Germany and the Germans from an American Point of ViewCollier, Price
History
Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View
Collier, Price
Germany; National characteristics, German
From 1886 to 1910 the Ansiedlungskommission or committee of
colonization, have spent $170,896,325, and have received $51,863,175,
leaving a net expenditure of $119,033,150. This large expenditure has
resulted in the settlement upon the land of 18,507 families, or about
111,000 persons. The total number settled is now 131,000 persons. Each
male adult German settler has cost the state something over $32,000!
This is probably the most extravagant colonization scheme ever
attempted in the world.
But even this expenditure has not brought success, and for a very
interesting reason. Again the Germans have been remarkably successful
in their dealings with the inanimate, but the Arcana imperii are still
hidden from them. They have redeemed the land, taught the Poles, as
well as the German settlers, how to farm successfully; largely
increased the output of grain, fruit, pigs, calves, chickens, geese,
and eggs, for which Germany spends several hundred millions a year
abroad; and seen to it that the breed of cows, pigs, horses, chickens,
and geese is kept at a high standard. But now the Poles will sell no
more land. They have profited, not been ruined, by what has come out
of the belly of the Trojan horse! The commission is at a standstill,
and it is now proposed to enforce the Prussian law of 1908 for the
expropriation of Polish estates. This law was overwhelmingly defeated
in the Reichstag in February, 1913, but the Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg
declared that it was an affair of Prussia, with which the
Reichstag has nothing to do, and the sand-paper of the Prussian
bureaucracy will probably be rubbed upon the Polish wound anew.
This attempt to build a line of moral and intellectual forts,
supplemented by German settlers, on the land between Russia and
Prussia, and to stop the inrush of the Slavic population, has ample
excuse behind it. It is undoubtedly in case of war a serious danger to
Germany to leave herself unguarded there. As to what will come of the
social and racial questions, prophecy alone can answer, and I have far
too much imagination to venture upon prophecy. The care and
thoroughness with which the work is done is beyond all praise, but it
is as difficult to make your brother love you by taking thought
thereon, as it is to add a cubit to one's stature by the same method.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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