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It is no mere accident that Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey should be ranged on the same side in the great European struggle; for they represent, each in its own way, those false conceptions of nationality which have so long envenomed the public life of Europe, and which, for want of better words, have been described as Germanisation, Magyarisation, and Turkification.

Here we see the strange stern, medieval, crusading atmosphere which lies behind the unpleasant combinations, so familiar to us to-day in France and Belgium, of Uhlans and religion, of culture and violence, of "Germanisation" and devastation.

The Billung line of Saxon dukes had become extinct in 1106, and Henry V had given the ducal name to Lothair, who succeeded him as Emperor, and who as Duke aimed at building up a strong dominion in north-eastern Germany. As Emperor he took up the civilising role of Otto the Great and encouraged the Germanisation of the Slavs.

After a time, however, the Austrian Government practically abdicated in favour of the Prussians and now undertake to carry out the measures of Germanisation dictated by Berlin.

The most that can be said is that the bureaucratic machine had become more firmly fixed in the groove which it was henceforth to occupy. The failure of Joseph II. was above all due to his inability to recognise the meaning of Nationality, to his attempt to apply Germanisation as the one infallible remedy for all internal difficulties in his dominions.

"The Czech nation made an alliance with Hungary and the Austrian Germans by a free election of a Habsburg to the throne of the kingdom of Bohemia in 1526; but the dynasty created through a systematic centralisation and germanisation a unitary absolutist state, thus violating their treaty guaranteeing the independence of the Bohemian State within and without.

True it is that the Zionist movement will offer, even as it has offered in the past, a strenuous opposition to Germanisation, but it would be crediting it with an inconceivable vitality to imagine that it will be able to resist the blandishments that Germany is certainly prepared to shower on it.

Yet it turned out to be a conspiracy no doubt inspired and suggested by Potsdam of a peculiarly devilish character. It was on that fateful day that the "Germanisation" of Russia became complete. Thanks to the traitorous assurances of Soukhomlinoff, Minister of War, Russia, alas! found herself suddenly plunged into hostilities. Petrograd, of course, went wild with excitement.

It is not merely that, though Scott had a great liking for and much proficiency in 'eights, that metre is never so effective for ballad purposes as eights and sixes; nor that, as Lockhart admits, Glenfinlas exhibits a Germanisation which is at the same time an adulteration; nor even that, well as Scott knew the Perthshire Highlands, they could not appeal to him with the same subtle intimacy of touch as that possessed by the ruined tower where, as a half-paralysed infant, he had been herded with the lambs.

There were a great many reasons given, but I think they were all various inferences from one reason; indirect results and sometimes quite illogical results, of what we have called the Germanisation of England. First, the very insularity on which we insisted was barbaric, in its refusal of a seat in the central senate of the nations.