Evening star., 1914-08-01
G|VESANALYS|S0F
EUROPEAN CRISIS
Prot. George A. Dorsey Tells of
Cause Behind Present
War,ike Conditions.
IMPENDING CONTEST NOT
BASED ON ACADEMIC LAWS
Austria Hungary and Servia Torn by
Thoughts of Pan-Germanism VS..
Pan-Slavism-0ther Peoples.

thoughts OF Pan-GermanlSm VS..
Pan-Slavism-Other Peoples.
CHICAGO, August 1-Prof. George A.
Dorsey, formerly Of the University of
Chicago and now curator Of ethnology at
the Field Museum, recently returned
from long sojourn in that part of Eu-
rope where war is now threatened. and
in a signed article in the Chicago Herald
gives his views of the cause which led up
to the present crisis between Austria
Hungary and Servia- He says:
AN orphan. mongrel cur, having for
the first time in 500 years got up enough
spunk to take his tail from between his
legs to wag it and feel growing pains
along comes great big dog and says:
Put that tail down-and gimme that
bone
I'VE see this sort o. thing nearly every
day.
Once upon time little old Servia was
an empire. and very nearly overcame the
Byzantine empire. which PROBABLY would
have changed the whole of european his
tory. There might have been no Turkey
IN Europe. That was in the fourteenth
century. under the mighty Dushan. Ser
via is now a poor. wretched little peas
ant kingdom. not half as big y Illinois
in size. with less people than tue city o.
.>ew York. And the house of Hapsburg
would wipe little Servia OFF the nap,
even though the process involves more
lives and money than any war Of any
time.
That is the life You or in the house
Of Hapsburg's shoes would do the same
thing. 1t is the law of existence. Ma
ture works today as in the stone age or
when saber-tooth tiger fought with mas
,odon.
why does Austria Hungary. the dual
monarchy, want poor peasant Serv:a :?
.asn't the dual monarchy, with its In
lernal babel Of confusion. enough trouble
already?
Suppose the dual monarchy does want
jervia. what is it to Russia? Sappos e
.tussia does object, what is it to Ger
many? Suppose Germany objects to Rus-
sIas objecting, what business 1t Is
rrance or England? Balance Of power
duman nature. Life.
II propose to analyze this whole stu
alton. And right here let us clearly
recognize the fact-two facts. The con
test now impending Is not based on
academic laws. To put it another way.
the desires which lead to action In east
ern Europe are not based on Christian
ethics or national procedure. but on GER
tain thoughts. Things are what we
think they are. and thinking depends
on the point Of view. Pan-Germanism
versus pan-Slavism. II we understand
this, we have travelled far. First let
me give an illuminating Illustration:
Germanism Is Pushed.
''In Prague. an important city Of Aus
tria. I was warned I would get along
much better in shops and otherwise ii
1 employed English first. OF course
I've Itch a.. tr
that city. but German is. We naturally
think of German as the language of
Austria, and proud as the ancient capi-
tai of Bohemia was once, to all intents
and purposes a German city. 1t now
tries to forget, and won't talk German
If it can possibly help it.
The term pan-Germanism stands for
a movement which seeks the common
welfare of the Germanic peoples of Eu-
rope at the expense Of pan-Slavism or
commonweal Of --iavs. Before we can
understand the significance Of these two
ton of the nationals or of the races.
as 1t is sometimes called. In fact, this is
not a question either OF nations or races.
but OF tongues
German is spoken by $4,000, 600 peo-
pie, of which 100000 are in Austria
and 100000 in Hungary. There are
40, 700, 900 Slavs in Europe. From this
it appears that the present political
boundaries are not coterminous with lin
guistic groups.
Great Diversity in Tongues.
Right here in this fact we have the
seeds of present and future troubles and
q clew to the causes of most Of the
wars IN eastern Europe through 1000
years. Russia is a veritable hodge
podge Of tongues. but of her Slav popu-
lation alone we have at least two dis
tinct elements today bitterly opposed to
the probability. of third. which will
seek recognition. AS against Russians
proper there are over 1O,OOOO00 Poles,
and Of the remaining Slavs there are
S.OOU.OO0 Ruthenians.
I'm Germany there are over 1900 600
Slavs. chiefly Polish. OF Austria's
3O,QOOO0O population only about a third
is German. the remainder being Slav, of
which there are 6,9O0.00o CZechs or Bo-
hemians, 100000 Poles, 3,5O0,OOO Ru-
Hungary is even more diversified
in tongue. The Magyar element co.
o.00O) Is equaled by the non Magyar,
1000, 900 Slovaks. 100000 Ruthenians.
100000 Serbo-Croat. all of the Slavic
tongue, and about 100000 Rou-
manians. who do not speak Slav at all
Many of Mixed Origin.
"The population Of Montenegro.
about half a million. are Slavs Of the
Servian branch. Roumanians are of
mixed origin, but the Roumanian
tongue is spoken by 12.000.000. of
which 5.50o.00o are in Roumania (92
per cent of its total population). The
remaining millions are found in the
dual monarchy, Servia, Bulgaria and
Russia.
Millions of people today speak
Polish whose ancestors few gener-
attons ago were not conscious of the
fact that they spoke any language at
all. Today there is a Slovene litera-
ture; fifty years ago no one even
thought of such a thing. The millions
of Bohemians had become almost en-
tirely Germans, and never before have
they been so thoroughly Slavic as to-
day.
been called a passion. 1t was not SO
very long ago that the language OF
the Hungarian parliament was Latin.
Magyar was held fit only for peasant
talk. Today the bitterness between
Magyar and Slav is as strong as be-
tween German and Pole.
"a few years ago there was no con-
seriousness in Galicia of linguistic dis
tinction between Poles and Ruthentans;
Ruthenian peasants were content to
remain serfs of Polish nobility. There
was no Ruthenian literature; Ruthen-
ian was not a polite language. Today
there are distinguished scholars VINO
seek to found a Ruthenian univer-