CHAPTER VII

THE ISSUES OF THE WAR

"March ahead of the ideas of your age, and it will follow you: go

with them, and you can feel at ease: remain behind them, and you are

lost."--NAPOLEON III.

§1. _Is there an Idea behind the War?_--The object of the preceding

chapters has been to provide the historic background without which it is

impossible to understand either the motives of our opponents or the events

which led up to their quarrel. It is now necessary to attempt a survey of

the issues raised by the war, both as concerns Europe as a whole and the

individual nations which form its component parts. This is a task of no

small difficulty, for just as it is true to say that no war in the previous

history of mankind has ever been waged on so huge a scale as this, so it is

also true to say that the issues raised by it are vaster and more varied

than those of any previous European conflict. It is as though by the

pressure of an electric button some giant sluice had been opened,

unchaining forces over which mortal men can hardly hope to recover control

and whose action it is wellnigh impossible to foresee.

Yet complex as is the problem before us, it is essential that we should

face it bravely. There is grave danger lest, just as we have been "rushed

into" this war (through no fault of ours, as the diplomatic correspondence

abundantly proves), so we may at a given moment be "rushed out" of it,

without having reached any very clear idea as to what issues are involved,

and how far our vital interests have been affected.

The essence of the problem before us is to discover whether there is an

Idea behind this war--whether on our own side or on that of the enemy. A

dangerous question, this!--a question posed again and again by the jingoes

and the fanatics of history, and invariably answered according to the

dictates of their own convenience. And yet a question which we dare not

shirk, a question which a Carlyle, a Ruskin, a William Morris would not

have hesitated to formulate. Does Britain stand for an Idea? Is it true

that we are fighting in the main for the cause of Liberty and Democracy,

for progress in Europe and the world at large? And if this be really true

to-day, how can we best ensure that it shall still be true at the close

of this long war, if, as we hope and pray, victory crowns the arms of

the Allies? It was an Idea that nerved Britain for the struggle against

Napoleon. It was an Idea that inspired Germany in the great uprising of

1813 against Napoleon. It was an Idea that brought the Balkan League

into being and carried its armies in triumph to Salonica and Adrianople.

Freedom, Unity, Liberation, such were the forms which that Idea took: the

determination of a free people to resist an upstart despot's designs

of world-dominion; the enthusiasm of a divided nation for the dream of

national unity; the longing of races which had but recently won their own

freedom, to emancipate their kinsmen from an alien and oppressive yoke.

In each of these struggles error and even crimes were committed by the

victors, and yet it is a thousand times true to assert that the victorious

Idea represented in each case the triumph of civilisation. To-day the

position is equally clear. In opposing Germany's claim to override

international treaty obligations to suit the convenience of her military

strategists, in associating ourselves with Belgium and Serbia in their

vindication of the rights of the smaller nations, we are not merely

resisting a fresh bid for world-dominion on the part of a single power, but

are challenging the theory that Might is superior to Right in the political

world.

§2. _The Aims of British Statesmanship._--Mr. Asquith on September 19

defined as follows the three main aims of British statesmanship in entering

upon war: "(1) To vindicate the sanctity of treaty obligations and what is

properly called the public law of Europe, (2) to assert and to enforce

the independence of free States, relatively small and weak, against the

encroachments and the violence of the strong, and (3) to withstand, as

we believe in the best interests not only of our own Empire, but of

civilisation at large, the arrogant claim of a single Power to dominate the

development of the destinies of Europe." In speaking thus, Mr. Asquith had

no intention of placing Britain upon a moral pedestal or of suggesting that

we have ever enjoyed a monopoly of political right dealing. Every nation

has blots upon its scutcheon; and the cynic may point to the Irish Union,

the destruction of the Danish fleet, the Cyprus Convention, as proofs that

we have richly earned the name of "Perfidious Albion." Let us forego the

patriotic retort which would fling in Prussia's teeth such incidents as the

conquest of Silesia, the partition of Poland, the Ems telegram, the seizure

of Kiaochau. But let us, while admitting our shortcomings in the past, nail

our colours to the mast and insist that this war shall never degenerate

into one of mere revenge or aggrandisement, that the fate of the nations of

Europe shall be decided, so far as possible, in accordance with their own

aspirations rather than the territorial ambitions of dynasties or racial

cliques.

Is it, then, possible, when considering the lines of settlement, to lay

down any general principles? The Europe which we have known has gone

beyond recall; the new Europe which is coming to birth will be scarcely

recognisable to those who have known its predecessor. Its political,

racial, social, economic outlook will be radically changed. Let us then

meet fate halfway and admit boldly that we _want_ a new Europe. But let us

bear in mind the fiery process by which a huge bell is forged and the fate

which befell the impatient apprentice who opened the furnace doors too

soon. The Prussian leaders, to whom war is an ideal and a programme, are

entitled, if fortune should desert them, to manoeuvre for a "draw"; for

they would console themselves with the hope of winning a subsequent match.

But to us, who regard war as a hateful necessity, from which we do not

shrink, but which we did everything in our power to avert--to us there

can be no thought of relinquishing our task, until there is a reasonable

prospect of a really lasting settlement. We should need no prompting from

our statesmen to realise that this must be "a fight to a finish." There

must be no reversion to the _status quo_, that accursed device of a

worn-out diplomacy, with its inevitable seeds of new quarrels and yet

another Armageddon.

Public Law, Nationality, and a general reduction of armaments (as

distinguished from complete disarmament) are the three foundation stones

of the new era, as already envisaged in the public utterances of those who

have some right to speak for the Triple Entente. Let us then endeavour to

apply these principles to the various problems raised by the war. It is

obvious that their application depends upon the victory of the Allies. If

we are defeated, public law will have lost its value, for the Germans will

have asserted their right to violate its fundamental provisions. The idea

of Nationality will have received its death-blow; for not only will the

independence of several of the smaller nations have been destroyed,

but Germany will have reasserted her right to dominate her own minor

nationalities, and to drain the life-blood of the 26 million Slavs of

Austria-Hungary in a conflict with their own Slavonic kinsmen. Finally,

all hope of reduced armaments will have been exploded, since the theory of

Blood and Iron will have attained its fullest expression in the virtual

domination of a single power on land and sea. Regrets or misgivings we may

have, but the time for their utterance has long since passed. The British

nation must have no illusions; defeat means the downfall of the Empire, and

the reduction of Britain to the position of a second-rate power. Either we

shall emerge victorious, or for all practical purposes we shall not emerge

at all. Even if _we_ shrink from a "fight to a finish," our enemies can be

relied upon to persist to the bitter end. It is for this reason only, and

not because I underestimate for a moment the vast resources, the splendid

organisation, the military valour of Germany, that I restrict myself in

the following pages to a consideration of the possible effects of victory

rather than of defeat. It would be the height of folly to anticipate

victory before it is achieved; but it is essential that we should be

prepared for all possible contingencies, and this involves a careful survey

of the various factors in an extraordinarily complicated situation.

§3. _Britain and Germany._--In the forefront of the discussion stands our

quarrel with Germany. What are to be our future relations with Germany

after the war? If there is anything in the assertion that we are fighting

for the cause of liberty and progress, it can only mean that we are

fighting a system rather than a nation--Prussian militarism and

bureaucracy, but not German civilisation. We have to go still further and

consider the motive powers behind that iron system. Sitting in our little

island, we are apt to forget what it means to possess a purely artificial

frontier of 400 miles, and to see just beyond it a neighbour numbering

171,000,000 inhabitants, in an earlier stage of civilisation and capable of

being set in motion by causes which no longer operate in the western world.

If the final settlement is to be just and lasting, the demands of the

victors must be adjusted to the minimum, not the maximum, of their own

vital interests. For Britain the central problem must inevitably be: What

is to be the position of the German Navy if we are successful in this war?

