there, were not assured that
robbery, murder, and license would follow on the heels of our
departure; and that instead of doing a magnanimous thing we should be
shirking our responsibilities in the most cowardly fashion. It is bad
enough to know, that we have such cynical political sophists in
Congress, that they would even suffer that catastrophe to innocent
people in the Philippines, if they thought it would make them votes at
home.

Prussia does not recognize such methods of ruling. Corporalism is
their only way, and, where the people are fit to govern themselves, a
very bad and humiliating way, for the Eden of the bureaucrat is the
hell of the governed. If the Germans approve it for themselves, it is
not our business to comment; but where these methods are applied to
foreign peoples, we both anticipate and applaud their failure.

The insurrections in Russian and Austrian Poland, had their echoes in
Posen, and since 1849 Prussia has tried in every way to substitute
Germans for Poles, in the country, and to make the German language
predominant in the churches, schools, and in the administration. The
Poles have resisted, emphasizing their resistance in 1867, when they
were included in the North German Federation, and again in 1871, when
they were included in the new German Empire.

The Emperor William I, in 1886, said: "The increasing predominance of
the Polish over the German element in certain provinces of the east
makes it a duty of the government to guarantee the existence and the
development of the German population." Since 1871 the Poles have
increased so much faster than the Germans that there is danger of
complete extermination of the German population. In 1902 the grandson
of William I, the present Emperor, said at Marienburg: "Polish
arrogance is unbearable, and I am obliged to appeal to my people to
defend themselves against it, for the preservation of their national
well-being. It is a question of the defence of the civilization and
the culture of Germany. To-day and to-morrow, as in the past, we must
fight against the common enemy." This speech of the Emperor was made
at Marienburg, a fine old town, once very prosperous, and in the days
of the Wars of the Roses playing a conspicuous part with the other
Hanseatic towns. This town was also the head and seat of the Teutonic
Order, and it was this Teutonic Order which, in 1230, began the work
of converting the then heathen Prussians, along lines not unlike