TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of each chapter.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book.]

THE FRONTIERS OF
LANGUAGE AND NATIONALITY
IN EUROPE

BY

LEON DOMINIAN

PUBLISHED FOR

THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1917

Copyright, 1917,
BY
THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.

To my Alma Mater
Robert College of Constantinople

PREFACE

This book is submitted as a study in applied geography. Its preparation grew out of a desire to trace the connection existing between linguistic areas in Europe and the subdivision of the continent into nations. The endeavor has been made to show that language exerts a strong formative influence on nationality because words express thoughts and ideals. But underlying the currents of national feeling, or of speech, is found the persistent action of the land, or geography, which like the recurrent motif of an operatic composition prevails from beginning to end of the orchestration and endows it with unity of theme. Upon these foundations, linguistic frontiers deserve recognition as the symbol of the divide between distinct sets of economic and social conditions.

The attention bestowed on the Turkish area has been determined by the bearing of the Turkish situation on European international affairs and in the earnest belief that the application of geographical knowledge could provide an acceptable settlement of the Eastern Question. Never has it been realized better than at the present time that an ill-adjusted boundary is a hatching-oven for war. A scientific boundary, on the other hand, prepares the way for permanent goodwill between peoples.

My effort has been directed to confine the work to a presentation of facts, as I have felt that the solution of the boundary problems involved could not be reached satisfactorily by individual opinion. Should these pages afford a working basis, or prove suggestive, in the settlement of European boundary conflicts, I shall feel compensated for the time and labor bestowed on the collection of the material herein contained.

My thanks are due to the American Geographical Society for the liberal spirit displayed in promoting my efforts and particularly for the colored maps which illustrate the text. I am under special obligations to Councilor Madison Grant of the Society for new views and a better insight into the significance of race in European history. To Dr. Isaiah Bowman, Director of the Society, the extent of my debt would be difficult to estimate, as his interest in my work has been unfailing in spite of the pressure of his many duties. I owe him many alterations and suggestions which have greatly improved the text. Neither can I allow the volume to go to press without thanking the American Oriental Society and the Geographical Society of Philadelphia for the reproduction of portions of my articles printed in their publications. Acknowledgment of important criticism on two articles forming the nucleus of the present volume and published in Vol. 47 of the Bulletin of The American Geographical Society is also due to Professors Palmer, Le Compte and Seymour of Yale as well as to Professors Gottheil and Jordan of Columbia. Many friends, whose work has helped mine, I have never seen. To them also I extend thanks.

Leon Dominian.

The American Geographical Society,

New York.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS

Figs. [1], [4], [23], [24], P. L. M. Railways of France.
Figs. [15], [16], [17], [19], [20], Swiss Federal Railroads.
Figs. [36], [37], American Scandinavian Review.
Figs. [40], [42], [46], Travel.
Figs. [45], [56], [58], Messrs. Sébah & Joaillier, Constantinople.
Figs. [52], [59], [60], [61], [62], [63], [64], [65], [66], Photos by Dr. E. Banks.

[CONTENTS]

LIST OF PLATES

[INTRODUCTION]

By Madison Grant

Mr. Dominian’s book on “The Frontiers of Language and Nationality” is the logical outcome of the articles written by him in 1915 in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society under the titles of “Linguistic Areas in Europe: Their Boundaries and Political Significance” and “The Peoples of Northern and Central Asiatic Turkey.” In the present work the problems arising from the distribution of main European languages and from their relation to political boundaries are discussed with clearness and brilliancy. The text embodies a vast collection of facts and data laboriously collected by the author, who has applied to the subject his familiarity with Eastern languages, as well as an impartial vision which is hard to find in these days when our judgments are so warped by the tragedy of the Great War.

The difficulty of depicting conditions geographically in colors or with symbols is of necessity very great. The peasants who form the majority of the population of most European states often speak a different language or dialect from that of the educated upper classes, and such lines of linguistic cleavage frequently represent lines of race distinction as well. For example, in Transylvania the language of about sixty per cent of the inhabitants is Rumanian, while the literary, military and land-owning classes speak either Magyar or German, and these Hungarians and Saxons, in addition to forming everywhere the ruling class, are gathered together in many places in compact communities. A similar condition of affairs exists along the eastern boundary of the German Empire, except that here the speech of the peasants is Polish and that of the dominant classes German.

The preparation of the maps which accompany this volume has been a task of peculiar difficulty. It is an easy matter to show by colors the language spoken by actual majorities, but such a delineation frequently fails to indicate the true literary language of the nation. Mr. Dominian’s solution of these difficulties has been a very successful one, and the resultant maps are really of great value, especially where they deal with little-known frontiers and obscure lines of demarcation, such as the eastern and western frontiers of the German Empire.

In spite of exceptions, language gives us the best lines for the boundaries of political units whenever those frontiers conform to marked topographical features such as mountain systems. In many cases where the boundaries of language and nationality coincide they are found to lie along the crest of mountains or a well-defined watershed, often along the base of plateaus or elevated districts, and very seldom along rivers. But the boundaries of nationality and of language, when they do coincide, seldom correspond with those of race, and political boundaries are more transitory and shifting than those of either language or race.

There are a few nations in Europe, chiefly small states, which are composed of sharply contrasted languages and races, such as Belgium, where the lowlands are inhabited by Flemish-speaking Teutons, and the uplands by French-speaking Alpines. Belgium is an artificial political unit of modern creation, and consequently highly unstable. The Belgian upper classes are bilingual, a condition which precedes a change of language, and unless Flanders becomes united to Holland or Germany it is more than probable that French speech will ultimately predominate there also.

Among the Celtic-speaking peoples, we have in the highlands of Scotland, in the mountains of Wales, in western Ireland and in the interior of Brittany, remnants of two distinct forms of Celtic speech. These diverse populations have, in common, only their Celtic speech, and are not related, one to the other, by race. As a matter of fact, the Scotch, the Welsh and the Bretons are excellent representatives of the three most divergent races of Europe. The Armorican-speaking Bretons are Alpine by race, the Cymric-speaking Welshmen are Mediterranean, while the Gaelic-speaking Scots are Nordic. In short, there is today neither a Celtic race nor any recognizable remnant of it. If one of these three peoples be Celtic in bodily characters, the other two must of necessity not be Celtic, and furthermore, if we designate any one of the three as Celtic by race, we must include in that term other distant populations which by no stretch of the imagination can be so regarded.

The literary revival of some Celtic dialects may be interesting, but it will only serve to keep the Celtic-speaking populations still more out of touch with the march of modern progress. In the long run the fate of Erse, Gaelic, Cymric and Armorican is certain. They will be engulfed by the French language on the continent, and by the English speech in the British Isles, just as Cornish and Manx have become extinct within a century.

In eastern Europe, the Slavic tongue of Bohemia and Moravia, known as Czech, was fifty years ago on the point of utter collapse, but the literary revival of Bohemia has been successful because it had for support on the east a solid mass of Slavic speech and the political power of Pan-Slavism, and in consequence was able to hold its own against the encroaching German. These Slavic dialects all through eastern Europe and the minor tongues elsewhere are greatly handicapped by the lack of books, newspapers and good literary forms. In the case of Erse and Cymric the difficulties of the spelling are an almost insuperable obstacle. The French language in Quebec and the various languages spoken among newly arrived immigrants in the United States will ultimately meet the same fate, since a few million illiterate and poverty-stricken habitants of Canada and a few million laborers in the United States must in the long run inevitably succumb to the overwhelming power of the world language of the English people.

Although race taken in its modern scientific meaning—the actual physical character of man—originally implied a common origin, it has today little or nothing to do with either nationality or language, since nearly all the great nations of Europe are composed of various proportions of two and sometimes all three of the primary European races. The population of England owes its blood to the Mediterranean and to the more recent Nordic race. Germany is composed of a combination of Nordic and Alpine, Italy of a mixture of Alpine and Mediterranean, while France unites within her boundaries the Nordic in the north, the Mediterranean in the south and the Alpine in the center. Spain and Portugal, however, are overwhelmingly of Mediterranean blood, while the Scandinavian races are purely Nordic. Thus it is quite evident that nationality and language are independent of race, and in fact the meaning of the word “race” as used not only by the man in the street, but also by the historian, is based on the spoken language. So far as race is concerned in its scientific sense, there exists no such thing as a “Latin,” a “Celtic,” a “German,” a “Slavic,” or even an “Aryan” or “Caucasian” race. These are linguistic terms, and are not correlated to bodily characters.

Throughout Europe, as pointed out by Mr. Dominian, there is, however, a close correspondence between topographical and geological land features, on the one hand, and the extent and spread of language on the other. A similar close connection has been noted between geographical features and race. Man’s topographical surroundings are among the most potent elements of environment, and have operated powerfully in the selection and development of man, but they do not transform or change one race into another. We have now discarded the old conception that blondness has anything to do with latitude, or altitude. Where two distinct races compete in a given environment, it generally happens that one or the other is better adapted to its surroundings, and that race tends to increase at the expense of its rival, with the result that one ultimately replaces the other. The races of Europe were originally adjusted to a certain fixed habitat, and when through conquest or commercial expansion they moved out of their native surroundings into unfamiliar ground, they tended to disappear. In short, race supplies the raw material, and environment is the molding force, or to use another simile, “the oak tree and the poplar tree are both wood, but the one can be polished by rubbing, while the other cannot.” In other words, the Greek genius and Hellenic culture were not created by the irregularity and broken configuration of Greece, and if the Greeks had been transplanted at an early time to Arabia, it is hardly conceivable that the world would have seen classic civilization in its most typical form. On the other hand, we have no reason to believe that if the Arabs had settled in Greece, they would have produced either Homer or the Parthenon. If England had remained exclusively in the hands of its original Mediterranean inhabitants, and if the Teutonic Nordics had not conquered it, or even if the Nordic Normans had not reinforced the Saxon strain, it is more than probable that the British Empire would not have achieved its triumphs.

Geographical situation, conditions of soil and of climate, mountain barriers, navigable rivers and abundant seaports have a powerful, even a controlling environmental influence on the raw material supplied by heredity, but in the last analysis it is race that manifests itself by characteristic achievement.

The prevailing lack of race consciousness in Europe compels us to disregard it as a basis for nationality. In the existing nations, races are generally scattered unevenly throughout the map, and are nearly always grouped in classes, as originally race was the basis of all class, caste and social distinctions. Race therefore being not available as a test of nationality, we are compelled to resort to language. As a matter of fact, language is the essential factor in the creation of national unity, because national aspirations find their best expression through a national language.

At the close of the Great European War the question of national boundaries will undoubtedly come to the front and the data collected and set forth in this book will be useful to a thorough understanding of the problems involved. There is reason to believe that if, at the termination of the Franco-Prussian war, the international boundary in Alsace-Lorraine had been run in conformity with the linguistic facts, much of the bitter animosity of later years might have been avoided. Similar problems will press for solution during the next few years, and if a permanent peace is to be assured neither the Allies nor the Central Empires can afford to create new Alsace-Lorraine or Schleswig-Holstein problems by disregarding national aspirations as expressed and measured by a common language or literature.

In the Balkan states the difficulty of finding any political boundaries that in any way correspond to race or language has heretofore been insuperable, but when the Congress of the Nations convenes, whether this year or next, or the year after, every member of it should be familiar with all facts that bear on the case, and above all with the meaning of such facts, and there exists today no book which covers these questions so fully, so accurately and so impartially as Mr. Leon Dominian’s “Frontiers of Language and Nationality.”

