“We Germans lifted the Poles out of their semi-savagery. We brought them _Kultur_. Do not be deceived by what you see in Posen. It is a magnificent city, is it not?—finer, perhaps, than you Americans found Coblenz? Yet everything that gives it magnificence was built by the Germans—the well-paved streets, the big, wide boulevards, the splendid parks, all the government buildings and the best of the private ones, the street-cars, the electric lights, even the higher state of civilization you find among the masses. There is not a Pole in the province of Posen who cannot read and write. Do not make the mistake of thinking all these things are Polish because the Poles have stolen them. Before you leave, go and compare Posen with the Polish cities _outside_ Germany. That will tell the story. In non-German Poland you will be struck by the appalling lack of schools, roads, doctors, hospitals, education, culture, by the sad condition of the workmen and the peasants—all those things that are included in the German word _Kultur_. In Galizia, where Austria virtually allowed the Poles to run themselves, the houses are only six feet high, and you could walk all day without finding a man who can read and write, or who can even speak German. Their cities are sunk in a degradation of the Middle Ages. Posen will fall into the same state, if the present Municipal Council continues in power. There are already frontier troubles between German and Russian Poland, and quarrels between the different sections that confirm what we Germans have always known—that the Poles cannot govern themselves. Warsaw does not wish to keep up our splendid system of workmen and old-age insurance because there is none in Russian Poland. Galizia complains that farm land is several times higher in price in the province of Posen, without admitting that it is German railroads and German settlers that have made it so. That advantage will soon disappear. The Poles will make a mess of the whole province and will have it sunk into the degradation in which we found it by the time a real ruling nation takes charge of it again.”