Ireland and Poland: A Comparison

In this as in other respects a comparison with the theory and practice of German administration may help to place the policy of the United Kingdom in its proper light. When at the Congress of Vienna, 1815, Prussia definitely acquired her present share of Polish territory, King Friedrich Wilhelm III promised for himself and his successors, "on my kingly word," that the Poles should have religious freedom, the use of the Polish language in administration, in the Law Courts and in the schools, and be in all respects on an equality with their German fellow-citizens. We have already seen how these promises were kept in regard to the vital question of the ownership of land. They have been no less flagrantly broken in regard to the national language. The use of Polish is strictly prohibited at all public meetings. No Polish deputy to the Reichstag may address his constituents in the only language they understand. Since 1873 German alone may be taught in the national schools. The language of instruction must be German wherever half the pupils are capable of understanding it, and after 1928 it is decreed that no other language must be heard in the schoolroom. A decree of 1899 forbids teachers to use Polish even in their own family circles. Anyone who is caught teaching Polish, even gratuitously, is punished by fine or imprisonment. Polish literature found in the houses of private persons is confiscated, and its possessors imprisoned, if the police consider it to bear the least trace of any propagandist character.[*]

[Footnote *: "The Evolution of Modern Germany," by W. H. Dawson, brings together in its twenty-third chapter most of the facts relating to this question. See especially a letter from a prominent member of the Polish aristocracy quoted on p. 475.]