POLITICS AND RACES
In Prague, the capital of Bohemia, I came in contact for the first time
with the advance guard, if I may use the expression, of a new race, the
Slavs. I say a new race, because although the Slavic peoples claim an
antiquity as great as that of any other race in Europe, the masses of
the race seem just now emerging from a condition of life more primitive
than that of almost any other people in Europe.
Many little things, not only what I saw with my own eyes, but what I
heard from others, gave me the impression, as I travelled southward,
that I was entering into a country where the masses of the people lived
a simpler and more primitive existence than any I had seen elsewhere in
Europe. I remember, for one thing, that I was one day startled to see,
in the neighbourhood of the mining regions of Bohemia, a half-dozen
women engaged in loading a coal barge--shovelling the coal into
wheelbarrows and wheeling them along a narrow plank from the coal wharf
to the ship alongside.
I was impressed, again, by the fact that several of the peoples
of the Austrian Empire--the Moravians and Ruthenians are an
illustration--still preserve their old tribal names. Certain other of
these peoples still keep not only the tribal names, but many of the old
tribal customs. Among most of the Slavic peoples, for example, custom
still gives to the marriage ceremony the character of barter and sale.
In fact, I found that in one of the large provincial towns in eastern
Hungary the old "matrimonial fairs" are still kept up. On a certain
day in each year hundreds of marriageable young women are brought down
to this fair by their parents, where they may be seen seated on their
trunks and surrounded by the cattle they expect to have for a dowry.
Naturally young men come from all the surrounding country to attend
this fair, and usually a lawyer sits out under a tree nearby prepared
to draw up the marriage contract. In some cases as many as forty
marriages are arranged in this way in a single day.
Divided into petty kingdoms or provinces, each speaking a separate
language, living for the most part in the country districts, and held
in some sort of political and economic subjection, sometimes by the
descendants of foreign conquerors, and sometimes, as in the case of
the Poles, by the nobility of their own race, the masses of the Slavic
peoples in southern Europe have lived for centuries out of touch with
the life of cities, and to a large extent out of touch with the world.
Compared, therefore, with the peoples of western Europe, who are living
in the centres of modern life and progress, the Slavic peoples are just
now on the horizon.
In the course of my travels through Austria and Hungary I think I met,
at one time or another, representatives of nearly every branch of the
Slavic race in the empire. In Bohemia I became acquainted, as I have
said, with the most progressive portion of the race, the Czechs. In
Galicia I saw something of the life of the Polish people, both in the
towns and in the country districts. Again, in Budapest and Vienna
I learned something of the condition of the labouring and peasant
classes, among whom the Slavic peoples are usually in the majority. At
Fiume, the port of Hungary, from which forty thousand emigrants sail
every year for the United States, I met and talked with Dalmatians,
Croatians, Slovenes, Ruthenians, and Serbs--representatives, in fact,
of almost every race in Hungary. In the plains of central Hungary, and
again in eastern Prussia, I saw gangs of wandering labourers, made up
of men and women who come to this part of the country from the Slavic
countries farther south and east to take part in the harvest on the
great estates.
During this time I became acquainted to some extent also with
representatives of almost every type of civilization, high and low,
among the peoples of southern Europe, from the Dalmatian herdsmen, who
lead a rude and semi-barbarous existence on the high, barren mountains
along the coast of the Adriatic, to the thrifty and energetic artisans
of Bohemia and the talented Polish nobility, who are said to be among
the most intellectual people in Europe.
I did not, among these classes I have mentioned, see the most primitive
people of the Slavic race, nor the type of the man of that race
farthest down. In fact, I have heard that in the mountain regions of
southern Galicia there are people who make their homes in holes in the
ground or herd together in little huts built of mud. I did not see,
either, as I should like to have seen, the life of those Slavic people
in southwestern Hungary who still hold their lands in common and live
together in patriarchal communities, several families beneath one
roof, under the rule of a "house father" and a "house mother," who are
elected annually to govern the community.