THE FRONTIERS OF LANGUAGE AND
NATIONALITY IN EUROPE

[CHAPTER I]
THE FOUNDATIONS

The site of populous cities and of trim little towns was once wild waste or sunless woodland. Our rude forefathers, wandering upon uninhabited tracts, converted them into fair fields and domains which their descendants rounded out eventually into nations. Humanity has prospered and today we often think of countries in terms of their characteristic landscape and scenery. But the thought naturally suggested by the name France or England is that of a nation whose people speak French or English. To separate the idea of language from that of nationality is rarely possible.

To say that a man’s accent betrays his nationality is another way of stating that every language has a home of its own upon the surface of the earth. A word or an accent will thrive or wither like a tree according to region. In the earliest forms of Aryan languages, words for fish or sea appear to be wanting—a want which points to inland origins. The natives of the scorching equatorial lowlands have no word for ice in their dialects. A further glimpse into the past is required for a proper estimate of these facts. Man’s conquest of a region is achieved in two distinct stages. The first settlers rarely accomplish more than a material hold. Their task is exclusively that of exacting sustenance from the soil. Intellectual possession is taken at a later stage. The land then becomes a source of inspiration to its dwellers. Having provided for his material wants, man is now able to cultivate ideals and give free rein to his artistic propensities. Instead of brooding in gloomy anxiety over future support or becoming desperate through sheer want he is able to bestow a leisure hour on a favorite recreation. In both of these stages, his thoughts and the words used for their utterance are in harmony with their surroundings.

We therefore turn to the land for intimate acquaintance with man and his culture. His very character is shaped in the mold of his habitual haunt. And language is little more than the expression of his character. The earnest Scotchman and the steadfast Swede, both hardened by the schooling of a vigorous climate, contrast strikingly with the impulsive Andalusian or the fitful Sicilian trained to laxity and carelessness in the midst of plenty. The revengeful Corsican is the native of an unblest island, while the Russian, bred in the vast and monotonous steppe, cannot avoid injecting a strain of melancholy into the literary treasures which he contributes to the human brotherhood.

The emotional ties which bind man to his country or to his mother tongue are the same because they are rooted in the past. A citizen of any country is conscious of his nationality whenever he realizes that he has a common origin with his compatriots. Language is merely the outward form of this feeling. But without its unifying influence national solidarity cannot be perfected.

The growth of modern European nations and the spread of their languages have been parallel developments. This parallelism is founded on the material ties no less than on the spiritual affinity which bind men to the earth. To furnish evidence of this relationship lies within the province of geography. Historical testimony is also at hand to show that political and linguistic frontiers have tended to coincide during the past two centuries, except where artificial measures have been brought into play. Broadly it may be submitted that the advance of civilization in most countries has been marked by the progress of nationality, while nationality itself has been consolidated by identity of speech.

Language areas, in common with many other facts of geography, have been largely determined by the character of the surface or climate. Occurrences such as the extension of Polish speech to the Carpathian barrier or the restriction of Flemish to the lowland of northwestern central Europe, are not the work of mere chance. An investigation of linguistic boundaries, therefore, implies recognition of the selective influence of surface features. But the influence of region upon expansion or confinement of language is far from absolute. The part played by economic factors will be shown in the following pages to have been of prime importance.

Considered as political boundaries, linguistic lines of cleavage have two-fold importance. They are sanctioned by national aspirations and they conform to a notable degree with physical features. Every linguistic area considered in these pages bears evidence of relation between language and its natural environment. A basis of delimitation is therefore provided by nature. Eastern extension of French to the Vosges, confinement of Czech to a plateau inclosed by mountains, uniformity of language in open plains and river basins, all are examples of the evidence provided by geography for statesmen engaged in the task of revising boundaries.

Europe may be aptly regarded as a vast field of settlement where the native element has, again and again, been swamped by successive flows of immigrants proceeding from every point of the compass. The wanderings of these invaders have been directed, in part, into channels provided by the main mountain ranges of Eurasia. Valleys or plains which favored expansion of nationality were, at the same time, the avenues through which languages spread. The barrier boundary of the Mediterranean basin contains a number of important breaches on the north[1] which facilitated the mingling of the Nordic race with Mediterranean men after it had mixed with Alpine peoples. Within historic times men of Celtic speech have been driven westward by Teutons, who also pressed Slavs in the opposite direction. The consequence is that few Frenchmen or Germans of our day can lay claim to racial purity. Northern France is perhaps more Teutonic than southern Germany, while eastern Germany is, in many places, more Slavic than Russia. To ascribe political significance to race is therefore as difficult today as it was when Roman citizenship meant infinitely more in comparison.

Nationality, however, an artificial product derived from racial raw material, confers distinctiveness based on history. It is the cultivated plant, blossoming on racial soil and fertilized by historical association. In the words of Ossian: “It is the voice of years that have gone; they roll before me with all their deeds.” Men alone cannot constitute nationality. A nation is the joint product of men and ideas. A heritage of ideals and traditions held in common and accumulated during centuries becomes, in time, the creation of the land to which it is confined.

Language, the medium in which is expressed successful achievement or hardship shared in common, acquires therefore cementing qualities. It is the bridge between the past and the present. Its value as the cohesive power of nationality is superseded, in rare instances, by ideals similarly based on community of tradition, hope, or in some cases religion. In speech or writing, words give life to the emotion which nationality stirs in the heart or to the reasoning which it awakens in the mind.

The distinction between the conceptions of race, language and nationality should, at the very outset, be clearly established. Race deals with man both as a physical creature and as a being endowed with spiritual qualities. Tall, blond men constitute a race distinct from their fellows who combine stockiness and brunetness. The basis of differentiation in this case is anatomical. Hence, to talk of an English or Persian race is erroneous. Every nation contains people endowed with widely different physiques, owing to the extensive intermingling of races which has taken place in the course of the million years during which the earth has been inhabited. To be precise, our conception of racial differences must conform to classifications recognized by modern anthropologists. We shall therefore consider the Mediterranean, Alpine and Nordic races—to mention only those composed of white men—and we shall find that they all blend in European nationalities.

Fig. 1—View of the “route d’Italie” or road to Italy at the extreme southeastern border of France and well inside the small area of Italian language lying within the French political boundary.

Take, as an example, the racial elements entering into the composition of French nationality. The dominating type, in northern France, belongs to the tall, narrow-headed Nordic race, with blue eyes and fair hair. Frenchmen with these characteristics are descendants of Franks and Gauls who settled in the northern plains of the Paris basin. In Brittany and the Massif Central, however, a round-headed and dark type, short and stockily built, is scattered over the two main piles of Archean mountains which still remain exposed to view. In the Aquitaine basin, as well as in the Lower Rhone valley, the narrow-headed Mediterranean race, with dark eyes and hair, is everywhere evident in the short, brunet inhabitants.

Ripley adheres to the racial segregation of European man in the three groups enumerated above. But a further reduction can be established on a purely geographical basis, with the result that Europeans may be classed primarily either as highlanders or lowlanders. Anthropological classification fits admirably in this dual distinction, since the inhabitants of European mountain lands belong to the round-head type while the dwellers of the depressions north and south of the central uplifts have long heads.

From the conception of race we attain that of people by considering the second as derived from the mingling of the first. Intercourse between the three great races of Europe has always existed as a result of migratory movements. The impulse to wander, however much it differed in each known instance, can usually be traced to a single determining cause, definable as the quest after comfort. This was the motive which led men of the Nordic race to abandon their uncomfortable habitat in the north. The same feeling was experienced by Alpine mountaineers as they descended towards attractive lowlands north and south of their rough mountain homes.

Nordics moving to the south and Alpines crowding toward the lowland converged upon one another. No meeting of human beings, in the entire history of mankind, has been fraught with consequences of wider reach than the contact between members of these, the two hardiest races which the world has produced. European nationalities and Aryan languages were born in those momentous meetings. The zone of contact extended from the northwestern, lowland fringe of continental Europe to the saucer-shaped land of Polesia. Along the depressed margin of western Europe a heavy flow of Mediterranean men, moving constantly northward, introduced a third element in the racial constituents of French and British populations. Each of the three races contributed a characteristic share of physical and moral traits to the spirit of nationality in Europe. The Nordics left the impress of their northern vigor wherever they passed. Their native restlessness, the joint product of cold weather and a hard life, became converted into a magnificent spirit of enterprise whenever it blended with Alpine hardiness or Mediterranean ambition. The Alpines, often considered as the intellectual type, also imparted the virility of highland physiques as they migrated to the lowland. Last, but not least, Mediterranean men contributed the softness of their native character as well as the fine qualities due to a keen artistic sense. The fusion of the three races was accompanied by the creation of the three great groups of European peoples, known as Celts, Teutons and Slavs. The differentiation of these peoples from the fused group occurred at an early period and was probably in full swing towards the close of the Neolithic.

We are thus led to picture the early home of Celtic dialects on territory now falling under French, Dutch and German rule. It is not unlikely that England and Ireland are areas of expansion of this language. Eastward, it is known that the Celtic territory extended at least as far as the Elbe. Beyond, in the same direction, an ever widening wedge of Teutonic area interposed itself between Celts and Slavs. The prehistoric home of the Teutons will be found in the region around the western extremity of the Baltic Sea. It comprised southern Sweden, Jutland, the German Baltic coast to the Oder and the Baltic islands as far as Gothland. The Slav’s original homeland had its site on an imperfectly drained lake-bed extending westward from the middle Dnieper valley to the Niemen and Priepet marshland.

Copyright by Brown Bros.

Fig. 2—Schwarzwald scenery. A region of transitional dialects between High and Low German.

From east to west on the Eurasian land mass the three main forms of language occupy strictly geographical settings. Monosyllabic Chinese lies rigid and lifeless within its barriers of high mountains and vast seas. The static condition of Chinese civilization is reflected in the changeless form of its language. A new idea requires a new word and a corresponding symbol. In the wild and wide-stretching steppes of Siberia, communication of thought or feeling is maintained through the medium of agglutinative forms of speech. Grammatically, this marks an improvement over the monosyllabic language. In the case considered here it expresses the restlessness and mobility of steppe life. At the same time inferiority of civilization is revealed by poverty of ideas and consequently of words. In the west, however, whether we consider western Asia or Europe, we deal with the world’s best nursery of civilization. In those regions are found the highly inflected and flexible languages of the Aryan and Semitic families. The grammar of these languages—a mere adaptation to superior requirements of order and method—renders them particularly responsive to the constant improvement in thought which characterizes western countries.

Aryan languages are spoken all the way from northern India to Europe’s westernmost confines. This territory comprises the western extension of the central belt of high Eurasian mountains together with its fringing lowlands. In its elevated portion it is the domain of the Alpine race and of the Nordic in its depressed northern border. On the other hand, that portion of the northern Eurasian grasslands which extends into Europe forms part of the area of Uralo-Altaic languages. It is sometimes contended that the original home of Aryan languages was situated in northern Europe, where full-blooded northerners now speak languages belonging to this family. But the weight of evidence in favor of a central European origin will seem almost decisive when we remember that culture and civilization have invariably proceeded from temperate regions. The Aryans issued at first from the contact of northern European lowlanders with the highlanders of central Europe, subsequently mingled with the inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin. As they migrated southward they must have changed continually in race. Every absorption of southern elements tended to modify their racial characteristics. A given type therefore corresponds to a definite period and place. The vagueness conveyed by the term Aryan, whether applied to language or people, is to be explained by the inherent instability of the subject.

A theoretical representation of the operation of this change may be offered by assuming that NA is the offspring of the first Nordic N having come in contact with an Alpine A. The tendency for NA is to migrate southwards. His offspring may be represented as NAA as the likelihood is that NA will have taken an Alpine wife to himself. This is the prelude to a long series of generations to each of which an A strain is added. At the same time the steadily maintained migration of Nordics in a southerly direction towards and beyond the territory occupied by the Alpines tends to bring new N strains to the mixed product. At a given stage contact with Mediterranean races becomes established and the process of obliterating Nordic traits is intensified.

