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.