Is anything even remotely resembling disarmament to be attained unless that

Navy is rendered innocuous? Is it conceivable that even if Britain accepted

the _status quo_, a victorious Russia could ever tolerate a situation which

secured to Germany the naval supremacy of the Baltic, and the possibility

of bottling Russian sea-trade? Even the opening months of the war have

shown what ought always to have been obvious, that sea-power differs from

land-power in one vital respect: military supremacy can be shared between

several powerful States, but naval supremacy is one and indivisible. In

this war we shall either maintain and reassert our command of the sea, or

we shall lose it: share it with Germany we shall not, because we cannot.

Again, what is to be the fate of German shipping and German colonies? Can

we not curtail Germany's war navy, while respecting her mercantile marine?

Is it either expedient or necessary to exact the uttermost farthing in the

colonial sphere in the event of victory? It is obvious that just as Germany

offered to respect French territory in Europe at the expense of the French

colonial empire, so the Allies, if victorious, might divide the German

colonies between them. By so doing, however, we shall provide, in the eyes

of the German nation, a complete justification of William II.'s naval

policy. One of the most widespread arguments among educated Germans

(including those friendly to this country) has always been that German

colonies and shipping are at the mercy of a stronger sea-power, and that

therefore Germany only holds her sea-trade on sufferance. If, as a result

of the war, we take from her all that we can, we shall ingrain this

point of view in every German. We should thus tend to perpetuate the old

situation, with its intolerable competition of armaments, unless indeed

we could reduce Germany to complete bankruptcy--a thing which is almost

inconceivable to those who know her resources and which would deprive us of

one of our most valuable customers.

On the other hand, we must of course remember that any extra-European

territorial changes depend not merely upon the attitude of Britain and her

Allies, but upon the wishes of the Dominions. Even in the event of victory,

it is still not London alone that will decide the fate of New Guinea, of

Samoa, or of German South-West Africa. The last word will probably be

spoken by Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and it is improbable

that any one of the three will consent to the restoration of territory

which they have occupied. It is only in the case of German colonies which

border upon British Crown colonies _(e.g._ Togoland, Cameroon, or East

Africa) that the decision will rest entirely with the European governments.

At this stage it would be absurd to suggest even the bare outlines of a

settlement; but it is well to emphasize the fact that it involves not only

the United Kingdom but the Dominions, and that on its solution depends the

future development of the British Empire. In other words, the war can only

result in the downfall of the Empire or in the achievement of Imperial

Federation and a further democratisation of the central government.

§4. _Nationality and the German Empire._--Finally, there is a still graver

question. Is Germany, if defeated, to lose territory _in Europe_? and if

so, would it be either possible or expedient to compensate her in other

directions for such a loss? The application of the principle of

Nationality to the German Empire would affect its territory in three

directions--Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein, and Posen. Let us very

briefly consider these three problems.

[Illustration: THE FRANCO-GERMAN FRONTIER _Boundary of France 1815-1871_

and _Boundary of France 1871-1914_]

(1) The population of the two provinces of Alsace and Lorraine is mainly

German by race and language, but none the less it had become by 1870 almost

entirely French in feeling, as the result of its long union with France.

The Germans, in reannexing the provinces after the war, were actuated

almost equally by reasons of sentiment and strategy. They welcomed the

recovery of a section of their race which had been wrested from them by the

brutal aggression of Louis XIV. and the dynastic policy of his successor;

they also desired to secure their western frontier against the possible

attacks of France, which, under the Third Empire, was still most

emphatically an aggressive power. In drawing the new frontier they included

for purely strategic reasons a small portion of western Lorraine, round the

fortress of Metz, which was admittedly as French as Champagne or Picardy.

From 1871 till 1911, Alsace-Lorraine was governed as a direct appanage of

the Imperial Crown; in the latter year it received a constitution,

but nothing even remotely resembling self-government. Contrary to the

expectation of most Germans, the two provinces have not become German in

sentiment; indeed the unconciliatory methods of Prussia have steadily

increased their estrangement, despite their share in the commercial

prosperity of the Empire. Those who know intimately the undercurrents of

feeling in Alsace-Lorraine are unanimous in asserting that if before last

July an impartial plebiscite, without fear of the consequences, could have

been taken among the inhabitants, an overwhelming majority would have voted

for reunion with France. But having once been the battleground of the two

nations and living in permanent dread of a repetition of the tragedy, the

leaders of political thought in Alsace and Lorraine favoured a less drastic

solution. They knew that Germany would not relinquish her hold nor France

renounce her aspirations without another armed struggle; but they believed

that the grant of real autonomy within the Empire, such as would place them

on an equal footing with Würtemberg or Baden, would render their position

tolerable, and by removing the chief source of friction between France

and Germany, create the groundwork for more cordial and lasting relations

between Germany and the two Western Powers.[1] Now that the nightmare of

war has once more fallen upon them, the situation has radically changed,

and there can be no question that in the event of a French victory the

provinces would elect to return to France. The fact that several of their

leading politicians have fled to France and identified themselves with the

French cause, is symptomatic, though doubtless not conclusive. That the

government of the Republic, if victorious, will make the retrocession of

Alsace-Lorraine its prime condition of peace, is as certain as anything can

be certain in the seething pot to which triumphant militarism has reduced

unhappy Europe. It may, then, seem merely pedantic to refer to an

alternative solution; and yet there is unquestionably a great deal to be

said in favour of forming the two provinces into an independent State, or

better still, uniting them in federal union with Luxemburg and Belgium.

Thus would be realised that "Middle Kingdom" which so many efforts have

been made to create, from the days of Charlemagne onwards. Henceforward

the fate of Alsace-Lorraine would be neither French nor German; they would

become a neutral clearing-house for the two cultures which have both come

to be so inextricably bound up with the life and traditions of the border

race. At the same time the most fertile source of friction between France

and Germany would be removed, and the two countries would no longer glare

at each other across a frontier bristling with fortifications.

[Footnote 1: This ideal was being actively pursued by many thoughtful

people on both sides of the frontier. Only last June I was discussing it at

some length with a prominent Alsatian deputy and various other friends in

Berlin.]

(2) The problem of Schleswig-Holstein presents far less difficulty, if

treated on a basis of nationality. Much has been written about the enormity

of Prussia's treatment of Denmark in 1848 and 1863; but the plain truth

is that the great majority of the population of the two duchies was as

enthusiastic in favour of union with their German kinsmen farther south, as

the population of Alsace-Lorraine was reluctant to be torn from France. The

whole of Holstein and much the greater part of Schleswig always was, and

is, pure German by race. Unfortunately Prussia, in annexing territory

which is as German as Kent is English, also acquired a portion of North

Schleswig, which is as unquestionably Danish, alike by blood and by

sentiment. Hence a complete revision of frontiers on a racial basis would

certainly involve the cession to Denmark of the extreme eastern portions of

Schleswig, as far as and including the port of Flensburg.

To-day, however, this question is complicated by strategic considerations,

due to the creation of the Kiel Canal as an almost impregnable naval base.

The suggestion has already been seriously put forward, that Denmark should

be allowed, in the event of Germany's defeat, to extend her territory

as far as the north bank of the Canal, which would thus become an

international highway for peaceful commerce, possibly under a general

guarantee of neutrality. Whether such a present might not prove a very

grave embarrassment to Denmark, and whether the guarantee would be more

effectual than the treaty which secured Belgian independence, are questions

which depend mainly upon the mood of the peoples of Europe after they are

tired of shedding each other's blood. But it is well to realise that

the question of the Kiel Canal is one which may very possibly lead to a

prolongation of the war, and which, as I have already hinted, Russia will

not allow to rest, even if Britain should hesitate to complete the work.