We thus see that as the northern invaders pressed southward they became more or less absorbed in the indigenous populations. Their physique changed and their individuality vanished. However great the strength of the invaders, they could bring relatively few women in their train. This was especially true whenever they operated in a mountainous country. The passes through which their advance was made were open only to the more vigorous in the bands of fighting men or adventurers.

At the end of the Neolithic, about 5,000 years ago,[2] Europe was the home of a type of man physically similar to any average European of our day. This type is the product of long-continued contact between the original human product of Europe, Asia and Africa. The dawn of history finds him speaking Celtic in western central Europe. An immense variety of dialects must then have been spoken on the continent, since intercourse was slight. Their fusion into modern languages has been the work of centuries. Out of the linguistic sifting of the past two millenniums, three great groups of languages have emerged: the Romanic, Germanic and Slavic, distributed over Europe from west to east. In these three groups French, German and Russian occupy respectively the leading rank.

The distinction between the languages spoken in northern and southern France was highly marked in early medieval days. The langue d’oïl in use north of a line starting at the mouth of the Gironde River and passing through Angoulême, L’Isle-Jourdain and Roanne eventually acquired ascendancy over the langue d’oc spoken to the south.[3] The dialect of this northern language which prevailed in Ile-de-France was the precursor of modern French. It spread rapidly throughout the country after the acquisition of Aquitaine by French kings and the consolidation of France by the annexation of Burgundian lands. The French of Paris thus became a national language whose linguistic and literary prestige is still strongly felt over the rest of the country.

The Roman conquest of Gaul brought Latin to the country because the civilization of the south was superior. At the time of the coming of the Franks, the Latinized Gaulish language was taken up by the conquerors because it also was the symbol of superior intellectual development. The conversion of barbarian invaders to Christianity helped to maintain Latinized forms of speech. The Latin of the Romans was modified, however, by the different local dialects. Thus the patois of langue d’oc and of langue d’oïl acquired resemblance through the leavening influence of Latin.

Fig. 3—Sketch map of France showing mountain areas and basins.

As long as southern France exercised a preponderating influence in national affairs, the langue d’oc occupied the first place in the country. In the eleventh century it was spoken by the leading classes in the north, as well as by the masses in the south. Such, at least, is the testimony of manuscripts of this period. But with the passing of power into the hands of northern Frenchmen, the langue d’oïl came into wider use, until one of its patois gave rise to the French which was subsequently to become the medium of expression for the genius of Molière and the notable host of his literary countrymen.

Fig. 4—St. Seine l’Abbaye near Dijon lies in the area of langue d’oïl. The fair land of Burgundy, of which the view is typical, has been open to northern invasions on the northwest and the northeast.

Fig. 5—A farmhouse in the Black Forest, a typical habitation in districts in which High German is spoken.

Between the langue d’oc and the langue d’oïl the difference was that of north and south. The southern idioms expressed feeling and harmony, hence they were preferred by poets. The troubadours favored them exclusively during the Middle Ages. The “parlers” of the north, on the other hand, were endowed with the staying qualities of lucidity, order and precision. The beauty of modern French, as well as the attraction it exerts on cultivated minds, is due to its well-balanced blend of northern and southern elements. French of our day is the shrine in which the treasured remains of earlier centuries are still preserved. In it the sunshine of the south pierces with its warm rays the severity of northern earnestness. No other European language can boast of an equally happy composition. In this respect it is a true mirror of the French mind as well as of French nationality.

As spoken at present, French is derived in direct line from a sub-dialect of the Picard patois formerly spoken in Paris and Pontoise and which spread throughout all Ile-de-France. This province may be aptly described as the bottom of the bowl-shaped area of northern France. It owes its geographical distinctiveness to the convergence of a number of important valleys which empty the products of their fertility into the Paris basin lying in its very center. Five of these irregular furrows, the Seine, Loing, Yonne, Marne and Oise, radiate outwardly from the low-lying Paris center. The ebb and flow of national power and language sped its alternate course along their channels until, from being the heart, Paris, always inseparable from its language, became also the head of France.

Fig. 6—Part of France showing the contact between “langue d’oc” and “langue d’oïl” countries. The shaded area represents the “langue d’oïl” or northern language. “Langue d’oc” prevailed in the unruled area. Between these two regions a transitional zone, shown by broken ruling, intervened, in which a mixture of the two languages was spoken.

The Frankish dukedom founded on such a site grew naturally into a kingdom. And along with the establishment of a royal court, the language of the region acquired part of the kingly prestige. Herein we find the explanation of the derivation of the name French from that of Frankish as well as of the language from the local sub-dialect of the Picard patois. Already in the thirteenth century, from this magnificently situated base as a center, both language and nation had absorbed additional territory by a process of steady outward growth. It was French unity in the early making. As early as the twelfth century, no northern nobleman dared appear at the French court without having previously acquired familiarity with its language and manners. The precious literary monuments of this century show that this court language was already known as “François.” A hundred years later, about 1260, French had acquired so much polish and importance that we find Italian writers using it in preference to their own dialects. So in 1298, Marco Polo, a Venetian, gives out the first account of his eastern travels in French, while Brunetto Latini, who was Dante’s tutor, writes his Tesoreto in the same language, explaining his preference by remarking that French “est plus délitaubles languages et plus communs que moult d’autres.”[4]

German was to become the language of central Europe. Interposed between the territories of Romanic and Slavic languages, the area of German speech occupies a magnificently commanding position. Originally the language spoken west of the Elbe and Saale rivers, it had advanced considerably to the east in the first century of the Christian era. The imposition of Teutonic language on Slavic populations is one of the results of this ancient expansion of Germanic peoples. During the past thousand years very little change in the distribution of the main German dialects is believed to have taken place.

Modern German is generally divided into three sub-branches, Low, High and Middle German. Low German, Niederdeutsch or Plattdeutsch,[5] the language of the plain, is restricted to the extensive northern lowland. Dialects spoken in the northeastern corner of Rhenish Prussia, Holstein, Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Prussia enter into its composition. High German, Oberdeutsch or Hochdeutsch, is the German of the highland. It comprises the Bavarian, Swabian and Alemannic dialects of Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden. Its use as the literary language of all German-speaking people became well established in the Middle Ages. Luther’s translation of the Bible written in Saxonian dialect, a combination of High and Middle German, contributed no mean share to the diffusion of the language. Its use has been favored by Germany’s most noted writers since the seventeenth century. Schools and newspapers tend to convert it eventually into the only speech that will survive within German boundaries.

A fact of special importance can be traced among the causes leading to the supplanting of Low German, the language of the German plain, by High German as the national tongue. The superiority of the highland dialect is due to its greater assimilation of Celtic words. This civilizing influence of Celtic culture is by no means a modern development in Germany. In the proto-historic period it was mainly through contact with the Celts that the Teutons became civilized. This intellectual dependence of the Germans is revealed for the period about 300 B.C. by the then existing civilization, which was entirely Celtic. The history that spans the intervening years naturally brings to mind the influence which French language has always had in Germany. Voltaire’s sojourn at the Prussian court does not rank among forgotten episodes and it was not so long ago that Leibnitz had to resort to French or Latin as the medium of his written expression.

The transition from the northern plain of Germany to the high central regions is represented, on the surface, by a zone of intermediate uplands in Saxony, Lusatia and Silesia. This area is characterized linguistically by a transitional form of speech between Low and High German.[6] The similarity, however, of this midland German to High German is observable to the extent to which the rising land over which it is distributed presents analogy to the mountainous region towards which it trends. The transitional dialects include East, Middle and Rheno-Franconian, as well as Thuringian. They occur in the middle Rhineland, the banks of the Moselle, Hesse, Thuringia and Saxony.

A bird’s-eye view of the area of German speech shows that the language prevails wherever a well-defined type of dwelling is found. This representative habitation consists of a frame house with an entrance in the middle of one of its long sides. The hearth generally faces the threshold. Barns and outlying buildings do not connect with the main house, but form with it the sides of an open inner yard. German houses can furthermore be subdivided into three distinct sub-types which correspond to the linguistic divisions of Low, Middle and High German. The Saxon sub-type, which rarely rises above a single story, prevails in the northern lowlands, while the Bavarian sub-type dots the mountain districts which resound to High German. Between the two an intermediate sub-type of construction exists in the zone of Middle German.

Fig. 7—Sketch map showing relative position of the three main areas in which the dialects of German language are grouped.

Russian language while Slavic, and as such Indo-European, is at the same time the transition speech between the Indo-European and Uralo-Altaic groups. Its inflections connect it with the western group. But the dominant use of vowels bears impress of the strong influence exerted by Asia in the formation of the language. The very consonants in Russian are liquid and softened so as to shade insensibly into vowels. These are characteristics of Turkish and Finnish. The singular charm with which the melodious sounds of the Russian language greet a stranger’s ears is derived from this Asiatic strain. In spirit also the fundamental fatalism of Russians increases in the eastern sections of the country. The trait can hardly be characterized as Slavic. In the case of the Poles or Bohemians, it gives place to buoyant hopefulness which helps to color life and the world in roseate hues. The fatalism of the Russian is a relic of past habitat in the interminable steppes of central Eurasia. The Turks whose former roaming ground was the same are also imbued with this spirit. It is the sophism of the level land. No matter how far the horseman urged his mount, the same monotony met his gaze. No effort on his part could ever change the prospect.

As late as the twelfth century the peoples of the basin of the Volga spoke purely Tatar dialects. The wide and open steppes of Siberia, extending without break into eastern Europe, poured the overflow of their populations into the valleys of the Russian rivers which flow into the Black Sea. The great Russian cities of the borderland between Europe and Asia were either founded or Slavicized after the eleventh century. About that time the Slavic dialects of the Vistula and the Dnieper began to blend with the Asiatic languages of the Oka, Kliasma and Volga valleys. Modern Russian, a mixture of Slavic and Tatar or Mongolian words, was born of this blending. In a broader sense it is the expression of the union of Europe and Asia to create a Russian nation, for Russia is the product of the ancient Russ or Ruthenian principalities and the old Muscovite states. The former were Slav and lay in Europe. The latter were Tatar and belonged physically to Asia. As a nation the Russia of our time sprang into existence at the end of the seventeenth century. Prior to that period, its western section is known to history as the land of Russ or Ruthenia. Its eastern part was Muscovy. Through the union of the eastern and western sections the Russian Empire of modern times came into being. No literary monuments antedate the birth of its nationality.

In Russia the Slav who is free from Asiatic contamination is rarely met east of the 35th meridian. A line from Lake Ladoga to Lake Ilmen and along this meridian to the mouth of the Dnieper forms the divide between the Russians of Europe and of Asia. The parting of the waters belonging respectively to the Don and the Dnieper is, from a racial standpoint, the boundary between the two groups. The Tatar in the Russian appears east of this frontier. The Oriental customs which permeate Russian life, the Tatar words of the Russian language, all begin to assume intensity east of this dividing line, while to the west the spirit of the vast stretch of north Asiatic steppes disappears. Thus the commonly accepted Ural frontier of European and Asiatic Russia is unwarranted in the light of ethnic facts. The inhabitants of the Volga lands are essentially Asiatics among whom the numerically inferior Slav element has become dominant.

Fig. 8—This group of Russian officers conveys an idea of the excessive racial mingling in Russia. Alpine and Tatar features can be recognized as dominant.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood

Fig. 9—The heart of Moscow with the buildings of the Kremlin in the background.

