Yet Slavic and East European studies are not in the same position as they were in past decades in Germany, France and the British Isles. There, they were definitely intellectual disciplines which might find practical use in certain governmental and educational posts but which were of interest only to a small number of specialists. In those countries there were learned professors of Slavic. This is especially true of Germany and France where relatively large groups of outstanding Slavs, chiefly of the educated, professional and political classes, were able to influence higher level thought in those countries. Few ordinary Slavs appeared in either country. Those who did were mostly migratory workers who did not take root in their new environment, and exercised little influence. That is not true in the United States. There were before World War I a small number of outstanding representatives of the Slavic nations, free or not. But the United States was also brought face to face with the immigration of millions of Slavic workmen and peasants. These brought little material or consciously intellectual baggage to the country but took root here and, under the leadership which they developed in the United States, have played a steadily increasing role in American life. They and their descendants of the second and third generations are not a negligible force. Their children and grandchildren may have lost a certain facility in the use of their mother tongues but they have retained qualities, knowledge and traditions which are vital to the United States today and which cannot fail to have a far-reaching effect upon the entire world in the future. We cannot then speak of Slavic studies merely in the narrow sense of the word. We must take into account these other factors which are rapidly becoming tangible elements in all of American life. In this sense we must consider Slavic and East European studies to include those means other than political propaganda which have led to the present American knowledge of the Slavic world, a knowledge with some striking insights and some equally amazing gaps. The present survey is an attempt to handle all aspects of the growing awareness of the Slavs by the American people and the American educational system. Yet we can hardly do this without a brief survey of the way in which the Slavs appeared on the American scene and the methods by which they have come to assume their present position. The complete history of this has never been written though we do have a fair outline of the various stages of the movement. CHAPTER 1 THE SLAVS IN AMERICA