(3) The third point at which, on a basis of racial redistribution, a

defeated Germany must inevitably suffer territorial loss, is the Polish

district on her eastern frontier. The present kingdom of Prussia includes

3,328,750 Poles among its subjects, mainly in the former duchy of Posen,

but also in Silesia and along the southern edge of West and East Prussia

(known as Mazurians and Kasubians). The pronouncedly anti-Polish policy

pursued by the German Government for over twenty years past has aroused

deep and insurmountable hatred against Prussia in the heart of the Poles,

who even in the days when Berlin was relatively conciliatory towards them

had never relinquished their passionate belief in the resurrection of their

country. Above all, the attempt to denationalise the eastern marches by

expropriation, colonisation of Germans, and other still cruder methods,

has not only been in the main unsuccessful, but it has roused the Poles

to formidable counter-efforts in the sphere of finance and agrarian

co-operation. This coincided with remarkable changes in Russian Poland,

which has rapidly become the chief industrial centre of the Russian Empire.

Economic causes have toned down the bitterness which Russia's cruel

repression of Polish aspirations had inspired, and to-day Prussia is

unquestionably regarded by every Pole as a far more deadly enemy than even

the Russian autocracy, the more so as the conviction has steadily gained

ground that the Polish policy of Petrograd has been unduly subject to the

directions of Berlin. While, then, the Poles look upon the promises from

either of these two capitals with pardonable suspicion and reserve, it

is certain that to-day such hopes as they may entertain from foreign aid

centre more and more upon Russia.

Any attempt to reconstruct the kingdom of Poland, whether as an independent

State or, as seems more practicable, as an autonomous unit within the

Empire of the Tsar, would inevitably deprive Prussia of the greater part of

the Duchy of Posen (except the three or four western "Kreise" or districts,

in which the German element predominates), a strip of eastern Silesia

from the upper reaches of the Vistula northwards, and a further strip of

territory in East Prussia, extending from near the fortress of Thorn along

the Mazurian lakes (in fact, the scene of the opening battles of the

present war). Polish extremists, however, not content with these

indubitably Polish districts, are already laying claim to the lower reaches

of the Vistula and to Danzig as the port of the historical Poland; and

there is a further tendency in certain Russian circles to regard the whole

province of East Prussia as part of the natural spoils of war. And yet it

is obvious that the annexation of Danzig,[1] one of the bulwarks of the old

Hanseatic League, and of Königsberg, the cradle of the Prussian Crown

and of modern German philosophy, would be a flagrant violation of that

principle of Nationality which the Allies have inscribed upon their banner.

The province of which Königsberg is the capital is to-day, whatever it may

have been in the twelfth century, as German as any portion of the German

Empire. Moreover, it is the stronghold of Junkerdom, that arrogant but

virile squirearchy which still forms the backbone of the old Prussian

system; and while it is doubtless the desire to undermine this caste

by robbing it of hearth and home that prompts such drastic schemes of

conquest, it cannot be too clearly realised that we should not only be

guilty of a monstrous injustice in lending our support, but should

be sowing the seeds of a new and even thornier problem than that of

Alsace-Lorraine. It would, moreover, be a superfluous injustice, since it

is perfectly possible to create on broad racial lines a new frontier at

least as natural as that which divides Russia and Germany to-day.

[Footnote 1: Strictly speaking, Danzig, though under Polish suzerainty till

1772, has always been a German town enjoying complete autonomy. It shares

the fame of Hamburg and Lübeck as one of the greatest of the mediaeval

Hansa towns.]

Such are the changes which an application of the principle of Nationality

involves. Let us then be under no illusions; they are changes such as can

only be extracted from a Germany which has virtually ceased to exist as a

military power--a contingency which is still remote to-day, and which can

only be attained by enormous sacrifices in blood and resources. It is only

by readjustment and compensation in other directions that the German nation

could be induced even to consider a revision of frontier, and from the

nature of things such compensation can only have one meaning--the break-up

of Austria-Hungary.

§5. _The Future of Austria-Hungary._--For many years this break-up has been

foretold by political pessimists inside and outside the Habsburg dominions,

and by many interested agitators both in Central and in Western Europe. The

present writer, on the other hand, has always regarded Austria-Hungary as

an organism full of infinite possibilities of progress and culture, a State

modelled upon that diversity of type which Lord Acton held to be the

surest guarantee of liberty. Those who affected to treat it as moribund

under-estimated both the underlying geographical bases of its existence and

its great natural resources; they emphasised what separates rather than

what unites. In short, they saw the rivalry between the two mottoes "Divide

et Impera" and "Viribus Unitis," and laid undue stress upon the former.

Just because they realised the extraordinarily complicated nature of the

racial problems involved, they tended to overlook the steady advance

made in recent years by Austria in the conceptions of political and

constitutional freedom. But at every turn Hungary has been Austria's evil

genius: the influence of the Magyar oligarchy has given a reactionary

flavour alike to internal and to foreign policy, has hampered every reform,

and poisoned the relations of the State with its southern neighbours.

[Illustration: AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: POLITICAL DIVISIONS]

For a short time the aggressive Balkan policy of Count Aehrenthal, as

exemplified in the annexation of Bosnia and the diplomatic duel with

Russia, was hailed as worthy of the Bismarckian tradition; but it soon

became clear that he was far from being the genius whose advent the

Monarchy was so anxiously awaiting. In recent years, then, despite many

hopeful signs, and despite increasing activity in almost every sphere of

life, a kind of progressive paralysis has taken hold upon the body-politic.

Three main causes may be noted--the lack of any great men capable of

counteracting the Emperor's lack of initiative, which was always very

marked, but has been accentuated by advancing old age; the superficial and

malicious outlook of the capital and the classes which control it; the

alliance between the Magyar oligarchy and the Jewish press and Haute

Finance, working in a pronouncedly anti-Slav direction. The wheels

still went round, but the machine of State made less and less progress:

stagnation and aimlessness were everywhere apparent. On all sides it was

recognised that the existing system had become unworkable, and that a

catastrophe could only be averted by speedy reforms. To many far-seeing

patriots the last hope of salvation for the State seemed to lie with the

late Heir-Apparent, not perhaps as the ideal Prince, but as a man of

courage and force of character, possessing the necessary energy to carry

through drastic political changes. His removal was a crushing blow to all

who still hoped against hope in the regeneration of the Monarchy. His place

was filled by a young man, lacking both experience and prestige; never was

there less sign of the heaven-born genius who alone could save a desperate

situation.

In the life of nations and States, as in that of individuals, there

sometimes comes a moment when it is possible to make the "Great Refusal"

of which Dante sang; and "History teaches that those who decline, or

prove unworthy of, the leading rôle which is offered to them, are trodden

mercilessly underfoot." In closing the German edition of my book with these

words, I expressed the conviction that "for a State such as Austria there

could only be one choice"; but unhappily her statesmen have preferred the

fatal alternative.[1] "The historic mission of the House of Habsburg is the

vindication of equal rights and liberties for all races committed to its

charge. The abandonment of this mission would endanger the very existence

of a Great Power upon the Middle Danube."[2] Austria has proved untrue to

this mission, and the inexorable forces of history seem at this moment to

be working her destruction. Nations, like individuals, sometimes commit

suicide; and those who have most earnestly warned them against such a crime

are left as mourners in the funeral procession.

[Footnote 1: In July 1911 I dedicated _The Southern Slav Question_ to "that

Austrian statesman who shall have the courage and the genius necessary to

solve the Southern Slav Question." In April 1913, in publishing a German

edition, I added the words, "At the twelfth hour this dedication is

repeated." In November 1914 it is unhappily only too evident that that hour

has already struck.]

[Footnote 2: See _Racial Problems in Hungary_, concluding sentence.]

The war-fever which seized upon the populace of Vienna and Budapest last

July typified the feelings of the three dominant races in the Monarchy, the

Germans, the Magyars, and the Jews; but it is no criterion for the attitude

of large masses of the population. In fact, the war has accentuated the

centrifugal tendencies which were so marked a feature of recent years, and

which the introduction of Universal Suffrage and the annexation of Bosnia

arrested but failed to eradicate; a stringent censorship may conceal, but

cannot alter, this fact. Disaffection is rife in portions of the army and

affects its powers of resistance, while the financial and economic crisis

grows from week to week. Cynics have tried to define the mutual relations

of Germany and Austria-Hungary by comparing the former to a strong man

carrying a corpse upon his shoulders, and the course of the war during

the first three months would seem to confirm this view. So far as

Austria-Hungary is concerned, its two outstanding features have been the

signal failure of the "punitive expedition" against Serbia and the debacle

of Auffenberg's army in Galicia. Friendly observers were prepared for a

break-down in the higher command and were aware that many Slav regiments

could not be relied upon, but they had expected more from the German and

Magyar sections of the army and from the very efficient officers' corps, as

a stiffening element. It is now known that despite the aggressive policy

of its chiefs, the Austro-Hungarian army was far from ready, and that its

commissariat and sanitary arrangements utterly broke down.