Asia’s linguistic contribution to Europe is the gift of its unwooded steppelands. The immense tract of monotonous country extending west of the Altai Mountains to Europe is the home of a family of languages known as the Uralo-Altaic. Among these the highly vocalic branch of Finno-Ugrian traveled west with the nomadic herdsmen who used it. In Europe it acquired the polish which brought it to the forms recognized respectively as Finnish or Suomi and Hungarian. Both enjoy the distinction of being the most cultivated of the great northern Asiatic family of languages. The case of Finnish is especially remarkable owing to its high development without loss of its original agglutinative character.

The picture of this linguistic evolution can be painted only with the colors of geography. The well-defined individuality of the Hungarian Puszta has its counterpart in the Siberian steppe region. The one is the reproduction of the other in small—a miniature. Both consist of undulating land, devoid of mountains or hills, and covered by deep sand. In Finland too a remarkably level stretch of granite land, marked by gentle swelling, lies under a sandy glacial mantle. The two European regions have only one advantage over their Asiatic type. They are better watered. The furthest penetration of Eurasian lowlands into Europe is obtained through them. The approach to Hungary is made without a break, through the valley of the Danube. To Finland access is equally easy once the Urals are crossed. That this range proved no obstacle to the westerly spread of central Asiatic peoples is indicated by their presence west of its axis and their settlement in the Volga valley prior to Slav inroads. But neither in lake-dotted Finnish lands nor within the limited and mountain-hedged area of Hungary could the Asiatic invaders find room for expansion or nomadism. From herdsmen they became farmers. The change is the dawn of their history as a European nation, and of the development of every manifestation of their culture. A more advanced language became the measure of the increasingly complex character of their needs—that is to say, of higher civilization. The whole story, traced from its origin, illustrates the superior civilizing power vested in European geography. In the sterile steppes of the northern half of Asia man led an easier life than in the cramped regions of diversified Europe. On the broad flatlands of the east he roamed with little thought of the morrow and without incentive to improve his condition. In the west he was spurred to activity by the very limitations of his homeland.

In our day about seventy different languages are spoken in Russia. In this fact is found a serious drawback to effective national unity. Fortunately the spread of the dialects belonging to the Slavic group of languages is steady. The thorough Slavicization of the peoples of the basin of the Volga is not yet ended, but Great Russian is gradually uprooting the native Uralo-Altaic tongues. It is also imposing itself upon Asiatic languages in Caucasia and Transcaspian territory. Wherever there has been a thorough blending of dialects into Russian, nationality has sprung into existence. Elsewhere unity is in process of formation. The problem before the governing class consists in hastening the assimilation of the different elements to the original Slavic nucleus. Not until this consummation has taken place will the country have developed its full strength. And the measure of progress will be indicated by the growing replacement of the numerous dialects by a single national language.

Looking back over the stormy centuries during which French, German and Russian nationalities were elaborated, we behold the formative influence of language everywhere. Aspirations which precede the period of free and unfettered national life give way to achievement when national hopes are crowned. This we shall find in greater detail in the succeeding chapters.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood

Fig. 10—View of Nizhni-Novgorod and the Fair across the Oka River.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood

Fig. 11—Plain of the Dnieper at Kiev.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] E. C. Semple: The Barrier Boundary of the Mediterranean Basin and Its Northern Breaches as Factors in History, Ann. Assoc. Amer. Geogr., Vol. 5, 1915, pp. 27-59.

[2] The Neolithic lasted longer north of the Alps.

[3] The dialects or patois spoken today in France all fall under one of these two languages. They can be classified as follows:

[4] The terminal s, a distinctly Latin form, is seen to persist in this early stage of the language.

[5] Niederdeutsch is derived directly from Old Saxon, the language which enters into the composition of the Anglo-Saxon current in England at the time of the Norman Conquest.

[6] Cf. Sheets 12a, Europe, Flusz-Gebirgskarte, and 12c, Europa, Sprachen- und Völkerkarte, both 1:12,000,000, in Debes: Handatlas.

[CHAPTER II]
THE BOUNDARIES OF FRENCH AND GERMANIC LANGUAGES IN BELGIUM AND LUXEMBURG

The western section of the Franco-German linguistic boundary extends over Belgian territory through a country in which the formation of nationality has been exceedingly laborious. Flemish and Walloon, two languages within a single political boundary, represent the obstacles which stood in the way of national growth. Physically Belgium also consists of diversified regions. Its history is the long drawn-out struggle between two powerful neighbors. Over and over again its inhabitants have found themselves drawn into foreign quarrels against their will.

The country is a marshland in which the mountains and plains of Europe meet. The main divisions which correspond to this background have inherited the names of Flanders and Wallonia. The clashing-ground of men of the Alpine and Nordic races, Belgium received wave after wave of northerners who came to colonize its broad flatlands. At the time of the conquest, the Romans came upon long-established colonies, but found to their cost that Teuton invasions were not ended. In the fifth century of our era the northern lowland was cleared of Romans by the Franks; but to this day the dualism of its people has not been obliterated. To whatever extent inbreeding has destroyed racial purity, the Fleming of our day represents the Nordic race, while the Walloon is mainly Alpine. Of the two, the fair-complexioned product of the north speaks a Teutonic language, whereas the swarthy highlander is both the user and disseminator of French.

At the partition of the Carolingian Empire in 843,[7] the Schelde became the dividing line between Lotharingia and France. Flemings and Walloons, who had been thrown together for centuries, were separated into an eastern and a western group. Nevertheless their struggle for unity and independence continued to fill Belgium’s history. In the ensuing period of national trials, the political disruption of the country is manifested by the growth of civic communities. Belgium became in turn a Burgundian, an Austrian and a Spanish province. The golden age of the Burgundian period brought prosperity to the land, but economic decadence accompanied the prolonged strife between Hapsburgs and Bourbons. It was Belgium’s misfortune to be the scene on which the rivalry was fought out. With a population reduced by the horrors of war, Belgium emerged from under the heel of Spanish oppression only to fall successively under Austrian, French and Dutch domination. But the seed of nationality, planted upon its uncertain soil when the valley of the Schelde became part of Burgundy, sheltered a smouldering vitality which, finally, in the nineteenth century was fanned to independence.

The line of contact between French and the languages belonging to the Germanic group begins at the sea on French soil. Starting a few miles west of Dunkirk,[8] the linguistic divide follows a direction which is generally parallel to the political boundary between France and Belgium until, a few miles east of Aire, it strikes northeast to Halluin, which remains within the area of French speech. From this point on to Sicken-Sussen, near the German border, the line assumes an almost due east trend.

This division corresponds broadly to the mountainous and depressed areas into which Belgium is divided. The upland has always been the home of French. Walloon is but a modified form of the old langue d’oïl.[9] Flemish, on the other hand, is a Germanic language which spread over Belgian lowlands as naturally as the Low German dialects to which it is related had invaded the plains of northern Europe. This east-west line also marks the separation of the tall, blond, long-skulled Flemings from the short, dark, round-skull Alpine Walloons.

The remarkably straight course of the linguistic divide, in Belgian territory, is generally regarded as an effect of the plain over which it extends. Whatever ruggedness it may have once possessed has been smoothed away in the course of centuries by the ease with which either Flemish or French could spread in the low-lying flatland. The two languages have now been facing each other for about four centuries. Place names indicate that the variations of the line have been slight. It is a rare occurrence to find Roman village names north of its present extension. Teutonic roots, in locality names to the south, are likewise unusual. A few can be traced. Waterloo, Tubize, Clabecq, Ohain were once Flemish settlements. Tubize was originally known as Tweebeek and became a Walloon center in the fifteenth century. Ohain likewise is known in the form of Olhem in twelfth century documents.

Belgium’s linguistic dualism prevailed throughout the five centuries of the Roman occupation. Intercourse at that time between the Belgae dwelling south of the Via Agrippa, and the Romans who were pushing steadily northwards was frequent and intimate. The Latin of the Roman invaders, modified by the Celtic and Germanic of native populations, gave birth eventually to the Walloon of subsequent times.[10] The Belgae of the lowlands farther north, however, successfully resisted the efforts made by the Romans to conquer them. The marshes of their nether country, and the forested area which was to be laid bare by the monks of the Middle Ages, constituted a stronghold in the shelter of which Germanic dialects took root. This forested area—the Sylva Carbonaria of the Romans—was the chief geographical feature which prevented thorough fusion of Flemings and Walloons. It was the westernmost extension of the Ardennes forests and its gloomy solitudes covered the largest part of the territory which has since become the province of Hainaut. Beyond its northern boundary lay the lands of Teutonic culture and language. To the Flemings, living north of the wooded curtain, the Gallo-Romans, who became known as Walloons, were the Walas or “foreigners” who dwelt south of the tree-studded barrier. A sharply defined line of separation intensified, in this manner, all pre-existing racial differences.

At a later date, the growth of the temporal power of the Roman Church resulted in the establishment of a number of bishoprics over districts segregated irrespectively of linguistic differences. Perhaps one of the most striking features of Belgian history is found in the fact that its linguistic and political boundaries have never coincided. Every century is marked by renewal of the age-long clashes between the northern and southern races which have been thrown in contact along the western end of the line which separates the plains of northern Europe from the mountainous southland of the continent.

It may be gathered from all this that the linguistic line of cleavage has undergone very little modification in the course of centuries.[11] It now divides the country into a northern section, the inhabitants of which consider Flemish as their vernacular, but who also generally understand French, and a southern section peopled by French-speaking inhabitants, who adhere to the use of Walloon dialects in the intimacy of their home life. To the east, the political frontier between Belgium and Germany does not divide the two countries linguistically. Within Prussian territory, Malmedy and a group of fifteen villages are inhabited by a French-speaking folk. As though to offset this intrusion of French speech on Prussian soil, a corresponding area of German speech is found in the Belgian province of Luxemburg around Arlon.[12] Altogether about 31,500 Belgians employ German as a vernacular.

The American Geographical Society of New York

Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. I

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THE FRANCO-FLEMISH LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY

The figures of the last (Dec. 31, 1910) Belgian census[13] show that the Flemish provinces are bilingual, whereas the Walloon region is altogether French. Knowledge of French as an educational and business requirement accounts for its occurrence in Flanders. The Romance language, therefore, tends to supersede the Germanic idiom as a national vernacular. The utter absence of Flemish in the Belgian Congo constitutes perhaps the strongest evidence in favor of French as Belgium’s national language.

In northwestern France, the language of the plain has, since the thirteenth century, steadily receded before the uplander’s speech. At that time Flemish was spoken as far south as the region between Boulogne and Aire.[14] The area spreading east of the Atlantic, between the present linguistic boundary and a line connecting these two cities, is now bilingual with French predominating. It might be noted here, however, that Boulogne has been a French-speaking city since Frankish days.

The use of Flemish in France is restricted to the two arrondissements of Dunkirk and Hazebrouck as well as to a few communes of Lille. Dewachter’s studies[15] in this locality have been summarized by Blanchard.[16] According to these investigations, the arrondissement of Dunkirk contains 41 Flemish-speaking communes, four of purely French language and 20 of dual speech. Of the last, only five reveal a majority of Flemish speakers. In Hazebrouck there are 36 Flemish communes, eight French and nine bilingual. Five of the latter show French predominance. In the arrondissement of Lille, Flemish is spoken only in six bilingual communes, four of which have a majority of French-speaking residents. Furthermore a few Flemish-speaking families are found in the suburbs of St. Omer as well as in a commune near by. About one-third of the inhabitants of Tourcoing understand Flemish. This is also true of one-half the population of Roubaix. In each of the cities of Lille and Armentières, the ratio falls to one-quarter. Outside of the Flemish-tainted communes of the arrondissement of Lille, the boundary of this language is indicated by the course of the Aa, the canal of Neuffossé and the Lys.