What little I did see of the life of the different branches of the race
gave me the impression, however, of a people of great possibilities,
who, coming late into the possession of modern ideas and modern
methods, were everywhere advancing, in some places rapidly and in
others more slowly, but always making progress.
One thing that has hindered the advancement of the Slavs has been
the difference in the languages spoken by the different branches of
the race. So great an obstacle is this difference of language that
some years ago, when a congress of all the Slavic peoples was held at
Prague, the representatives of the different branches of the race,
having no common tongue, were compelled to speak to each other in the
one language that they all professed to hate--namely, German.
Another thing that has hindered the progress of the Slavs has been
the inherited jealousies and the memories they cherish of ancient
injuries they have inflicted on one another in times past. In general,
it seems to be true of the races of Austria-Hungary that each race or
branch of the race hates and despises every other, and this hatred is
the more bitter the more closely they are associated. For example,
there is a long-standing feud between the Polish peasants and the
Polish nobility. This division is so great that the Polish peasants
have frequently sided against the Polish nobility in the contests
of the latter with the central government of Austria. However, this
sentiment of caste which separates the two classes of the Polish people
is nothing compared with the contempt with which every Pole, whether
he be peasant or noble, is said to feel for every Ruthenian, a people
with whom the Pole is very closely related by blood, and with whom he
has long been in close political association. On the other hand, the
Ruthenian in Galicia looks upon the Pole just as the Czech in Bohemia
looks upon his German neighbour: as his bitterest enemy. The two
peoples refuse to intermingle socially; they rarely intermarry; in many
cases they maintain separate schools, and are represented separately in
the Imperial Parliament, each race electing its own representatives.
But all are united in hating and despising the Jew, who, although he
claims for himself no separate part of the empire, and has no language
to distinguish himself from the other races about him, still clings as
tenaciously as any other portion of the population to his own racial
traditions and customs.
The Slavic peoples, otherwise divided by language and tradition, are
also divided by religion. People speaking the same language, and
sharing in other respects the same traditions, are frequently just
as widely separated by differences of religion as they could be by
differences of race. For example, among the southern Slavs the majority
of the Slovenes and the Croatians are Roman Catholics, others are
Protestants. On the other hand, the majority of the Serbs, their close
neighbours, are members of the Greek Orthodox Church, while others
are Mohammedans. So wide is the division between the Roman Catholic
and the Orthodox Slavs that in some cases members of the Eastern and
Western branches of the Church belonging to the same nationality wear
a different costume in order to emphasize the differences of religion
that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked.
In Galicia there are not only the Roman and Orthodox branches of the
Church, but there are also three or four other minor branches. One
of these, the Uniates, which is a compromise between the two and is
intended to be a sort of link between the Eastern and Western churches,
is now, it is said, just as distinct from both as any of the other
branches of the Church. In this region, which has been the battleground
of all the religions in Europe, religious distinctions play a much
more important rôle than they do elsewhere, because the masses of the
people have not yet forgotten the bitterness and the harshness of the
early struggles of the sects. The result is that religious differences
seem to have intensified rather than to have softened the racial
animosities.
In spite of the divisions and rivalries which exist, there seems to
be growing up, under the influence of the struggle against the other
and dominant races in the Empire, and as a result of the political
agitations to which this struggle has given rise, a sense of common
purpose and interest in the different branches of the Slavic race; a
sort of racial consciousness, as it is sometimes called, which seems to
be one of the conditions without which a race that is down is not able
to get the ambition and the courage to rise.
It is the presence of this great Slav race in western Europe, groping
its way forward under the conditions and difficulties which I have
described, that constitutes, as well as I am able to define it, the
race problem of southern Europe.