The evident failure to profit by the experience of two general

mobilisations within the previous six years is in itself a proof that there

is "something rotten in the state," and it is already obvious that only a

complete and crushing victory of Germany can extricate Austria-Hungary from

the war without loss of prestige and actual territory. Unless the Russians

can be not merely defeated but driven out, it is absolutely certain that

they will retain the province of Galicia, or at least the eastern portion,

with its Ruthene or Ukrainian population; unless the Serbian army can be

overwhelmed, Bosnia and at least some portion of Dalmatia will fall into

the hands of Serbia. This would be an eminently unsatisfactory solution

or rather it would be no solution at all, for it would solve neither the

Polish, the Ukraine, nor the Southern Slav questions. I merely refer to it

as a possible outcome of one form of stalemate; it is hardly necessary to

add that from every point of view stalemate is the result which is most

to be dreaded, since it inevitably involves fresh wars in the immediate

future. Whatever happens, the effete Dual System in its present form is

doomed, for while an Austrian defeat means dissolution, an Austrian victory

means the absorption of Serbia and Montenegro, and in either case the

balance between Austria and Hungary will be fatally disturbed and a new

constitutional arrangement rendered inevitable. It is thus a tragic paradox

that while the attempt to bolster up the Dual System was undoubtedly one of

the great underlying causes of the war, its first effect is likely to be

the collapse of that very system.

The Dual System once abolished, it might seem reasonable to aim at a

reconstruction of Austria-Hungary on a modified federal basis. But this was

essentially a peace-ideal. The war, far from kindling a common patriotism

which in Austria-Hungary was so conspicuous by its absence, has placed a

gulf of blood between race and race, and rendered their continued existence

under the same roof not only difficult but undesirable. Even in the event

of only relative failure on the part of Austria-Hungary a much more radical

solution may be expected, while the effect of her complete defeat would be

to place the solution of the whole "Austrian problem" in the hands of the

Entente Powers and of her own disaffected populations. In that case there

are two probable alternatives, one more radical than the other. Both depend

to a large extent upon the development of the military situation and upon

as yet incalculable economic influences, but it is possible to indicate

their broad outlines. Indeed, this is the best means of illustrating the

conflicting fears and aspirations which the great conflict has still

further intensified in the racial whirlpool of Central Europe. Let us

consider the less drastic of the two first.

Austria, as distinguished from Hungary, consists of seventeen provinces,

of which Galicia is the largest and most populous; yet there are many

Austrians who have long regarded its possession as anything but an unmixed

blessing for the Monarchy as a whole, and would scarcely regret its loss.

It has always occupied a peculiar autonomous position of its own; its

political, social, and economic conditions are at least a century behind

those of the neighbouring provinces, and have given rise to many gross

scandals. It has been a hot-bed of agrarian unrest, electoral corruption,

and international espionage. Instead of paying its own way, it has been

financially a heavy drag upon the State, while racially it provides, in the

Polish-Ruthene conflict, an object-lesson on the disagreeable fact that

an oppressed race can become an oppressor when occasion arises. But the

argument which weighs most with the Germans of Austria is that the Poles

of Galicia have for a whole generation held in their hands the political

balance in the Austrian Parliament, and that the disappearance of

the Polish and Ruthene deputies would destroy the Slav majority and

correspondingly strengthen the Germans. The Magyars in their turn would no

doubt view with some alarm the extension of the Russian frontier to the

line of the Carpathians; but the change would bring to them certain obvious

compensations, since it would greatly increase the relative importance of

Hungary inside what was left of the Habsburg Monarchy. In short, it is

by no means impossible that if the Russians succeed in holding Galicia,

Austria-Hungary may show a sudden alacrity to buy peace by disgorging a

province which has never wholly fitted into her geographical or political

system.

It is obvious that the fate of the small province of Bukovina is bound up

with that of Galicia; and in such circumstances as we have just indicated,

it would doubtless be divided between Russia and Roumania on broad

ethnographical lines, the northern districts being Ruthene, the southern

Roumanian. This, however, must depend upon the attitude of the kingdom of

Roumania, to which reference will be made later.

There is one other direction in which Austria could afford to surrender

territory, without serious loss save that of prestige. The southern portion

of Tirol--the so-called Trentino, the district round the town of Trent--is

purely Italian by race, and its union with the kingdom of Italy has long

been the chief point in the programme of the Italian Irredentists or

extreme Nationalists. It is a poor and mountainous country, which belongs

geographically to its southern rather than to its northern neighbour. The

pronouncedly Italian sympathies of its inhabitants have complicated the

problem of government and have been a permanent source of friction between

Austria and Italy. The elaborate fortifications along the existing frontier

would have to be sacrificed, but the new racial frontier could soon be made

equally satisfactory from a strategic point of view. It should then be

borne in mind that at a later stage of the war an attempt may be made by

Austria to buy off Italy with the offer of the Trentino. Whether the latter

would seriously consider such an offer, if made, will doubtless depend

upon future events, but it is clear that Italy, if her diplomatists are

sufficiently adroit, has a fair prospect of acquiring the Trentino,

whichever side wins, and consequently that a much more tempting bait will

be required in order to induce her to abandon her neutrality. These two

losses, the one already probable, the other hypothetical, would still leave

Austria in the unquestioned position of a Great Power. The problem of her

future relations with her Balkan neighbours raises an infinitely more

complicated issue. Let us consider the Southern Slav and Roumanian

questions, first separately, and then in their bearing upon each other.

§6. _The Southern Slav Question_.--The Southern Slav question, as

has already been argued in an earlier chapter, can only be treated

satisfactorily as an organic whole; and it may be taken for granted that

Austria-Hungary, in the event of victory, will annex the two independent

Serb kingdoms, and unite the whole Serbo-Croat race under Habsburg rule.

The task of governing them, when once she has overcome their resistance,

will be one of extraordinary difficulty, and will involve a complete

revision of her own standards of government and administration. Her record

and that of Hungary in the Slavonic South does not inspire one with

confidence as to the result. Moreover, it is not too much to assert that

the destruction of Serb independence--a task which the present writer

unhesitatingly regards as beyond the powers of Austria--will in no way

solve the Southern Slav problem, but merely transfer its centre of

gravity. The task of Southern Slav liberation would pass to Bulgaria, and

Austria-Hungary would be involved in an ever-widening field of hostilities.

Hence, even if Serbia's independence were not now inextricably bound up

with the success of the British arms, it would still be essential that

every effort should be made to heal what has long been an open sore upon

the face of Europe. People in this country are only too apt to ignore the

question altogether, or at best to say, "Oh yes, of course, if the Allies

win, the Serbs will get Bosnia." Those who talk thus have not grasped the

elements of the great problem, of which Bosnia, like Serbia itself, is only

one section. The idea that to transfer Bosnia alone from Austro-Hungarian

to Serbian hands would settle anything whatever, fatally ignores alike the

laws of geography and those considerations of national sentiment

which dominate politics in South-Eastern Europe. In every respect

Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia complement each other. So long as there

were no railways in the Balkans and Bosnia stagnated under Turkish rule, so

long as the national consciousness of the Serbo-Croats slumbered or ran in

purely provincial channels, the separation between coast and hinterland

was possible, though even then unnatural. But with the advent of modern

economic ideas the situation radically changed. It was above all the

possession of the Dalmatian seaboard that tempted Austria to occupy Bosnia,

and so conversely the acquisition of Bosnia by Serbia would at once

compel the latter, willy-nilly (quite apart from all racial affinities or

sentiments), to aspire to Dalmatia as well.