The progress of French, in the Flemish-speaking districts of France, may be followed through the growing invasion of French words in the local vernaculars. The Flemish spoken in Dunkirk or Hazebrouck is an archaic dialect which is growing further and further away from the Flemish of Belgium, as this language tends to identify itself with Dutch in order to acquire literary form. As a rule, French is gradually replacing the Germanic idiom throughout the line of linguistic contact. The Frenchifying of the communes between the Aa and Dunkirk has taken place within the last fifty years. In the same period, Flemish has almost entirely disappeared from the suburbs of St. Omer, and the progress of French towards Cassel and Hazebrouck becomes yearly more apparent. The bilingual aptitude of the inhabitants in all of these localities is on the increase in the sense that many of the Flemings are acquiring proficiency in French. Business requirements in a large degree account for the change.

The only opposition to the advance of French is found in the Flemish immigration which brings fresh linguistic energy in its train. Fortunately for the Romance language, the tide of this immigration is weak and the newcomers are easily assimilated by the French-speaking element. A locality in which the decline of French is noticeable is found in the vicinity of Menin on the Lys river. The number of Flemish immigrants is particularly heavy in this region. Communes which have been French since immemorial times are fast becoming Flemish. Everywhere else, however, French is steadily encroaching upon the domain of Germanic speech.

Fig. 12 is a view of the low-lying plain of Flanders in the vicinity of Waterloo.

Fig. 13—Shows the environs of Chaudfontaine and gives an excellent glimpse of the hilly country in which Walloon language has held its own. These two photographs show the contrast between the areas of Walloon and Flemish in Belgium.

Brussels typifies the bilingual character of the country of which it is the capital. French and Flemish are spoken both in its precincts and suburbs. The distribution of inhabitants, according to communes or wards, showed French predominance on December 31, 1910, as follows:

Although Brussels is generally placed on the Flemish side of the linguistic divide, it is interesting to note that the city may appropriately be considered as the northernmost extension of the area of Romance languages in Belgium. Only two villages of Flemish speech intervene between the capital and the Walloon area. They are Rhode-Saint-Genèse and Hoeylaert. Were it not for these two small communities, Brussels would not be an enclave of French speech in Flemish territory. But the two villages are separated by the forest of Soignes which extends in an elongated band, all the way south of Uccle and Boitsfort, to within reach of Waterloo. This wooded area acts as a link which connects Brussels with the ancient area of Romance speech. It tends to restrict Flemish in this section to the lowland to which it really belongs.

Within the city limits the canal, which now replaces the natural water course flowing on the site, divides Brussels into Flemish-speaking quarters and districts entirely given up to French language. West of the waterway, the native vernacular prevails predominantly. This section of the Belgian capital is the site of its industries. Its population consists mainly of laborers. As early as the twelfth century, the members of the city’s guilds found it convenient to reside along the banks of the stream which watered the heart of their settlement. In our day, this part of Brussels presents similar advantages to factory owners and operators of industrial plants.

Fig. 14—Sketch map of the environs of Brussels showing the forested patch of Soignes intervening between the Brussels area of French language (shown by dots) and the adjacent part of the area of the French language in Belgium (also shown by dots). The blank area is territory of Flemish speech. (Based on a map by P. Reclus in La Géographie, Vol. 28, 1913, p. 312.)

The rising ground east of the canal has always been favored as a residential site by the leaders of the community. In the Middle Ages the counts of Brabant erected their palace on the summit of this eminence. Since then the well-to-do residents of Brussels have built their homes on this side of the canal. The bourgeois class followed the lead of the aristocracy as soon as their commercial and industrial revenues equaled those of their titled countrymen. French, the language of culture in the land, naturally took root in this eastern section of Brussels. The tendency of the privileged classes to select this part of the city for their residence is as strong today as in the past. The bracing air of the heights and of the forest of Soignes near by affords an inducement which cannot be found in the bottom of the valley. Spacious avenues enlivened by elaborate residences extend along the crest lines. The intervening blocks are tenanted by the middle classes. Educational institutions also flourish in these eastern wards of Brussels. French prevails overwhelmingly in all their nooks and bypaths.

The growth of French in Brussels is strongly brought out by a comparison of the following census figures for the years 1846 and 1910:

The gradual replacement of Flemish by French in Brussels may often be traced to recent changes in the growth of the city.[17] In the faubourgs of Woluwe, Boitsfort and Uccle the number of users of French is on the increase each year. The growth proceeds with sufficient regularity to forecast a thorough spread of the language by 1935. In some cases it is easy to foresee that some of the outlying villages will be Frenchified sooner than certain wards of the western part of the city. Tervueren and Linkebeek, for instance, are both noted for the charm of their scenery. Both are centers of attraction for the well-to-do Belgians and as a result tend to lose their Flemish character.

In recent years a keen struggle for predominance between Flemings and Walloons has been observed in every province of the country. Each element aspires to impose its racial traits, customs and ideals on its rival. The contest sometimes degenerates into extreme bitterness. The university, the street, the theater, even the government offices are converted into scenes of polemical wrangling. News items in the dailies reveal a constant state of tension between “Flammigants” and “Fransquillons.” In this racial struggle, language has been adopted as the rallying standard of both parties. Each faction consistently aims to eliminate the study of the rival tongue in the primary schools of its territory.

The Walloons now represent a true blend of northern, central and southern European types. The mingling was attended by the clash and contest which has always marked racial fusion. As a language Walloon forced itself into existence out of the confusion which followed a long bilingual period and by the sheer obstinacy of an humble Belgo-Roman people whose ears had been attuned to vernacular speech at church and school. It was no mean feat for the inhabitants of the principality of Liége to have retained their language, surrounded as they were by Germanic peoples on all sides but one. The ancient state had the shape of a triangle whose base abutted against a land of French speech. Its sides, however, on the north and the east penetrated like a wedge into districts of Flemish and German.

The language became prevalent in the principality of Wallonia after the tenth century. It was then still in a state of infancy and the literature of its early period is relatively poor.[18] Contrasted with official and aristocratic French the Walloon was a dialect of little account prior to the eighteenth century. Since that time, however, genuine interest has been manifested in its folk-tales and literature by educated Frenchmen. But it remained for Dutch presumption to give a final impetus to the revival of Walloon. By the terms of the treaty of Vienna, Belgium and Holland had been assembled into a single state known as the Netherlands. The Dutch represented the dominant element in the union. Their endeavor to impose their language on the Flemings and Walloons was vigorously resisted by the latter. The streets of Belgian towns resounded with the hatred of the Dutch expressed in Walloon words.[19] The separation of Belgium from Holland in 1830 was in a sense the expression of the linguistic diversity which had characterized the kingdom of the Netherlands.

Fusion of the two elements of the Belgian population is observable in the Brabant country, in the vicinity of the linguistic frontier. Flemish laborers tend to invade Walloon settlements with the result that the number of inhabitants of Flemish speech is on the increase. A counter immigration of Walloons into Flemish villages also exists, with a corresponding addition to the number of French-speaking inhabitants wherever it takes place. The fact remains, however, that while Flemings acquire the French spoken by Walloons, it is an extremely rare occurrence for the latter to take up Flemish. In the course of time the Flemish immigrant in Walloon villages learns French, while the Walloon newcomer in Flemish villages manages to impose his language on his new neighbors. The net result is a gain for the French language.

Today, after almost a hundred years’ quiescence, the Belgian question enters upon another critical stage. The problem is one of language in so far as the two languages spoken in the country represent the aims and interests of two different peoples. The Belgian question dates, in reality, from the treaty of Verdun of 843 and the partition of Charlemagne’s empire. Belgium then became the westernmost province of the transition state known as Lothringia. It was the hedge-country artificially created to act as a barrier between the peoples of Romanic and Teutonic speech. Its population, drawn from both elements, has been the alternate prey of French and German powers. But all of Belgium’s troubled history has been affected by the shape of the land. The only frontier with which the nation has been supplied by nature is the sea on the west. On the other three sides land features merge gradually with the main types in their neighborhood. Within Belgian territory, the lowlands of northern Europe join with the outliers of the uplifts of central Europe and their extension into France. Nowhere is the break sharp. The basin of the Schelde itself trespasses on the neighboring basins of the Rhine, the Meuse and the Somme.

Aggravation of the feud between Walloons and Flemings may lead to secession. The Flemish provinces might then cast their political lot with the Dutch, with whom their intercourse has been marked by a degree of friendliness which has never characterized their relations with other neighbors. This extreme course might not unreasonably be adopted as a measure of self-preservation.[20] The languages spoken in Holland and Flanders are practically identical. Religious differences alone have stood in the way of political fusion in the past. Flemish princes, swayed by religious scruples, had refused to side with the Protestant communities whose political connection had been established by the Union of Utrecht in 1597. The menace of absorption by Germany may yet drive the Flemings to union with their close kinsmen of the lowlands on the north. Walloons would then naturally revert to French allegiance. The coincidence of political and linguistic boundaries in the westernmost section of central Europe would then become an accomplished fact.

The language of the Duchy of Luxemburg is a Low German dialect in which a strong proportion of Walloon French words is found. French is taught in schools and is the language of the educated classes. It is also used in tribunals, and in many places as the official language of governing and administrative bodies. The use of French is largely due to intimate intellectual ties which bind Luxemburgers and Frenchmen. It is estimated that at least 30,000 natives of the Grand Duchy, or about one-eighth of its population, emigrate to France for business reasons. Many marry French women. Maternal influences prevail with the children born of these unions with the result that, upon returning to their native land, the families bring French speech along.

But French as a commercial language is on the wane throughout the Grand Duchy. German has been replacing it gradually since 1870. This is one of the results of the small state’s admission into the ring of German customs. Prior to that period business was transacted mainly in the French dialect of Lorraine. The spread of German is furthermore the result of a systematically conducted propaganda carried on with well-sustained determination. German “school associations” and “Volksvereine,” established in every city of importance, help to spread German speech and thought. Lectures of the type entitled “The beauty of Schiller’s and Goethe’s speech” are delivered by orators who are in reality skilled pioneers of empire engaged in the work of reclaiming populations to Germanism. The efficiency of their methods is proved by the results they have obtained. Out of a population of about 21,000 inhabitants, hardly 4,000 natives of Luxemburg speak French exclusively, while of the six or seven papers published in the capital, two alone are issued in French.

This closing of the German grip over the land stimulated the growth of national feeling among the inhabitants. They were reminded by their leaders that, from having formerly been one of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, the duchy acquired the status of a sovereign state in 1890, on the accession of Queen Wilhelmina to the throne. Henceforth the maintenance of Luxemburg’s independence rests on the European powers’ observance of the pledges by which they guaranteed national freedom for this little state.[21] The natives are free from the burden of onerous taxation imposed on inhabitants of the neighboring powerful countries. Peaceful development of their commerce and industry is thus facilitated. Their land is richly endowed by nature. The wine produced in the Moselle valley and the extensive deposits of high grade iron ore found around Etsch make the community one of the most prosperous on the European continent.

Nevertheless the country seemed predestined by nature itself to form a part of Germany. The broken surface of the Ardenne hilly region and the extension of the plateau of Lorraine are drained by the Sauer and Moselle into German territory. The life of the inhabitants of the entire state is influenced by this easterly drift and tends yearly to greater dispersal in the same direction. This is the danger which prompts them to cling to their independence with patriotic tenacity. Their feelings are reflected in their national hymn, which begins with the words “Mir welle bleiwe wat mer sin” (We wish to remain what we are). These are the words of the tune rendered daily at noon by the chimes of the Cathedral of Luxemburg.

Some fifty miles north of Luxemburg, and at the point of contact of the French, German and Dutch languages, lies the neutral territory of Moresnet, barely three and a quarter square miles in area. This forgotten bit of independent land is claimed by both Prussia and Belgium on account of the exceedingly valuable zinc deposits which it contains. It has a population of some 3,000 inhabitants who, alone among Europeans, enjoy the inestimable privilege of not paying taxes to any government. A Burgomaster, selected alternately from among Prussian and Belgian subjects, rules this diminutive state in conjunction with a Communal Council.

