more paradoxical than the alliance of increasingly democratic and socialistic and anti-clerical France with mediæval Russia. The reasons dictating the alliance were practically the same.
But there was this difference. Italy entered into an alliance with a former enemy and oppressor, who was still holding certain unredeemed territories of the united Italy as it had existed in the minds of the enthusiasts of the middle of the nineteenth century.
Too many books have been written about the distribution of populations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to make necessary going into the details here of the Italian populations of the Austrian Tyrol and of the Austrian provinces at the north of the Adriatic Sea. The Tyrolese Italians are undoubtedly Italian in sympathies and characteristics. But is their union with Italy demanded by either internal Italian or external European political and economic considerations more than would be the union with Italy of the Italian cantons of the Swiss confederation?
Italian irredentism in regard to the Adriatic littoral is a far more serious and complicated problem. One is struck everywhere in the Adriatic, even as far south as Corfu, by the Italian character of the cities. Cattaro, Ragusa, Spalato, Zara, Fiume, Pola, and Trieste, all have an indefinable Italian atmosphere. It has never left them since the Middle Ages. It is in the buildings, however, rather than in the people. One hesitates to attribute even to the people of Fiume and Trieste Italian characteristics in the narrower sense of the word. On the Dalmatian coast, the Slavic element has won all the cities. In Fiume and Trieste, it is strong enough to rob these two cities of their distinctive Italian character. One's misgivings concerning the claims of Italian irredentists grow when he leaves the cities. There are undoubtedly several hundred thousands of Italians in this region. Italian is the language of commerce, and on the Austrian-Lloyd and Hungaro-Croatian steamship lines, Italian is the language of the crews. But the people who speak Italian are not Italians, in every other case you meet, nor do they resemble Italians. Why is this?
Nationality, in the twentieth century, has a mental and civic, rather than a physical and hereditary basis. We are the product of our education and of the political atmosphere in which we live. This is why assimilation is so strikingly easy in America, where we place the immigrant in touch with the public school, the newspaper, and the ballot. Just as the Italians and Germans and French of Switzerland are Swiss, despite their differences of language, so the Italians of the Adriatic littoral are the product of the dispensation under which they have lived. Unlike the Alsatians, they have never known political freedom and cultural advantages in common with their kin across a frontier forcibly raised to cut them off; unlike the Poles, they have not been compelled to revive the nationalism of an historic past as a means of getting rid of oppression; unlike the Slavs of the Balkans, their national spirit has not been called into being by the tyranny of a race alien in civilization and ideals, because alien in religion.
I have among my clippings from French newspapers during the past five years a legion of quotations from Vienna and Rome correspondents, concerning the friction between Austria-Hungary and Italy, and between the Italian-speaking population of Austria and the Viennese Government, over the question of distinct Italian nationality of Austro-Hungarian subjects. There have been frontier incidents; there have been demonstrations of Austrian societies visiting Italian cities and Italian societies visiting Trieste; there has been much discussion over the creation of an Italian Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna, and the establishment of an Italian University at Trieste or Vienna; and there have been occasional causes of friction between the Austrian Governor of Istria and the Italian residents of the province. But the general impression gained from a study of the incidents in question, and the effort to trace out their aftermath, leads to the conclusion that these irredentist incidents have been magnified in importance. A clever campaign of the French press has endeavoured to detach Italian public opinion from the Triple Alliance by publishing in detail, on every possible occasion, any incident that might show Austrian hostility to the Italian "nation."
In 1844, Cesare Balbo, in his Speranze d'Italia, a book that is as important to students of contemporary politics as to those of the Risorgimento, set forth clearly that the hope of Italy to the exclusion of Austria from Lombardy and Venetia was most reasonably based upon the extension of the Austrian Empire eastward through the approaching fall of the Ottoman Empire. Balbo was a man of great vision. He looked beyond the accidental factors in the making of a nation to the great and durable considerations of national existence. He grasped the fact that the insistence of the Teutonic race upon holding in subjection purely Italian territories, and its hostility to the unification of the Italian people, was based upon economic considerations. Lombardy and Venetia had been for a thousand years the pathway of German commerce to the Mediterranean. If Austria, Balbo argued, should fall heir to a portion of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, she would have her outlet to the Mediterranean more advantageously than through the possession of Lombardy and Venetia. Once these Ottoman territories were secured, Austria would be ready to cede Lombardy and Venetia to a future united Italy.
After the unity of Italy had been achieved, and Austria had been driven out of Lombardy and Venetia, she did receive compensation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, just as Balbo predicted, there was born the Austrian ambition to the succession of Macedonia. That this ambition has not been realized, and that Russia was determined to prevent the attempt to revive it, explains the Austro-Hungarian willingness to fight Russia in the summer of 1914.
