Note 232 — Chapter IV · —The Movements Of Peoples In Their Geographical Significance

Strong peoples, like the English, French, Russians and Chinese, occupy ever larger areas. Where an adverse climate precludes genuine colonization, as it did for the Spanish in Central and South America, and for the English and Dutch in the Indies, they make their civilization, if not their race, permeate the acquired territory, and gradually impose on it their language and economic methods. The Poles, who once boasted a large and distinguished nationality, are being Germanized and Russified to their final national extinction. The Finns, whose Scandinavian offshoot has been almost absorbed in Sweden,232 are being forcibly dissolved in the Muscovite dominion by powerful reägents, by Russian schoolmasters, a Russian priesthood, Russian military service.