The survival of such a relic of medieval political disorders was due to the impossibility of making a settlement between the two claimants of its territory. In the fifteenth century its mines were the property of the Dukes of Limburg, who had leased them to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Shortly after the French Revolution, they were declared national property by the French Republic and were operated by the government.[22] With the fall of Napoleon, the estate passed under the management of both Prussia and Holland. After the Belgian revolution of 1830, however, the entire property became part of Belgium’s share. A demand for rents in arrears from the lessee by Prussia, although recognized as valid by the courts of Liége, was not approved by the new Belgian state and the only compromise that could be reached was a declaration of the neutrality of the territory.

The Belgian question as well as the related Luxemburg and Moresnet problems, the latter being of slight significance, present themselves today as economic settlements no less than political adjustments. The inner reason which had led German hope to dwell on the annexation of Belgium is the knowledge that such an addition in territory would convert Germany into the dominating industrial nation of Europe. This position of superiority would be firmly established if, in addition, the French basins of Longwy and Briey could be turned into Reichslands, as had been done with Alsace-Lorraine in 1870. Fortunately for Europe, the developments of the armed contest begun in 1914 proved that the threat of this economic vassalage is no longer to be feared. Incidentally it is worth remembering that its realization would obviously have been followed by the loss of Holland’s independence.

Belgium’s political independence is therefore a necessity for the fine adjustment of the balance of European industrial life. And there are quarters where such economic considerations carry greater weight than national sentiments. The main point to be made, however, is that Belgian nationality is entitled to survival, whether it be examined from a material or a moral standpoint. Changes, if any, of its frontiers are indicated in the east, where Malmedy and its environs in Rhenish Prussia constitute a domain of French language. The exchange of this territory for districts of German speech in Belgian Luxemburg and the strategic reinforcement of this eastern frontier, as a safeguard against future aggression, are desirable for Belgians as well as for Germans.

TABLE I

French- and Flemish-Speaking Inhabitants of Belgium

Census of December 31, 1910

This table shows French predominance for the entire country. The arrangement given immediately below brings out this fact more clearly.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The importance of the treaty of Verdun of this date with regard to the conflict between the French and the German languages is pointed out in the next chapter.

[8] G. Kurth: La frontière linguistique en Belgique et dans le nord de la France, Mém. couronnés, Acad. R. Sci. Let. et Beaux-Arts de Belg., XLVIII, Vol. 1, 1895, Vol. 2, 1898, Brussels.

[9] Cf. Map, “Ausbreitung der Romanischen Sprachen in Europa,” 1:8,000,000, in Gröber: Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, Trübner, Strassburg, 1904-1906.

[10] The Belgae of Caesar are probably represented by the Teutonic populations of northern France—Flanders and Batavia—rather than by the Walloon. They are a Germanic tribe who made their appearance in Belgium about the third century, B.C.

[11] G. Touchard: Les langues parlées en Belgique, Le Mouv. Géogr., May 11, 1913, pp. 226-229.

[12] N. Warker: Die deutsche Orts- und Gewässernamen der Belgischen Provinz Luxemburg, Deutsche Erde, Vol. 8, 1909, pp. 99, 139.

[13] Statistique de la Belgique, Recensement Général de 1910, Vol. 2, 1912, Vol. 3, 1913, Brussels.

[14] G. Kurth: op. cit. Kurth’s work is based partly on place names. See also L. De Backer: La langue flamande en France, Samyn, Ghent, 1893.

[15] Le flamand et le français dans le nord de la France, 2^me Congrès international pour l’extension et la culture de la langue française, Weissenbruch, Brussels, 1908.

[16] Le flamand dans le nord de la France, Ann. de Géogr., Vol. 20, Dec. 15, 1909, pp. 374-375.

[17] P. Reclus: Les progrès du Français dans l’agglomération Bruxelloise, La Géogr., Vol. 28, No. 5, Nov. 15, 1913, pp. 308-318.

[18] M. Wilmotte: Le Wallon, histoire, littérature des origines à la fin du XVII^e siècle, Rosez, Brussels, 1893. J. Demarteau: Le Wallon, son histoire et sa littérature, Liége, 1889.

[19] J. Demarteau: op. cit., p. 134.

[20] Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality in 1914 has been followed by systematic endeavors to induce Flemings to favor annexation of their land to Germany on the plea of ancestral kinship.

[21] Luxemburg’s neutrality was guaranteed by the treaty of London, May 11, 1867, to which Britain, Austria, Prussia, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy and Russia were signatories.

[22] The Neutral Territory of Moresnet, Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1882, p. 14.

[23] Children under two and foreigners are included under this heading.

[CHAPTER III]
THE FRANCO-GERMAN LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY IN ALSACE-LORRAINE AND SWITZERLAND

With the exception of a few districts in Alsace-Lorraine, the political boundary between France and Germany is also the linguistic line between French and German languages. This condition is a result of the modifications which French frontiers have undergone since the treaty of Utrecht in 1714. Unfortunately the Napoleonic period and its disorderly train of political disturbances brought about an unnatural extension of the northern and eastern lines. France departed for a time from the self-appointed task of attracting French-speaking provinces to itself. Between 1792 and 1814 almost all of the territory of Belgium and Holland was annexed and the eastern frontier extended to the Rhine. Teutonic peoples in Holland, Flanders, Rhenish Prussia and the western sections of Hesse and Baden passed under French control. But their subjection to Napoleon’s artificial empire was of relatively short duration. The German-speaking people in 1813 united in a great effort to drive the French across the Rhine. They were merely repeating the feat of their ancestors who, at an interval of eighteen centuries, had defeated the Latin-speaking invaders of their country led by Varus. Success in both movements was largely the result of the feeling of kinship based on language. In 9 A.D. the Romans were forced back to the Rhine from the line they occupied on the Weser. The treaty of Vienna restored French boundaries to the lines existing in 1790. French territory was once more confined to the normal boundaries which inclose members of the French-speaking family. A natural frontier thus became determined for the country. The union of Frenchmen into a compact political body was shattered, however, by the treaty of Frankfort in 1871, when France was obliged to cede the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany.

The part to be played by the province of Lorraine in the history of Franco-German relations was laid out by nature itself. The province had always been a wide pathway connecting highly attractive regions of settlement. It lies midway between the fertile plains of the Rhine and the hospitable Paris basin. It is also placed squarely in the center of the natural route leading from Flanders to Burgundy. Physically the region was part of France; its inhabitants have therefore always been Frenchmen, but the lack of a natural barrier on the east provided a constantly open door for Teutonic invasion. In particular, the Moselle valley has always facilitated access into Lorraine. The province was thus a borderland disputed first by two adjoining peoples and, subsequently, by two neighboring nations.

As a duchy, Lorraine had attained a state of semi-independence in the tenth century. It then included the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. From the eleventh to the eighteenth century, the house of Lorraine furthermore exerted sovereign power over Nancy and Lunéville. The loosening of the ties of vassalage which united it to the German Empire grew as centuries passed.

This long period of conflict was necessarily accompanied by modifications of linguistic boundaries. Glancing back to the end of the Middle Ages, a slight westerly advance of the area of German speech may be ascertained for the period between the tenth and sixteenth centuries.[24] From that time on, however, the regional gain of French has been in excess of previous German advances. Toponymic data afford valuable clues to early distribution of languages in the region. Occurrences of the suffix “ange” which is the Frenchified form of the German “ingen,” in names lying west of the present line, show the extent of territory reclaimed by the French language.[25]

The linguistic boundary in Lorraine assumes a general northwest-southeast direction as it winds onward according to the predominance of German and French. About 65 per cent of the area of Lorraine, at present under German rule, contains a French-speaking majority.[26] From Deutsche-Oth, the line crosses the Moselle south of Diedenhofen and extends towards Bolchen and Morhange. The entire lake district farther south is in French-speaking territory. About two miles southwest of Sarrebourg the line traverses the Saar. The Lorraine boundary is attained close to the headwaters of the same river. A German enclave occurring at Metz is the only break in the unity of the area of the French language. A large frontier garrison and a host of civilian officials account for the numerical superiority of German in this provincial capital.

The fluctuations of French in Lorraine since the eleventh century have been studied with great minuteness by Witte.[27] Basing himself on the text of documents examined in the archives of Strassburg, Metz, Nancy and Bar-le-Duc this scholar succeeded in plotting the linguistic divide for the years 1000 and 1500. To these two lines he added the present language boundary as determined from his own field observations. His method consisted in traveling from village to village, usually on foot, and ascertaining personally the predominance of French and German in each locality he visited.

Between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries changes along this linguistic boundary appear to have been unimportant. The five intervening centuries are characterized by a slight westerly advance of German. From the sixteenth century to our time, however, the easterly spread of French has been considerable. This change is particularly noticeable in southern Lorraine, as if to show that the gap between the heights of the Moselle and the northern Middle Vosges had provided an outlet for the overflow of the language on German soil.

Compared with Lorraine, Alsace has the advantage of greater definiteness as a geographical unit. It is the region of the valley of the Ill which ends at the wall of the Vosges Mountains on the west. Its easterly extension attains the banks of the Rhine. This elongated plain appears throughout history as a corridor through which races of men marched and countermarched. The Alpine race provided it with early inhabitants. Barbarians of northern lineage also swarmed into its fields. Romans subjugated the land in the course of imperial colonization. The province subsequently passed under Germanic and Frankish sway.

The entry of Alsace into linguistic history may be reckoned from the year 842, when the celebrated oaths of Strassburg were exchanged in Romance and Teutonic languages by Louis the German and Charles the Bald, respectively. This solemn function was a precautionary measure taken by the two brothers to safeguard their territory against the coveting of their senior, Lothaire, to whom Charlemagne had bequeathed the area which, for a time, was known as Lotharii Regnum, and which comprised modern Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence and a portion of Italy. The main point of interest in the territorial division which marked the passing of Charlemagne, lies in the fact that the future division of central Europe into nations of French, German and Italian speech was outlined at this period. Strassburg, the chief city of the borderland between areas of French and German speech, was a bilingual center at this early date. The versions of the oaths taken on February 18, 842, by the royal brothers, as handed down by Nithard, Charlemagne’s grandson and a contemporary historian, show a formative stage in French and German. The document has been aptly called the birth certificate of French. Louis the German spoke the following words in the lingua romana, which was then the speech of Romanized Gaul:

Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, dist di in avant, in duant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai io cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adjudha, et in cadhuna cosa, si cum on, per dreit, son fradre salvar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet; et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karlo in damno sit.[28]

Charles the Bald used the lingua teudisca as follows:

In Godes minna ind in thes christianes folches ind unser bedhero gealtnissi, fon thesemo dage frammordes, so fram so mir Got gewizci indi madh furgibit, so haldih tesan minan bruodher, soso man mit rehtu sinan bruodher scal, in thiu, thaz er mig sosoma duo; indi mit Ludheren in non-heiniu thing ne gegango the minan willon imo ce scadhen werhen.

Ever since this event Alsace has occupied the European historical stage as a bone of contention between German-speaking peoples and their rivals of French speech. A year had hardly elapsed after this exchange of pledges, when the division of the Frankish Empire between the grandsons of Charles the Great was formally settled by the treaty of Verdun. Lothaire, the eldest brother, was awarded Alsace and Lorraine. From this time on, Alsace became a part of the lands of German speech which form a compact block in central Europe. In 1469, however, Sigismund of Austria mortgaged his land holdings in Upper Alsace to Charles of Burgundy who thereby assumed jurisdiction over the districts affected by the mortgage. The treaty of St. Omer which contains the terms of this transaction paved the way for subsequent French intervention in both Alsace and Lorraine. Accordingly, a few years later, by the treaty of Nancy (1473), Charles of Burgundy was recognized by René II of Lorraine as the “protector” of Lorraine.