Geographically, it is inconceivable that to-day Dalmatia should be in

different hands from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Herzegovina does actually touch

the sea at two places--for a few miles at the swampy mouth of the Narenta

below Metkovié, and for a mile at Castelnuovo-Zelenika, inside the Bocche

di Cattaro. It is obvious that to allow Serbia these two outlets, while

leaving their surroundings to another State, would create immediate and

intolerable friction; whereas to assign the southern half of Dalmatia to

Bosnia, but to leave the northern half in other hands, would be keenly

resented by the Dalmatians themselves, as an outrage alike upon their

national and their local traditions.

When we consider the population of Dalmatia we must apply the rival tests

of history and of race. On the grounds of historical sentiment Italy might

claim Dalmatia; for its chief towns (Zara, Sebenico, Trau, Spalato, Lesina,

Curzola)[1] were Venetian colonies, and not only they but even the Republic

of Ragusa, which always maintained an independent existence, were saturated

with Italian culture and ideals. But on ethnical grounds Dalmatia is now

overwhelmingly Slavonic. In 1900 only 3.1 per cent of its population--in

other words, about 15,000 out of a total of 584,000--were Italians, the

remaining 97 per cent being Serbo-Croats. The census of 1910 is even more

unfavourable to the Italians, probably unduly so. It is, of course, true

that the Italian element, though numerically negligible, represents a

higher percentage of the educated and cultured class; but while this would

entitle Italy to demand guarantees for the maintenance of existing Italian

schools and institutions, it cannot conceivably be employed as an argument

in favour of an Italian occupation. Not only would it bring her inevitably

into collision with the Southern Slavs who already are, and are likely to

remain, a military power of no mean order; it would lead her on into the

false and hopeless path of attempting to assimilate a hostile population

by the aid of an insignificant minority which only exists in half a dozen

towns, and in all the rest of the province is simply non-existent. The

price paid would be the eternal enmity of all Slavs, the jeopardising of

Italian interests in the Balkans, the sacrifice of many of the

benefits which the new Trans-Balkan railway route

(Odessa-Bucarest-Kladovo-Sarajevo-Spalato) would naturally bring to Italy,

a challenge to one of the finest maritime races in Europe--the Croats of

Dalmatia, Croatia and Istria--a challenge which would sooner or later

involve the creation of a Southern Slav navy against Italy. So far as

Britain is concerned, to separate Dalmatia from Bosnia is not only to

prevent even the beginnings of a solution of the Southern Slav question,

but to obscure the naval situation in the Mediterranean, to alienate Russia

in a matter in which we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by

accommodating her. But even when Bosnia and Dalmatia have been united to

Serbia and Montenegro, the Southern Slav problem will still be far from

solution. Dalmatia is alike in constitutional theory and in political

fantasy, though not in sober fact, an integral portion of the Triune

Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, and it is unthinkable that

Serbo-Croat opinion could ever consent to the liberation of the one without

the other. No solution has any chance of permanence which ignores Agram as

the centre of Croat political and religious life, of education, art and

historic memories. The Dalmatian Croats, as the most virile and stubborn

element in the race, have always formed the vanguard of political thought,

but it is to Agram that they have always turned for the necessary backing,

and it is the peasantry of Croatia who have always borne the brunt of every

attempt at repression. Latterly the Dalmatians have been the soul of

the student movement, which plays so vital a part in recent political

development.

[Footnote 1: In the West they are only known under their Italian names, but

at home they are known as Zadar, Sibenik, Trogir, Split, Hvar, Korcula,

and Dubrovnik (Ragusa).]

Croatia-Slavonia is a vital part of the problem, indeed from a national

point of view perhaps more vital than Bosnia and Dalmatia. But even this is

not enough. No settlement will be complete which ignores the Slovenes of

eastern Istria, Carniola, and southern Carinthia and Styria: they must

share the fate of their Croat and Serb kinsmen.

So far, then, as the Southern Slavs are concerned, the triumph of the

Allies ought to mean the creation of a new State on the Eastern Adriatic,

the expansion of gallant Serbia into Jugoslavia (Jug is the Slav word for

south), and the achievement of Unity by the three kindred races, Serbs,

Croats, and Slovenes. On the north it would be comparatively easy to draw

a new frontier corresponding to the main requirements of ethnography,

geography, and strategy. With only very slight deviations, this would

follow the racial line between Slovenes and Germans from the present

Italian frontier as far as the little town of Radkersburg in Styria;

thence, the course of the rivers Mur and Drave as far as the latter's

junction with the Danube. It is only in the Banat--that portion of the

great Hungarian plain which faces Belgrade across the Danube--that an

artificial frontier will be inevitable, if the Serb districts of Hungary

are to be included in the new State and if the Serb capital is to be

rendered immune from the dangers of future bombardment. The weak spot in

so drastic a solution is the inclusion of the Slovene districts, which--in

view of their geographical position, cutting off the German provinces of

Austria from the sea--is unthinkable, save in the event of a complete

collapse of the Monarchy. All depends upon the number of leaves which are

pulled off the artichoke. If only a few of the outer rows are taken,

a situation may arise in which it would be necessary to sacrifice the

Slovenes and to rest satisfied with the acquisition of Bosnia, Dalmatia,

and Croatia--in other words, with the frontier which at present divides

Croatia from Austria and from Hungary proper. But this, it must be

remembered, would leave the work of Southern Slav Unity incomplete, and is

only to be regarded as a _pis aller._

The Slovene section of the Southern Slav problem is further complicated by

the attitude of Italy, who cannot be indifferent to the fate of Trieste and

Pola. On historic grounds Italy cannot lay claim to Trieste, which has been

a possession of the House of Habsburg since 1386 (400 years longer than

Dalmatia). But if as before we apply the principle of nationality, it is

indisputable that Trieste is an Italian town, though the whole surrounding

country up to the very suburbs is purely Slovene. On the other hand, the

commercial interests of Trieste are entirely bound up with its hinterland,

by which is meant not only the Alpine provinces, but Upper and Lower

Austria and Bohemia on the one hand and even south Germany (Bavaria) on

the other. Any settlement, then, must be a compromise between national and

economic interests. As an ancient centre of Italian culture, Trieste

would welcome the flag of the Regno upon its municipality, as the surest

guarantee that the town would remain Italian in character to all time. But

any attempt to include Trieste within the tariff system of the kingdom of

Italy would produce fatal results, and the obvious solution is to proclaim

the city as a free commercial port. Of course, from a purely Southern

Slav point of view, the fate of the town of Trieste (as distinct from the

district) ought to be a matter of complete indifference, though of course

the extremists claim it. It is, however, well to bear in mind that the

inclusion of Trieste in Italy's tariff system would mean the speedy

economic ruin of a great and flourishing commercial centre. Commercially,

then, Trieste is unthinkable save either as the port of Austria or as a

_porto franco_ under Italian suzerainty. So far as Istria is concerned,

there would be no insurmountable difficulty in drawing a satisfactory

frontier on ethnographical lines; the western portions, including

Capodistria, Rovigno, and Pola, are overwhelmingly Italian, while the

interior of the little province and the eastern shore (with Abbazia,

Lovrana, etc.) is as overwhelmingly Slavonic (Croat and Slovene mixed).

Any redistribution of territory on the basis of nationality must therefore

inevitably assign western Istria to Italy, and no reasonable Southern Slav

would raise any valid objection. Once more the essential fact to consider

is that the acquisition of Trieste and Pola by Italy presupposes the

disappearance of Austria-Hungary; otherwise it is not even remotely

possible. Hence it is no exaggeration to assert that the fate of Trieste

is one of the central issues in the whole European settlement. Once

make Trieste a free port, under the Italian flag, and _ipso facto_ the

Austro-Hungarian navy ceases to exist, and with it all need for Italian

naval activity in the Adriatic. In other words, such a settlement would

lead to an almost idyllic reduction of naval armaments in the Adriatic,

since both Italy and the new Jugoslavia could afford to restrict

themselves to a minimum of coast defence. It is obvious, however, that the

dismantlement of Pola--to-day an almost impregnable fortress--would be an

essential condition to neighbourly relations between the two, the more so

since under such altered circumstances an Italian naval base at Pola could

only have one objective.