In many respects the situation of the Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and in southern Europe generally is more like that of the
Negroes in the Southern States than is true of any other class or
race in Europe. For one thing, the vast majority of that race are,
like the Negroes, an agricultural people. For centuries they have
lived and worked on the soil, where they have been the servants of the
great landowners, looked down upon by the educated and higher classes
as "an inferior race." Although they were not distinguished from the
dominant classes, as the Negro was, by the colour of their skin, they
were distinguished by the language they spoke, and this difference
in language seems to have been, as far as mutual understanding and
sympathy are concerned, a greater bar than the fact of colour has been
in the case of the white man and the black man in the South.
Up to a comparatively few years ago an educated Slav did not ordinarily
speak, at least in public, the language of the masses of the people.
Doctor Clarke, the head of the Austrian Mission of the American Board
in Prague, told me that as recently as thirty years ago an educated
Czech did not care to speak his own language on the streets of Prague.
At that time the German language was still the language of the educated
classes, and all the learning of Europe was, to a very large extent, a
closed book to the people who did not speak and read that language.
To-day conditions have so changed, Doctor Clarke tells me, that the
people in certain quarters of Prague scowl at any one who speaks German
on the street.
"When we go to visit an official of the Government," said Doctor
Clarke, "we usually inquire, first of all, which language this
particular official prefers to speak, German or Czech. It is wise to do
this because most of the officials, particularly if they represent the
central government of Vienna, speak German; but a Czech who is loyal to
his race will not speak the hated German unless he has to do so."
Doctor Clarke told me, as illustrating the fanaticism of the Bohemian
people in this matter of language, that his little girls, who had been
educated in German schools and preferred to speak that language among
themselves, had more than once been hooted at, and even stoned, by
young Bohemians in the part of the town where he lives, because they
spoke a language which the masses of the people had been brought up to
hate.
Another way in which the situation of the Slavic people resembles, to
a certain extent, that of the masses of the Negroes in the Southern
States, is in the matter of their political relations to the dominant
races. Both in Austria and in Hungary all the races are supposed to
have the same political privileges, and, in the case of Austria at
least, the Government seems to have made a real effort to secure equal
rights to all. Here, again, racial and traditional prejudices, as well
as the wide differences in wealth and culture of the different peoples,
have kept the political power in Austria proper in the hands of the
Germans, and in Hungary in the hands of the Magyars.
What makes the situation more difficult for the dominant races in
these two countries is the fact that the so-called inferior peoples
are increasing more rapidly than the other races in numbers, and the
Germans and Magyars are every year becoming a smaller minority in the
midst of the populations which they are attempting to control. The
result has been that the empire seems to the one who looks on from the
outside a seething mass of discontent, with nothing but the fear of
being swallowed up by some of their more powerful neighbours to hold
the nationalities together.
There is one respect in which the situation of the Negro in America
is entirely different from the various nationalities of Austria and
Hungary. The Negro is not compelled to get his education through the
medium of a language that is foreign to the other people by whom he
is surrounded. The black man in the South speaks the same tongue and
professes the same religion as the white people. He is not seeking to
set up any separate nationality for himself nor to create any interest
for himself which is separate from or antagonistic to the interest of
the other people of the United States. The Negro is not seeking to
dominate politically, at the expense of the white population, any part
of the country which he inhabits. Although he has suffered wrongs and
injustices, he has not become embittered or fanatical. Competition with
the white race about him has given the Negro an ambition to succeed and
made him feel pride in the successes he has already achieved; but he
is just as proud to be an American citizen as he is to be a Negro. He
cherishes no ambitions that are opposed to the interests of the white
people, but is anxious to prove himself a help rather than a hindrance
to the success and prosperity of the other race.
I doubt whether there are many people in our Southern States who have
considered how much more difficult the situation in the Southern
States would be if the masses of the black people spoke a language
different from the white people around them, and particularly if, at
the same time, they cherished political and social ambitions that were
antagonistic to the interests of the white man.