It was only in the seventeenth century, however, that France obtained a definite foothold in Alsace and Lorraine. In 1648, the country won by treaty settlement her long contested rights in Alsace. The treaties of Nimwegen (1679) and Ryswick (1697) confirmed Louis XIV in his possession of the major portion of Alsace. By that time French influence had acquired a paramount share in both of the border provinces. Lorraine, however, was not formally ceded to France until the treaty of Vienna was signed in 1738. French sovereignty over Alsace was confirmed again by the treaty of Lunéville, in 1801, and by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. It was to last until 1871. In that year Alsace and Lorraine became part of the newly constituted German Empire, the cession being determined by Arts. I to IV of the treaty of Frankfort.

The preceding paragraphs show that the earliest form of French and German nationality assumed shape immediately after the treaty of Verdun and at about the time when the language spoken in these countries began to present similarity to the forms used at present. In the partition of Charlemagne’s empire only two of the three divisions were to survive. The western evolved finally into modern France. The easternmost became Germany. Lying between the two, Lothringia naturally became the coveted morsel which crumbled to pieces in the struggle waged for its possession.

A highway of migration cannot be the abode of a pure race. Its inhabitants necessarily represent the successive human groups by which it has been overrun.[29] The Alsatian of the present day is, accordingly, a product of racial mingling. But the blending has conferred distinctiveness, and Alsatians, claiming a nationality of their own, find valid arguments in racial antecedents no less than in geographical habitation. The uniform appearance of the Alsatian region strikes the traveler at every point of the fertile Ill valley, where the soil is colored by a reddish tinge which contrasts strongly with the greens and grays of surrounding regions. By race also the Alsatian represents a distinct group in which the basal Alpine strain has been permeated by strong admixtures of Nordic blood. The confusion of dark and fair types represent the two elements in the population. In a broader sense the Alsatians are identical with the Swiss population to the south and the Lorrains and Walloons to the north—in fact, they are related to the peoples of all the districts which once constituted the Middle Kingdom of Burgundy.

Although sharply defined by nature, Alsace never acquired independence. Its situation between the areas peopled by two powerful continental races was fatal to such a development. But the influence of its physical setting always prevailed, for, despite its political union with Frenchmen or Germans, the region has always been recognized as an administrative unit defined by the surface features which mark it off from surrounding regions. The influence of topographic agencies has even been felt within the province. The separation of Lower from Higher Alsace originated in a natural boundary, formed by a marshy and forest-clad zone extending from the Tännchal and Hochkönigsberg mountains to the point of nearest convergence between the Rhine and the Vosges. This inhospitable tract first separated the two Celtic tribes known as the Sequani and the Mediomatrici. Later, it afforded a convenient demarcation for the Roman provinces of Maxima Sequanorum and Tractus Mediomatricorum. The two archbishoprics of Besançon and Mayence, both of Middle-Age fame, were similarly divided. The coins of Basel and of Strassburg point to the subsistence of this line during the Renaissance, when two distinct territories of economic importance extended over the region. In the administrative France of modern days, the departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin again reveal adherence to the dividing line provided originally by nature. Finally after the German annexation of 1871 the “districts” constituted under German authority, with Colmar and Strassburg as their chief towns, conformed once more with the historical line of division.

The Vosges[30] uplift has been until recent times the means of barring intercourse between the plains facing its eastern and western slope. The chain has prevented communication on account of the height of its passes, its thickly forested slopes and the sterility of its soil. The influence of these mountains on European history deserves contrast with that of the Alps where nature’s provision of passes and defiles has at all times facilitated land travel in and out of the Italian peninsula. Primitive wandering tribes found but scant inducement to settle in the mountainous area of the Vosges. Pastoral Celts settled in its environing plains long before they attempted to occupy the rocky mass itself. The Teutonic tribes which followed the Celts likewise found little to attract them to the Vosges, and generally migrated southward around its northern and southern extremity, the former route being that of the Franks while the Goths, Burgundians and Alemanni invaded France through the Belfort gap.

Alsace was a province of German speech throughout the Middle Ages as well as after Louis XIV’s conquest of the land. French took a solid foothold mainly after the revolution and during the nineteenth century. An enlightened policy of tolerance towards Alsatian institutions cemented strong ties of friendship between the inhabitants and their French rulers. Alsatian leanings towards France were regarded with suspicion by the victors of 1870, who proceeded to pass prohibitory laws regarding the use of French in primary schools, churches and law courts. These measures of Germanization were attended by a notable emigration to France. In 1871 there were 1,517,494 inhabitants in Alsace-Lorraine. The number had decreased to 1,499,020 in 1875 in spite of 52.12 per cent excess of births over deaths.

Nancy, by its situation, was destined to welcome Alsatians who had decided to remain faithful to France. The number of immigrants to this city after the Franco-Prussian war was estimated at 15,000.[31] Pressing need of workingmen in the city’s growing industrial plants intensified this movement. Alsatian dialects were the only languages heard in entire sections of the urban area. Peopled by about 50,000 inhabitants in 1866, Nancy’s population jumped to 66,303 in 1876. Metz, on the other hand, with a population of 54,820 inhabitants in 1866, could not boast of more than 45,675 in 1875. The census taken in 1910 raised this figure to 68,598 by the addition of the garrison maintained at this point. Altogether it was estimated that, in 1910, French was spoken by 204,262 inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, out of a total population of 1,814,564.[32]

The present line of linguistic demarcation in Alsace-Lorraine rarely coincides with the political boundary. Conformity between the two lines is observable only in stretches of their southernmost extension. East and southeast of Belfort, however, two well-defined areas of French speech spread into German territory at Courtavon and Montreux. In the elevated southern section of the Vosges, the line runs from peak to peak with a general tendency to sway east of the crest line and to reveal conspicuous deflections in certain high valleys of the eastern slope. Its irregularity with respect to topography may be regarded as an indication of the fluctuations of protohistoric colonization.

From Bären Kopf to about 10 miles beyond Schlucht Pass, the mountainous divide and the linguistic line coincide. Farther north, however, French prevails in many of the upper valleys of the Alsatian slope. This is true of the higher sections of the Weiss basin, as well as of the upper reaches of the Bruche. At a short distance south of the sources of the Liepvre, parts of the valley of Markirch (Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines) are likewise French. Here, however, the influx of German miners, who founded settlements as far back as the seventeenth century, converted the district into an area linguistically reclaimed by Germans.

The linguistic boundary in the valley of the Bruche corresponds to the dividing line between houses of the Frank-Alemannic style and those of the purely Alemannic.[33] Villages of the Frank-Lorrainer style, in which narrow façades, flat roofs and close lining-up of houses are observable, belong to the period of French influence which followed the Thirty Years’ war and should not be confused with the former types. In Lorraine the houses are built with their longest sides parallel to the street. The entrance leads into the kitchen; rooms occupy the left wing of the building, the right providing stable space. In some respects this structure recalls the Saxon houses met east of the Elbe valley. The characteristic feature of the Lorraine dwelling, however, is found in the construction of the entrance on the long side, whereas in the German type of house it lies under a gable on the short side. As a rule the Alemannic type of house prevails in the mountainous sections and attains the valleys of the Meurthe. In the Vosges, Black Forest and Swabia these dwellings are distinguishable by their characteristic inclusion of all outhouses and barns under a single roof. In the densely peopled valley of the Bruche the most important settlements rest on the alluvial terraces of its affluents. In the upper valley the villages are scattered on rocky amphitheaters, and here the Celtic type of settlement is oftener met.

Witte’s studies show that, in Alsace,[34] the delimitation of the Germanic and Romanic domain is somewhat more complicated than in Lorraine. Valuable clues are generally afforded by toponymic data. The Alemanni are responsible for the suffix “heim.” Towns and villages with names bearing this suffix are restricted to the plain. The dividing line extends on the west to the sub-Vosgian foreland and attains the forest of the Haguenau on the north. This last section corresponds to the beginning of an area of Frankish colonization having its center at Weissenburg. The suffix “ingen,” which occurs in place names of southern Alsace, is likewise Alemannic. It is supposed to correspond, however, to a later period of settlement. The ending “weiler” accompanies the names of villages found on the heights.

These data led Witte to assume that the Celto-Roman natives of the plains were thrust back towards the mountains by the Alemannic invasion proceeding from the east. The designation “weiler,” which is also spelled “weyer,” “weyr” and “wir,” indicates the mountain sites to which the population of the plain was repelled by the Germanic flow. The Vosges mountains have thus been a place of refuge against Germanic aggression. Witte’s researches point to the probable peopling of the Alsatian slopes of the Vosges by tribes speaking a Romanic language during the invasions of Teutonic barbarians. The so-called Welsh element appears to be a Celto-Roman remnant of the population of the locality.[35]

The character of Alsace-Lorraine as a connecting region between two great European nations is shown also by demographic studies.[36] Life in the provinces is accompanied by conditions which prevail in Germany or France. The excess of births over deaths, which maintains itself on an average at about 10 per 1,000, is lower than in any other part of the German Empire. The rate of birth has decreased from 36 to 28 per 1,000 in spite of an increase in the population. The tendency of the inhabitants to emigrate is evinced by the large number of uninhabited houses. The decrease in the native population is largely due to the desire of many of the inhabitants to emigrate to French soil. In 1875 the proportion of native-born inhabitants amounted to 93 per cent of the total population. In 1905 it did not exceed 81 per cent. The strictly German element had grown from 38,000 in 1875 to 176,000 in 1905. Fully 90 per cent of these are native-born Prussians. Among them the teaching of French to children has increased. Molsheim, in Lower Alsace, and Ribeauvillé, in Upper Alsace, are centers for the study of French. In recent years German immigrants have become the preponderant element of the province.

Two methods of indicating the presence of a French element in Alsace-Lorraine are given in the accompanying map ([Pl. II]) of this region. The method of showing percentages according to administrative districts[37] has been contrasted with the plan of representing the actual extension of French predominance.[38] In one respect the map is illuminating. It shows the concordance of French and German authorities regarding the German character of the language spoken in Alsace, as well as the French nature of a substantial portion of Lorraine. The Rhine valley, a natural region, appears throughout as an area of German speech. The startling preference of Alsatians for French nationality cannot therefore be substantiated by geographical evidence. It suggests the persistent influence of the human will swayed by feelings of justice and moral affinity rather than by material considerations.

To primitive societies, a river as large as the Rhine provided almost as impassable a frontier as the sea itself. It had the advantage of being defined by nature. The boundary was actually marked on the ground. As frontiers of the Roman Empire, the Rhine and the Danube proved their practical value by the long period during which they marked the extent of imperial or republican domain. The history of oversea colonization indicates the partiality of colonial powers for rivers as boundaries. It is likely that in the very early period of man’s habitation of the earth, the tribes settled on either side of watercourses had little or no intercourse. As they advanced in civilization relations were developed. The divisive influence of running waters was therefore exerted most strongly at the dawn of human history. Later the river may become a link and finally may attain the stage when it is a rallying line for the activity and thought of the inhabitants of its entire valley.

