90 
FIFTEENTH REPORT. 
there are the strongest influences against it socialism thrives best, while 
in America it is relatively unnecessary as our democracy is fairly free, 
but iu those same countries nationalism is strongest. To make this 
more clear I shall give several further illustrations. 
Poland was never particularly conspicuous in art literature or govern- 
ment, but something over a hundred years ago it was an independent 
country. Now Germany, Austria and Russia have divided it up and with 
absolute ignorance of sociological principles are trying to absorb it, 
but if there was ever a case of imperial indigestion, Poland is causing 
three chronic attacks. Bismark’s policy of forbidding the Polish lan- 
guage, and forcing German in its place, and Russia's similar policy 
with Russian has made the preservation of the language a religion, and 
martyrdom for it a glorification. At the present time undoubtedly 
Poland has the hardest attack of nationalism, unless it be Ireland, but 
its revolutionary work lias been closely connected with socialism. Social- 
ist papers are smuggled from Cracow to Warsaw daily. The strong 
hold of the catholic church upon the Poles makes it hard for socialism 
to make much headway, but while the Poles think that their love of 
the church is piety, they are really good catholics because their real 
religion is Poland, and Catholicism is a Polish protest against Russia. 
It has seemed to me, when walking with a Pole that after passing a 
Russian church he would increase his zeal in crossing himself when we 
passed a catholic church. Every sign of Russia says, "be a devout 
catholic.” As I shall try to make clear later, any particular religious 
form is never so strong as the spirit of nationalism, of which it may 
often be merely a symbol. One may safely say of the Pole that his 
backward look becomes more intense every day, and psychologically if 
not temporally the day of ultimate socialism is farther off the nearer 
we approach it. 
In the midst of Poland is the Lithuanian movement. Several cen- 
t.uries ago a prince and princess of the two countries married each other 
and the government became one, with the culture Polish. There was 
no Lithuanian literature of education. The language was preserved by 
the peasants as was Ihe case among the Finns and Hungarians. Poles 
and Germans were the landholders and Ihe Lithuanians almost alto- 
gether the laborers or serfs. Within the last decade the Lithuanian 
consciousness has burst into a conflagration. A man fully Polish in 
interests and culture possessing a little Lithuanian blood becomes en- 
tirely Lithuanian in spirit learning the language from the peasants, 
and chooses them for associates rather than the cultured Pole with 
whom he was identified ten years ago. After Ihe revolution of 1905 
the privilege was granted to the students in the gymnasia to adopt 
Russian, Polish or Lithuanian for religious instruction, whereas pre- 
viously only Russian was allowed. In a gymnasium in Vilna where 
there had been thirty in a class who spoke Polish only three chose 
Lithuanian. Now out of the same number at least twenty will take 
Lithuanian, and that increase about indicates the growth of the move- 
ment among the people. I have had two Lithuanian students who speak 
Polish as a mother tongue, and Lithuanian with relative difficulty. One 
is half Polish in blood, and has learned to read Lithuanian since com- 
ing to America three years ago, though he is a graduate of the gym- 
nasium. In 1905 he chose Polish as his language, but his fourteen year 