On the other hand, I doubt whether the Negro people realize the
advantage which they have in speaking one of the great world languages,
the language, in fact, that is more largely used than any other by the
people who are most advanced in science, in the arts, and in all that
makes the world better. English is not only a great world language,
it is the language of a people and a race among whom the highest are
neither afraid nor ashamed to reach down and lift up the lowest, and
help them in their efforts to reach a higher and a better life.
In the south of Europe conditions are quite different. The languages
spoken there, so far from helping to bring people together, are the
very means by which the peoples are kept apart. Furthermore, the masses
of the people of Austria speak languages which, until a hundred years
ago, had almost no written literature. Up to the beginning of the last
century the educated people of Hungary spoke and wrote in Latin, and
down to the middle of the century Latin was still the language of the
Court. Until 1848 there were almost no schools in the Czech language in
Bohemia. Up to that time there were almost no newspapers, magazines, or
books printed in the language spoken by the masses of the people.
It has been said that the written or literary languages of the Slavic
people have been, with one or two exceptions, almost created during the
past hundred years. In fact, some of the Slavs, although they have a
rich oral literature, still have, I have been told, no written language
of their own.
A great change has been brought about in this respect in recent
years. At the present time, of the 5,000 periodicals printed in
Austria-Hungary, about 2,000 are printed in German, 938 in Magyar,
582 in Czech, and the remaining 1,480 are in some five or six other
languages. The Magyar language is now taught in all the schools of
Hungary, whether some other language is taught at the same time or not.
Outside of Hungary, in Austria proper, there are some 8,000 exclusively
German schools, 5,578 Czech, and 6,632 schools in which are taught
other Slav dialects, not to speak of the 645 schools in which Italian
is taught, the 162 schools in which Roumanian is taught, and the 5 in
which Magyar is taught.
To an outsider it seems as if the purpose of these schools must be to
perpetuate the existing confusion and racial animosities in the empire.
On the other side, it must be remembered that it has been an enormous
advantage to the masses of the people to be able to read the language
which they habitually speak. In fact, the multiplication of these
different written languages, and of schools in which they are taught,
seems to have been the only way of opening to the masses of the people
the learning which had been before that time locked up in languages
which they sometimes learned to read but rarely spoke.
As I have considered the complications and difficulties, both political
and economic, which not merely Austria but Europe has to face as a
consequence of the different languages spoken by the different races, I
have asked myself what would probably happen in our Southern States if,
as some people have suggested, large numbers of these foreign peoples
were induced to settle there. I greatly fear that if these people
should come in large numbers and settle in colonies outside of the
cities, where they would have comparatively few educational advantages
and where they would be better able and more disposed to preserve their
native customs and languages, we might have a racial problem in the
South more difficult and more dangerous than that which is caused by
the presence of the Negro. Whatever else one may say of the Negro, he
is, in everything except his colour, more like the Southern white man,
more willing and able to absorb the ideas and the culture of the white
man and adapt himself to existing conditions, than is true of any race
which is now coming into this country.
Perhaps my attempt to compare racial conditions in southern Europe
with racial conditions in the southern United States will seem to some
persons a trifle strange and out of place because in the one case the
races concerned are both white, while in the other case one is white
and one is black. Nevertheless, I am convinced that a careful study of
conditions as they exist in southern Europe will throw a great deal of
light upon the situation of the races in our Southern States. More than
that, strange and irrational as racial conflicts often seem, whether
in Europe or in America, I suspect that at bottom they are merely the
efforts of groups of people to readjust their relations under changing
conditions. In short, they grow out of the efforts of the people who
are at the bottom to lift themselves to a higher stage of existence.
If that be so, it seems to me there need be no fear, under a free
government, where every man is given opportunity to get an education,
where every man is encouraged to develop in himself and bring to
the service of the community the best that is in him, that racial
difficulties should not finally be adjusted, and white man and black
man live, each helping rather than hindering the other.