There is an unfortunate tendency in Italy to misread the whole situation

on the eastern Adriatic, to ignore the transformation which the revival

of Southern Slav consciousness has wrought in lands which once owned the

supremacy of Venice. A short-sighted distrust of the Slav blinds many

Italians to the double fact that he has come to stay, and that his

friendship is to be had for the asking. The commercial future of Dalmatia,

Bosnia, and Serbia is intimately bound up with Italy, and Italy herself

will be the chief loser if she closes her eyes to so patent a truth.

The fate of Trieste and Istria is a triangular issue between Teuton, Slav,

and Latin. The Italian, if his claims are too ambitious or exacting, may

succeed in preventing the Slav from obtaining his share of the spoils, but

only by leaving them all in the hands of a still more dangerous rival, in

other words, by a crude policy of dog-in-the-manger.

One thing is certain in all this interplay of forces--that it is too late

in the day to suppress Southern Slav national consciousness, and that there

can never be durable peace and contentment on the eastern Adriatic until

the unity of the race has been achieved. It would be premature to discuss

the exact forms which the new State would assume; but when the time

comes it will be found that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia,

Croatia-Slavonia, Istria and Carniola, will acclaim their liberation at the

hands of free Serbia and Montenegro. Their watchword, however, will be not

conquest from without, but free and voluntary union from within--a union

which will preserve their existing political institutions and culture as a

worthy contribution to the common Southern Slav fund. The natural solution

is a federal union under which the sovereign would be crowned not only as

King of Serbia but with the crown of Zvonomir as King of the Triune Kingdom

of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, thus reviving historic traditions dating from

the tenth century and never abandoned or forgotten. The Croatian Parliament

would continue in Agrani, parallel with the Serb Parliament in Belgrade,

but both would be represented in a central federal Parliament. The only

question is whether the existing provincial divisions should be allowed to

survive, the Diets of Bosnia, Dalmatia, Istria, and Carniola thus forming

conjointly with the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Croatian Parliaments

the units on which the new constitution is based, or whether complete

unification should be attempted. The latter would be the ideal arrangement,

but in view of the great divergence of local customs and institutions it

would probably be premature, and it might therefore be wiser to preserve

the smaller units until they were ripe for fusion, rather than to

compromise by creating a dual State of Serbia and Croatia.

§7. _The Roumanian Question._--I have dwelt at some length upon the

Southern Slav problem, because it is as complicated as it is unfamiliar

to public opinion in this country. It has been the _causa causans_ of the

present struggle, and if neglected or mismanaged at the final settlement,

may again plunge Europe into trouble at some future date. Parallel with

any solution of the Southern Slav question must come the solution of the

Roumanian question, which represents the other half of Austria-Hungary's

Balkan policy. The Kingdom of Roumania is, alike in territory, population,

and resources, the leading power in the Balkan peninsula, but over five

million Roumanians, including the very cream of the race, still live under

foreign domination. Of these at least 3,500,000 are in Austria-Hungary, the

great majority under the grossly oppressive rule of the Magyars; and the

redemption of Transylvania and the neighbouring counties of Hungary has

always been the ideal of all patriotic Roumanians, even of those who looked

to a distant future for its realisation. Russia's short-sighted policy in

1878, in annexing the Roumanian province of Bessarabia as a reward for

their valiant support at Plevna, drove the Roumanians into the arms of

Austria-Hungary, and for a whole generation not even the perpetual irritant

of Magyar tyranny in Transylvania could avail to shake the _entente_

between Vienna and Bucarest, strengthened as it was by the personal

friendship of the Emperor Francis Joseph and King Charles. But the spell

was broken by Austria's attitude during the Balkan War. The imperious force

of circumstances brought the interests of Roumania and Serbia into line;

for it was obvious that any blow aimed against Serbia's independent

existence must threaten Roumania also, just as any weakening of the

Serbo-Croat element in the Monarchy must react unfavourably on that of

the Roumanians and other nationalities of Hungary. The growth of national

feeling within the two neighbour races has proceeded for some time past on

parallel lines, and even before the war there were manifest signs that

the Roumanians of Hungary, whose economic and cultural progress since the

beginning of the century has been very rapid, were at length nearing the

end of their patience. The bomb outrage at Debreczen last February--an

event which is without parallel in Roumanian history--was the first

muttering of the gathering storm. Roumania occupies a position of extreme

delicacy. Her natural tendency would be to espouse the cause of the Allies,

since they obviously have more to offer her than their rivals. But the

somewhat equivocal attitude of her statesmen has been determined not merely

by an astute desire to win the spoils of war without making the necessary

sacrifice--a policy which is apt to overreach itself--but also by a very

pardonable anxiety as to the attitude of Bulgaria and Turkey. Roumania has

hitherto been the foremost upholder of the Treaty of Bucarest, and it is

only in the event of drastic territorial changes farther west that she is

likely to consent to its being torn up. She has made no secret of the fact

that she would not tolerate naked aggression against the Greeks, whether

from the Turkish or Bulgarian side. In view of the political record of King

Ferdinand of Bulgaria and his present Prime Minister, the Roumanians may

perhaps be excused for adopting an attitude of vigilant reserve; for their

statesmen suspect that Bulgaria is only waiting until the Roumanian army

has crossed the Carpathians in order to reoccupy the southern Dobrudja.

Certain it is that Roumania, while declining all temptations to join the

central powers, has also rejected the Russian invitation to occupy the

Bukovina, and has actually approached Hungary with a view to securing the

restoration of Transylvanian autonomy. The Magyars on their part have tried

to buy off Roumania by introducing the Roumanian language of instruction in

many of the State schools of Transylvania--a wholly inadequate concession

which would none the less have been inconceivable four short months ago.

Unfortunately the realisation of Roumanian unity inevitably involves the

inclusion in the new State of considerable Magyar and Saxon minorities,

amounting in all to not less than 600,000 inhabitants. There are no means

of overcoming the hard facts of geography, but it is essential that

Roumania, while incorporating Magyar and Saxon islets in the Roumanian

racial sea, should guarantee the existing institutions of the two races,

and the fullest possible linguistic freedom in church,[1] school, and

press. The Saxons in particular have preserved their identity for over

seven centuries in this little corner of the Carpathians, and have

contributed far more than their share to the cause of culture and progress

in Hungary. It would be a crying irony of fate if they were allowed to

perish in the twentieth century at the hands of those who have pledged

themselves to vindicate the rights of smaller nationalities.

[Footnote 1: The Szekel (Magyar) districts of Transylvania are mainly

Calvinist, the Saxons Lutheran to a man, while the Roumanians are divided

between the Orthodox and the Roumanian Uniate Churches. Transylvania is

also the centre of an interesting sect of Unitarians, who are for the most

part Magyar by race.]

It must not be forgotten that the dream of Roumanian Unity can only be

fully realised if Russia restores at least a portion of Bessarabia, which

contains not less than a million and a quarter Roumanians. A victorious

Russia might well afford such a concession; for it would involve no

strategic dangers and would, especially if conveyed in the graceful form of

a wedding dowry, triumphantly efface the last traces of Russophobe feeling

that still linger in Roumania. But it would be absurd to expect such

magnanimity on the part of Russia unless Roumania's action is prompt and

vigorous. The abstract theory of nationality must be reinforced by the more

practical argument of sterling services rendered to a common cause.

