In recent years a keen struggle for predominance between Flemings and Walloons has been observed in every province of the country. Each element aspires to impose its racial traits, customs and ideals on its rival. The contest sometimes degenerates into extreme bitterness. The university, the street, the theater, even the government offices are converted into scenes of polemical wrangling. News items in the dailies reveal a constant state of tension between “Flammigants” and “Fransquillons.” In this racial struggle, language has been adopted as the rallying standard of both parties. Each faction consistently aims to eliminate the study of the rival tongue in the primary schools of its territory. The Walloons now represent a true blend of northern, central and southern European types. The mingling was attended by the clash and contest which has always marked racial fusion. As a language Walloon forced itself into existence out of the confusion which followed a long bilingual period and by the sheer obstinacy of an humble Belgo-Roman people whose ears had been attuned to vernacular speech at church and school. It was no mean feat for the inhabitants of the principality of Liége to have retained their language, surrounded as they were by Germanic peoples on all sides but one. The ancient state had the shape of a triangle whose base abutted against a land of French speech. Its sides, however, on the north and the east penetrated like a wedge into districts of Flemish and German. The language became prevalent in the principality of Wallonia after the tenth century. It was then still in a state of infancy and the literature of its early period is relatively poor.[18] Contrasted with official and aristocratic French the Walloon was a dialect of little account prior to the eighteenth century. Since that time, however, genuine interest has been manifested in its folk-tales and literature by educated Frenchmen. But it remained for Dutch presumption to give a final impetus to the revival of Walloon. By the terms of the treaty of Vienna, Belgium and Holland had been assembled into a single state known as the Netherlands. The Dutch represented the dominant element in the union. Their endeavor to impose their language on the Flemings and Walloons was vigorously resisted by the latter. The streets of Belgian towns resounded with the hatred of the Dutch expressed in Walloon words.[19] The separation of Belgium from Holland in 1830 was in a sense the expression of the linguistic diversity which had characterized the kingdom of the Netherlands.