The American Geographical Society of New York

Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. II

View larger image here

THE FRANCO-GERMAN LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY IN ALSACE-LORRAINE

The Gallo-Teutonic line of the Rhine was the scene of many a struggle during the reign of Clovis. In the days of Charlemagne the dwellers on the right bank of the Rhine were the “gens atroces et féroces” of French chroniclers. They represented northern barbarians, the foes of Christianity and of the civilization which Rome had given to the world. Before becoming a German river the Rhine flowed in a valley peopled by inhabitants of Celtic speech. The name it bears is of Celtic origin. When men of Teutonic speech began to press westward, the river supplied a natural moat which, for a long period, had formed part of the system of defense devised by the earlier inhabitants of the land. The strength of the position is attested by the slowness of Germanic infiltration on the left bank of the river. To this day the valley province owes more to France in thought and ideals than to any other country. The Alsatian temperament has much of that mental sunshine which Mirabeau calls the “fond gaillard.” This is assuredly not derived from Germany. His wit is of the true Gallic type—mocking, and tending to the Rabelaisian; its geniality is reserved for France and French institutions, its caustic side for Germany and Germans. It could never have proceeded from the ponderous Teutonic mentality. Alsatians are French in spirit because they know how to laugh well, to laugh as civilized men with the cheer that brightens the good and the irony that draws out in full relief the ugliness of evil.

The spread of the French language in Alsace after the conquest of Strassburg by the soldiers of Louis XIV was slow. The French governors of the province never compelled the Alsatians to study their language. Up to the time of the French Revolution, French served as the medium of intercourse in official circles and among the nobility. The mass of the people, however, retained their vernacular. Freedom, granted by the French civil administration, was equally maintained by the official representatives of French ecclesiastical authority. Religious tolerance in Alsace was felt notably at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the province being probably the only one in which Protestant Frenchmen were unmolested. Moral ties with France were thus cemented by the extremely liberal character of French rule.

The French Revolution was enthusiastically welcomed by the democratically inclined Alsatians. This event in fact consolidated Alsace’s union with France. French military annals of the period contain a high proportion of Alsatian names. A community of ideas and interests had come into being. The study of French was taken up with renewed enthusiasm in Alsace because the language was the agency by which the new spirit of the time was propagated. It became the medium of communication among thinkers. The revolution of 1848 accentuated this tendency. By that time every Alsatian who could boast of any schooling knew French. This linguistic conquest of Alsace was the result of sympathy with French thought and ideals.

The German method of imposing the rival tongue was distinctly different. All the brutality which attends misconceptions of efficiency among petty officials was given free rein in the process of replacing French by German. A stroke of the pen on April 14, 1871, suppressed teaching of French in the primary schools of the annexed territory. In other educational establishments the study of the language was relegated to the position of minor courses. It is worth mentioning that Alsace and Lorraine are the only territorial units of the German Empire in which the study of French has met opposition on the part of the government. The interest shown for the Romance language elsewhere in the Kaiser’s land contrasts with the efforts made to root it out of Alsatian soil.

The unrelenting activity of the Prussian officials stationed in Alsace-Lorraine has borne fruit, for the use of French by the inhabitants is on the wane. This is partly due, however, to the emigration of a large number of native-born Alsatians and the swarm of settlers brought from other sections of Germany. In one respect the results of the Germanizing propaganda have differed from expectations. They have tended to foster the development of Alsatian dialects as well as the spirit of nationality among the people. Alsatians preferred to become proficient in their own tongue rather than in German. At the same time, if Alsace is to be German, they are united in the desire to see their native province form part of the Empire on a footing similar to that of other German states. They apprehend eventual absorption by Prussia as much as the prolongation of the present “Reichsland” status of their native land.

The European war brought its train of trials to Alsatians no less than to other European peoples. French papers contain the complaints of natives of Alsace and Lorraine serving in German regiments to the effect that their officers exposed them to the worst dangers of war with undue harshness. It is not unlikely that at the cessation of hostilities the number of native-born Alsatians will have dwindled to insignificant proportion. A plebiscite on the fate of the province, taken then, might help German designs. But since a revision of the Franco-German boundary seems inevitable, a preliminary solution might be found in the abrogation of the treaty of Frankfort. The final settlement of the problem will be equitable only when the desires of native-born Alsatians shall have been taken into consideration.

Beyond Alsace, French and German languages meet along a line which extends across western Swiss territory to the Italian frontier.[39] Its present course has been maintained since the fifteenth century.[40] Beginning at Charmoille, north of the Bernese Jura, the linguistic frontier strikes east towards Montsevilier,[41] after which it makes a sharp turn to the southwest as it follows the strike of the Jura mountains. In this region the historical division between Teutonic and Latin civilization occurs in the valley of Delémont through which the Sorne flows. Teutonic invaders never succeeded in penetrating beyond the Vorburg barrier. East of the Jura, the line passes through Bienne, Douane and Gléresse. At Neuveville the valley is French. The line follows thence the course of the Thièle. With the exception of its northeastern shore all Lake Neuchâtel is surrounded by French-speaking communities. The parting next coincides with the line of the Broye river and extends across the waters of lake Morat. The western and southern shores of the lake are likewise French. It then skirts the banks of the Sarine until it reaches Fribourg, which it cuts into two portions. A strenuous struggle for linguistic supremacy is maintained at this urban edge of French-speaking territory. Inside the city’s line, German is spoken principally in the quarters tenanted by the laboring classes. With the middle classes both language and tradition are largely French.

In the twelfth century Fribourg had been turned into a fortified outpost of German power by the Dukes of Zähringen.[42] The city’s position between the Alps and the Jura favored its selection for this aggressive purpose. German language flourished under the shadow of its castles and probably would have taken deeper root among its citizens but for one fact. At the time of the Reformation, the Fribourgers decided to stand with the Roman Church. This decision converted the city into a haven to which the Catholic clergy of French-speaking Switzerland repaired; and the Bishopric of Lausanne was transferred to Fribourg, where it became the headquarters of active French propaganda.

Fig. 15—The shady arcades and sunny streets of Lugano in the Swiss area of Italian languages recall the typical aspects of Italian cities.

Fig. 16—The basin of Lake Geneva is an ancient domain of French language in Switzerland.

Fig. 17—Basel in German Switzerland recalls German cities. The Marketplace and the Government House (on left) are seen in this view.

It should not be taken for granted from what has been said that the cause of French in Switzerland is related to Catholicism. The case of Fribourg is an isolated one. At Bienne, another of the cities on the linguistic divide, the growth of French has an entirely different origin. This city is the center of an important watch-making district. The growth of its native industry favored rapid increase in its population. But the new citizens were drawn principally from the mountainous region of which Bienne is the outlet. The French-speaking highlanders swelled the ranks of the city’s French contingent to such an extent that, from numbering one-fourth of the population in 1888, it had grown to one-third in 1900. The German-speaking farmers of the plains surrounding Bienne, however, were never attracted by the prospect of factory work. At present Bienne’s population is believed to be equally divided between the two tongues.

Fig. 18—The boundary between French and German in Switzerland. Scale, 1:1,435,000.

From Fribourg the line takes a straight course to the Oldenhorn. Here it elbows eastward to Wildstrubel and attains the Valais country. In the upper valley of the Rhone, the line becomes well defined as it coincides with the divide between the Val d’Anniviers and Turtman Thal. In the Haut Valais the construction of the Simplon tunnel appears to have affected German adversely and to have caused an extension of French speech in the region. The recession of German from the Morge valley to the east of Sierre lies within the memory of living natives. The linguistic line finally cuts across the Rhone valley above Sierre and strikes the Dent d’Hérens on the Italian frontier. In southeastern Switzerland, French surrounds the uninhabited massif Mont Blanc. One would naturally expect to find this language confined to the western slopes of the uplift only. But the inhabitants of Bas-Valais districts and of the Aosta valley speak French as fluently as the population of the elevated valleys of Savoy.

The prevalence of French has been shown to be due to the direction of travel in this mountainous region. The two St. Bernard Passes, the “Col du Grand St. Bernard” and the “Col du Petit St. Bernard,” have determined the route along which human displacements could be undertaken with a minimum of effort.[43] The road encircles that famous Alpine peak. It has acted as a channel through which French has flowed into areas of Italian and German speech. This instance may well be adopted as a classical example of the influence of geography in the distribution of linguistic areas.

The origin of linguistic differences in Switzerland may be traced to the dawn of the period that followed Roman conquest. At the time of Caesar’s invasion of Helvetia, the mountainous land was peopled by men of Celtic speech. Barbarian invasions put an end to the uniformity of language prevailing in the country. Romance language survived in the highlands of the Jura and throughout the western sections of Switzerland. The Celtic and Latin languages spoken in the first five centuries of our era gave birth to French. The Burgundian conquerors themselves adopted this language at the time of the foundation of the first kingdom of Burgundy. German, on the other hand, is a relic of Teutonic invasion of eastern and central Switzerland. In the sixth century, the Alemanni took advantage of the weakening of the Burgundian Kingdom to spread beyond the Aar and overrun the attractive lake district. By the eleventh century they had succeeded in imposing their language on the native populations of the Fribourg and Valais country. The reunion of the two states under the reign of Clovis failed to unify the language of Switzerland. A split occurred again after the partition of Charlemagne’s dominions, followed by another period of joint political life until the death of Berthold V of Zähringen. After this event the consolidation of languages became impossible in Switzerland. The rivalry of the Alemanni and Burgundian kingdoms was maintained among Swiss populations. In feudal days, German Switzerland acknowledged the suzerainty of Hapsburg counts. Romanic Switzerland, on the other hand, leaned towards the House of Savoy.

That the area of French speech has receded during our era cannot be doubted. There was a time when French was spoken on the left bank of the Aar, from its headwaters to below Berne. At three different periods of history the German language made notable strides in Switzerland. Its earliest forward move occurred between the fifth and ninth centuries. Another advance took place between the eleventh and the thirteenth. The language made further progress during the religious struggles of the Reformation. Each of these periods was followed by partial regain of lost territory by French language. But the French gains fell short of the Germanic advances. Since the eighteenth century very little variation in the line has been recorded. A slight advance of French in the nineteenth century can be traced.

In the minds of Pan-Germanists a significant proof of the progress of French is seen in cases of the replacement of the word “Bahnhof” by “gare” at railroad stations—as for example along the mountainous tract between Viège and Zermatt. They also complain of the introduction of French words and expressions in the German spoken by Swiss citizens. To the tourist’s eye the advance of German in the Swiss villages of the Grisons Alps is indicated by the red-tiled roofs in the midst of gray shingled roofs. This is noticeable in the Albula valley where Romansh was formerly the only language of the natives. Now the old Romansh dwellings with their low roofs, white walls and narrow windows are disappearing before the wooden houses of the German settlers.

According to the census of 1910 there were 796,244 inhabitants of Switzerland who spoke French. This was about one-third of the country’s total population. Of this number, 765,373 were dwellers in French Switzerland, which comprises the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, a portion of the cantons of Valais and Fribourg and the Bernese Jura. The remainder were scattered in the German and Italian districts of the Republic. Notable colonies of French-speaking Swiss in the midst of the area of German speech are found at Berne and Basel. In all, three of the twenty-two cantons are of French speech. Fribourg and Valais contain French-speaking majorities.[44] The canton of Tessin with its 140,000 inhabitants is Italian in language. In Berne the majority of the city’s population speak German, only 120,000 inhabitants out of a total of 600,000 using French.

The history of Switzerland shows that at bottom neither language nor physical or racial barriers suffice to constitute nationality. Human desire to achieve and maintain national independence, or to establish liberal institutions, depends on will or purpose far more than on physical facts. Diversity of language never impaired Switzerland’s existence as a sovereign nation. Racial heterogeneity in its population likewise failed to weaken national feeling. Over such natural drawbacks the indomitable determination of free-born Helvetians to maintain their country’s sovereignty has prevailed. Frenchmen and Germans have always been warring elements in Switzerland, but animosity bred by racial differences invariably disappeared in matters where national existence was at stake. A bond of patriotism based on common religious and democratic ideals proved strong enough to overcome divergencies due to natural causes.