Austria and Hungary, from the very beginning of existence as a Dual Monarchy, have been caught in the vise between Italian irredentism and Servian irredentism. They have not been able to secure their outlet through Macedonia to the Ægean Sea. They have been constantly threatened by their neighbours on the south-east and south-west with exclusion altogether from the Adriatic, their only outlet to the Mediterranean.
From the economic point of view, one cannot but have sympathy with the determination of the Austrians and Hungarians to prevent the disaster which would certainly come to them, if the aspirations of Italian and Servian irredentism were realized. The severity of Hungary against Croatia and the oppression of the Servians in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia by Austria have been dictated by the same reasons which led England and Scotland to attempt to destroy the national spirit of Ireland for so many centuries after they had robbed her of her independence. They could not afford to have their communications by sea threatened by the presence and growth of an independent nation, especially since this nation was believed to be susceptible to the influence of hereditary enemies.
It has been fortunate for Austria-Hungary that the claims of the irredentists at the head of the Adriatic have overlapped and come into conflict in almost the same way that the claims of Greece and Bulgaria have come into conflict in Macedonia. From time immemorial, the Italian and Greek peoples, owing to their position on peninsulas, have been seafaring. Consequently, it is they who have developed the commercial life of ports in the eastern Mediterranean. Everywhere along the littoral of the Ægean and the Adriatic, Greeks and Italians have founded and inhabited, up to the present day, the chief ports. But, by the same token, those engaged in commercial and maritime occupations have never been excellent farmers, shepherds, or woodsmen. So, while the Italians and Greeks have held the predominance in the cities of the littoral, the hinterland has been occupied by other races. Just as the hinterland of Macedonia is very largely Bulgarian, the hinterland of the upper end of the Adriatic is very largely Slavic. Just as the realization of the dreams of Hellenic irredentists would give Greece a narrow strip of coast line along European Turkey to Constantinople, with one or two of the larger inland commercial cities, while the Slavs would be cut off entirely from the sea, the realization of the dreams of Italian irredentists would give to Italy the ports and coast line of the northern end of the Adriatic, with no hinterland, and the Slavs, Hungarians, and Germans an enormous hinterland with no ports.
Italian irredentism, in so far as the Tyrol goes, is not unreasonable. But its realization in Istria and the Adriatic littoral is impracticable. Our modern idea of a state is of people living together in a political union that is to their economic advantage. Only the thoughtless enthusiasts could advocate a change in the map of Europe by which fifty million people would be cut off from the sea to satisfy the national aspirations of a few hundred thousand Italians.
The Italian Society Dante Alighieri has gotten into the hands of the irredentists, and, before the Tripolitan conquest, was successful in influencing members of Parliament to embarrass the Government by interpellations concerning the troubles of Italians who are Austrian subjects. This society has advocated for Italy the adoption of a law so modifying the legislation on naturalization that Italians who emigrate can preserve their nationality even if they acquire that of the countries to which they have gone. It was a curious anticipation of the famous Article XXV, of the German Citizenship Law of 1914. In 1911, a Lombard deputy tried to raise the old cry of alarm concerning German penetration into Italy, and emphasized the necessity of the return to the policy of the Ghibelline motto, "Fuori i Tedeschi"—"Expel the Germans."
Italian statesmen, however, have never given serious attention to the claims of the irredentists. The late Marquis di San Giuliano deplored their senseless and harmful manifestations. In trying for the impossible, and keeping up an agitation that tended to make friction between Italy and Austria-Hungary, he pointed out that they harmed what were the real and attainable Italian interests.
The antagonism between Italy and Austria-Hungary has had deeper and more logical and justifiable foundation than irredentism. The two nations have been apprehensive each about allowing the other to gain control of the Adriatic. Up to 1903, Spezzia was the naval base for the whole of Italy. Since that time, Tarento has become one of the first military ports, important fortifications have been placed at Brindisi, Bari, and Ancona, and an elaborate scheme has been drawn up for the defence of Venice. The Venetians have been demanding that Venice become a naval base.
Italian naval and maritime activity having increased in the Adriatic, there has naturally been more intense opposition and rivalry between the two Adriatic Powers over Albania. The spread of Austro-Hungarian influence has been bitterly fought by the Italian propaganda. This problem was becoming a serious one for the statesmen of the two nations while Albania was still under Turkish rule. Since, at the joint wish of Italy and Austria-Hungary, Albania has been brought into the family of European nations, the question of the equilibrium of the Adriatic has only become more unsettled. For free Albania turned out to be a fiasco.
If the relations between Austria-Hungary, fighting for life, and her passive ally of the Triple Alliance have become more strained since the European war began, let it be hoped for the future stability of Europe that it has not been because Italian irredentism has gained the upper hand at Rome. For if Italy were to intervene in the war for the purpose of taking away from Austria-Hungary the Adriatic littoral inhabited by Italians, she would be menacing her own future, and that of Switzerland as well. To entertain the hope of taking and keeping Trieste would be folly.