Note 311 — Chapter VI · —Geographical Area

An important factor in the preservation of national consciousness and the spread of national influence is always a national language and literature. This principle is recognized by the government of the Czar in its Russification of Finland,311 Poland, and the German centers in the Baltic provinces, when it substitutes Russian for the local language in education, law courts and all public offices, and restricts the publication of local literature. The survival of a language and its literature is intimately connected with area and the population which that area can support. The extinction of small, weak peoples has its counterpart in the gradual elimination of dialects and languages having restricted territorial sway, whose fate is foreshadowed by the unequal competition of their literatures with those of numerically stronger peoples. An author writing in a language like the Danish, intelligible to only a small public, can expect only small returns for his labor in either influence, fame, or fortune. The return may be so small that it is prohibitive. Hence we find the Danish Hans Christian Andersen and the Norwegian Ibsen writing in German, as do also many Scandinavian scientists. Georg Brandes abandons his native Danish and seeks a larger public by making English the language of his books. The incentive to follow a literary career, especially if it includes making a living, is relatively weak among a people of only two or three millions, but gains enormously among large and cultivated peoples, like the seventy million German-speaking folk of Europe, or the one hundred and thirty millions of English speech scattered over the world. The common literature which represents the response to this incentive forms a bond of union among the various branches of these peoples, and may be eventually productive of political results.