§8. _Can the Dual Monarchy be replaced?_--The result of applying the

principle of nationality to the Southern Slavs and Roumanians would thus

be to create two powerful national States at the expense of the Habsburg

Monarchy; and here it is well to repeat that such drastic territorial

changes are only possible if the military power of Austria suffers

an almost complete eclipse. But even the loss of Galicia, Bukovina,

Transylvania, the Trentino, and the Serbo-Croat provinces would still leave

Austria-Hungary a State of very considerable area, with a population of 32

millions. There is no reason why such a State should not continue to exist,

provided that it retained the necessary access to the sea at Trieste and

Pola, and this would involve the exclusion of the Slovenes from the

new Jugo-Slav State. Under such circumstances it would be possible to

reconstruct the State on a federal basis, with five main racial units,

the Germans, the Czechs and Slovaks, the Magyars, the Slovenes, and the

Italians. Certain unimportant racial minorities would still be left, but

these could unquestionably be dealt with by a law of guarantees, similar to

those which have played so conspicuous a part in the theory, but sometimes

also in the practice, of the Dual Monarchy. So many severe amputations

might, however, prove too much for the vitality of the patient; and in any

case we may assume that either Austria-Hungary will be able to prevent the

operation, or that the Allies, if they can once bring matters thus far,

will insist upon completing the process by a drastic post-mortem inquiry.

Any sympathetic qualms are likely to be outweighed by the consideration

that a State of this hybrid nature would tend to be more than ever a vassal

of Germany. Moreover, there can be no doubt that one of the surest means of

bringing Germany to her knees is by crushing her most formidable ally, and

thus tapping some of the sources of her own military and economic strength.

It is safe to assume that this consideration plays an important part in the

military plans of Russia; and for many reasons--political, strategic, and

economic--a Russian occupation of Bohemia must be regarded as the essential

prelude to a decisive victory of the Allies. The war has thrown the

Dual Monarchy into the melting-pot; but it is not enough to accept the

possibility of its disappearance from the map, it is also necessary to

consider what new organisms would take its place. A complete partition

would, as we have seen, remove the last obstacle to a unified Southern

Slav State. The dreams of Italia Irredenta and Greater Roumania would

be realised. Western Galicia and a part of Silesia would be united to

autonomous Poland as reconstituted by the Russian Tsar. Eastern Galicia,

Northern Bukovina, and the Ruthene districts of Hungary as far as Ungvár

and Munkács, would be incorporated in the Russian Empire, though it is

to be hoped that an early result of this change would be the grant of a

certain modified autonomy, or at least of special linguistic and religious

privileges, to the Ukraine population, thus united after centuries of

partition in a single body politic.

§9. _Bohemia and Hungary._--But the most striking result of the partition

would be the revival of the famous mediaeval kingdoms of Bohemia and

Hungary as independent States. Thus would be realised the dream of two

races, the Czechs and Magyars, whose national revival forms one of the

most romantic incidents of the nineteenth century. But it is difficult to

imagine a greater contrast than their respective development. In Bohemia

the Czechs, after losing their religious and civic liberty and enduring for

two centuries the domination of the Germans, raised themselves once more

in the course of two generations, by sheer force of character and tireless

industry, to a position of equality, and reorganised their national life on

an essentially democratic basis. In Hungary the Magyars, thanks to their

central position, their superior political sense, and their possession of

a powerful aristocracy, succeeded in concentrating all government and

administration in their own hands and reducing the other races of the

country, who have always formed a majority of the population, to a state of

veritable political helotry. And just as their evolution has been on very

different lines, so must be their future fate. In Bohemia all is activity

and political progress, in Hungary the sterility of a corrupt and

reactionary system, staking the future upon the hollow credit of

a long-vanished past. The Czechs are beyond all question the most

progressive, the most highly civilised, the most democratic of all Slavonic

nations. The stubborn spirit of John Hus is still alive among them to-day,

and their recent achievements in music, art, and industry are in every way

worthy of the nation which has produced Comenius and Dvorák and first

lit the torch of Reformation in Europe. The ancient city of Prague contains

all the elements of culture necessary for the regeneration of Bohemia, and

the mineral riches and industrial resources of the country are infinitely

greater than those of many European States which have successfully led a

separate national existence.

But the liberation of the Czechs would not be complete unless their close

kinsmen the Slovaks were included in the new Bohemian State; and every

reason alike of politics, race, and geography tells overwhelmingly in

favour of such an arrangement. The Slovaks, who would to the last man

welcome the change, have long suffered from the gross tyranny of Magyar

rule. Their schools and institutions have been ruthlessly suppressed or

reduced in numbers, their press muzzled, their political development

arrested, their culture and traditions--far more truly autochthonous than

those of the conquering Magyar invaders--have been discouraged and hampered

at every turn. The Slovaks are a race whose artistic and musical gifts,

whose innate sense of colour and poetry have won the sympathy and

admiration of all who know them; and their systematic oppression at the

hands of the Magyar oligarchy is one of the greatest infamies of the last

fifty years. In this war Britain has proclaimed herself the champion of

the small nations, and none are more deserving of her sympathy than the

Slovaks. Unless our statesmen renounce that principle of nationality which

they have so loudly proclaimed, the Slovaks cannot be abandoned to their

fate; for they form an essential part of the Bohemian problem. Without

them the new kingdom could not stand alone, isolated as it would be among

hostile or indifferent neighbours. In every way the Slovak districts form

the natural continuation of Bohemia and are the necessary link between it

and Russia, upon whose moral support the new State must rely in the first

critical years of its existence.

The main difficulty would be the fate of racial minorities; for minorities

there still must be, no matter how the frontiers may be drawn. At first

sight the natural solution would be to pare down Bohemia by assigning

to the neighbouring provinces of Germany the German fringe which almost

completely surrounds the Czech kernel. So far as the south-west and

north-east districts of Bohemia (near Budweis and along the German Silesian

border) are concerned, the historic boundaries might fairly be revised on

ethnographic lines, and in the same way the line of demarcation between

Bohemia and Hungary could in the main be made to follow the racial boundary

between Slovak and Magyar and later between Slovak and Ruthene. But in the

north of Bohemia there are insurmountable objections to any revision of the

historic frontier of the kingdom; for not merely is its industrial life

concentrated to a very considerable degree in the German districts, but

this fact is responsible for the existence of important Czech industrial

minorities, which it would be difficult to sacrifice. So far as there is to

be any sacrifice, it must be made by the losers rather than by the winners

in this war. But it ought to be possible, under the rule of some

carefully selected western prince as ruler of Bohemia, to devise proper

administrative guarantees for the linguistic rights of minorities in every

mixed district of Bohemia, whether it be Czech or German. The case of

Hungary is different. That the Allies, if victorious, should perpetuate the

racial hegemony of the Magyars, and with it many of the abuses which have

contributed towards the present war, is as unthinkable as that they should

once more bolster up the Turkish régime. If the Habsburg Monarchy should

break up, Hungary is fully entitled to her independence. She will become a

national Magyar State, but in a sense very different from that which her

Jingo politicians have intended--not by assimilating the non-Magyar races

of the country, but by losing to the other national States by which she

will be surrounded all but the purely Magyar districts of the central

plains. Hungary will then be more fully than before a Danubian State; her

rich alluvial lands will be developed, and a check will be put upon the

unnecessary streams of Magyar emigration which the present political and

economic situation favours. The chief gainer by the change will be the

Magyar peasantry, who have in their own way been exploited by the ruling

oligarchy as cruelly as their non-Magyar neighbours. One result of the war

will be to discredit the policy and methods of this oligarchy and to hasten

the break-up of the vast latifundia of the great magnates and the Church,

and those other drastic land reforms without which Hungary cannot hope to

attain her full economic value as the granary of central Europe. Hitherto

the government of the day has secured a parliamentary majority by

corrupting and terrorising the non-Magyar constituencies of the periphery

and thus out-voting the radical Magyar stalwarts of the great plain; and

with the loss of the Slovak, Ruthene and Roumanian districts this system

would automatically collapse. The result might be a genuine strengthening

of democratic elements and the dawn of a new era for the Magyar race.

