ter 1928 it is decreed
that no other language must be heard in the schoolroom. A decree of 1899
forbids teachers to use Polish even in their own family circles. Anyone
who is caught teaching Polish, even gratuitously, is punished by fine or
imprisonment. Polish literature found in the houses of private persons
is confiscated, and its possessors imprisoned, if the police consider it
to bear the least trace of any propagandist character.[*]

[Footnote *: "The Evolution of Modern Germany," by W. H. Dawson, brings
together in its twenty-third chapter most of the facts relating to this
question. See especially a letter from a prominent member of the Polish
aristocracy quoted on p. 475.]

All this, it will be seen, is merely the drastic execution tion of the
policy laid down by Treitschke, the prophet of modern Germany, and more
recently urged by the most popular living representative of Prussian
ideals, H. S. Chamberlain.

"There is," writes Chamberlain, "no task before us so important as
that of forcing the German language on the world (_die deutsche
Sprache der Welt aufzuzwingen_.)" The German has "a twofold duty"
laid on him: "never must a German abandon his own speech, neither he
nor his children's children; and in every place, at every time, he
must remember to compel others to use it until it has triumphed
everywhere as the German Army has done in war. ... So far as the
German Empire extends, the clergy must preach in German alone, in
German alone the teacher must give his lessons ... Mankind must be
made to understand that anyone who cannot speak German is a
pariah."[*]

[Footnote *: "Kriegsaufsaetze," 1914.]

Such are the ideals and such the practice of the people whom Roger
Casement and one or two other enthusiasts for Gaelic culture in Ireland
have sought to make the dominant power in that country, because it will
rid them of "English" rule.

Let us now see what "English" rule (it is not really English at all, but
the rule of the United Kingdom) is actually like in regard to this
particular subject. Up to the decade 1830-40 it may be said that the
Irish language was spoken by fully half the population of Ireland. No
restrictive measures were in force against it. But during that decade a
general system of elementary education was introduced, and in the Board
Schools the language withered away with astonishing rapidity. At the
last census (1911) only 16,000 persons w