§10. _Germany and Austria._--One final problem connected with

Austria-Hungary remains. What is to be the fate of the German provinces of

Austria? If the map of Europe is to be recast on a basis of nationality, we

obviously cannot withhold from the great German nation that right to racial

unity which we accord to the Czechs, the Poles and many minor races. The

seven German provinces--Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Tirol,

Salzburg and Vorarlberg--reconstituted perhaps as a kingdom of Austria

under the House of Habsburg and augmented by the German population of

western Hungary, would then become an additional federal unit in the German

Empire. Such an event, it cannot be too often repeated, is inconceivable

except as the result of a complete defeat of the central powers, but if on

that assumption Germany loses Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, the loss would be

made good by the incorporation of German Austria. The result of this

in figures would be the subtraction of six million inhabitants and the

addition of eight million others--a transaction which need not unduly alarm

the British Jingo, and at the same time might render defeat less galling to

the German patriot.

Whether this fulfillment of the Pan-German aspiration would meet with

unqualified enthusiasm on either side of the present frontier, is a

question on which it is not altogether easy to answer. The idea of

admitting eight million additional Catholic subjects into Germany would

certainly arouse misgivings in Prussia, both among the stricter Protestants

and among the far more active section of "intellectuals" who merely regard

Protestantism as a political asset in the struggle against Latin and

Slavonic influences. From a political point of view their admission would

unquestionably transform the whole parliamentary situation and force the

Imperial Government to revise its whole attitude; for the Austrian voters

would greatly strengthen the two parties to whose existence Prussia has

never become reconciled--the Clerical Centre and the Social Democratic

Left,--while contributing little or nothing to the parties of the

Conservative Junkers or the middle-class "Liberals." In other words, the

new element might prove to be an effective leaven which would permeate the

whole lump. All the arguments which induced Bismarck to expel Austria

from Germany in 1868 would still be upheld by the advocates of

"Preussen-Deutschland" (see p. 65), and the Prussian hegemony; but after an

unsuccessful war and territorial losses the chance of making these good

by the achievement of national unity would probably sweep away the

dissentients, who would no longer represent a triumphant system, but a

beaten and discredited caste. The old idea of the "seventy-million Empire,"

which appealed so strongly to the Liberals of Frankfurt in 1848, should

prove irresistible under these circumstances. The influence of Austrian

Germans, already so marked in literature, art, music, and above all in

political theory, might make itself felt in other spheres also.

Meanwhile, in view of the wild talk in which certain sections of the Press

are already indulging, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that only the

Germans can reform their political institutions, and that any attempt at

external interference will not merely fail lamentably, but produce the very

opposite effect from that which is intended. If the German Emperor insists

upon confusing the relative positions of the Deity and some of his

self-styled vicegerents upon earth, only the German people can restore him

to a sense of proportion and modesty. All believers in human progress hope

that after this war the monstrous theories of divine right propounded

by the House of Hohenzollern will be relegated to the lumber-room of a

vanished past. But the sooner references to St. Helena as a residence for

deposed emperors are dismissed as arrant nonsense, the better. The future

of German dynasties, as of German Unity, rests with the German people

itself; and those who challenge this statement repudiate _ipso facto_

the two principles of Nationality and International Law, which we have

officially adopted as our programme for the future.

The fate of the German provinces of Austria is one of the central problems

raised by this war, since it is the link between the fate of two Empires.

The present writer most emphatically disclaims all idea of prophecy; but

he feels that the time has come for outlining some of the possible

alternatives which confront the statesmen of "the new Europe." So far as

Austria-Hungary is concerned, it is clear that the splendid dream of "a

monarchical Switzerland," as conceived by many serious political thinkers,

has already died a violent death; but it would be quite premature to

dogmatise on the future grouping of the races of the Dual Monarchy at a

moment when its ultimate fate has still to be decided on the field of

battle.

§11. _Italian Aspirations._--We have already alluded to Italy's position,

in connection with the Southern Slav question, and have pointed out that a

settlement which follows even approximately the lines of nationality would

assign the Trentino, the town of Trieste (as a free port), and a strip

of Western Istria to Italy, but the remainder of the coast from Cape

Promontore to the Bojana river to the new "Jugoslavia." There are, however,

other directions in which Italy may claim compensation for her friendly

attitude towards the Triple Entente. She has already occupied the rocky

islet of Saseno, opposite Valona, and in the event of the collapse of

Austria-Hungary, she may demand the whole bay of Valona, as the strategic

key to the Adriatic, and even a general protectorate of the embryo Albanian

State. The establishment of a miniature Gibraltar on the eastern side of

the Straits of Otranto is a step which neither France nor Britain would

oppose, if Italy should insist upon it; but it may be questioned whether

she would not thereby be laying up stores of trouble for a distant future,

altogether incommensurate with any possible advantages which might accrue.

Indeed, Italy would probably be well advised to abandon all idea of an

Albanian adventure (which, originally conceived as a counterstroke to

Austrian aggression, would lose its point if Austria disappeared from the

scene), to leave the Greeks a free hand in south Epirus, to cede to them

Rhodes and the other islands occupied during the Tripolitan War, and then

to secure, during the partition of Turkey, the reversion of Cilicia and the

Gulf of Alexandretta. It is in any case clear that the Powers of the Triple

Entente will raise no objections to such action on the part of Italy, and

are resolved to show every consideration to a power whose great and vital

interests in the Mediterranean in no way conflict with their own.

§12. _The Balkan Situation: Bulgaria and Greece._--The creation of a

Greater Roumania and of a new Southern Slav State would transform the whole

Balkan situation, and therefore obviously involves material concessions to

Bulgaria and Greece.

(A) If Roumania succeeds in redeeming her kinsmen across the northern

frontiers, she cannot be so ungenerous as to insist upon retaining

territory whose population is overwhelmingly Bulgarian, and the least which

might be expected from her would be the retrocession to Bulgaria of her

bloodless acquisition during the second Balkan War. This means a reversion

to the boundary defined under Russian arbitration at Petrograd in January

1913--except outside the fortress of Silistria, where strategic reasons

demand its rectification.

It is in the relations of Bulgaria and Serbia, however, that the key to the

Balkan situation is to be found. The Serbo-Bulgarian treaty of February

1912, which formed the groundwork of the Balkan alliance, had limited

Serbia's sphere of influence to northern Macedonia and referred to the

arbitration of the Russian Tsar any disputes arising from conquests to the

south of a certain specified line. Serbia was tacitly given a free hand

in her attempt to reach the sea in Northern Albania. The action of

Austria-Hungary in vetoing her access to the Adriatic forced Serbia to turn

her eyes from west to south and to seek her economic outlet to the sea

down the valley of the Vardar to Salonica and the Aegean. The cession of

Monastir, Ochrida, and the Vardar Valley to Bulgaria would have rendered

this impossible, for it would not merely have driven a wedge between Serbia

and Greece, but would have placed two customs frontiers, the Bulgarian and

the Greek, between Serbia and the sea, instead of only one, the Turkish, as

hitherto. Shut in upon all sides, with all hope of expansion blocked by the

powerful Dual Monarchy to north and west and by a big Bulgaria to east and

south, Serbia would have found herself in a worse position than before the

war. The Bulgarians, intoxicated by their victories over the Turks and

seduced by the promptings of the Austrian tempter, turned a deaf ear to the

arguments of their Serbian allies, and insisted upon their pound of flesh.

They failed to realise that the most effective way of inducing the Serbs to

evacuate Macedonia was to give them adequate backing in their demand for an

Adriatic port. Every fresh intrigue of Sofia with Vienna confirmed Belgrade

in its view of the vital necessity for retaining the Vardar Valley. The

hoary argument that "circumstances alter cases," appeared anew in the garb

of the Bismarckian theory that all treaties are subject to the provision

"_rebus sic stantibus_"--a theory which many great international lawyers

have unhesitatingly endorsed. In this form it appealed as irresistibly to

the Serbs as did the rival shibboleth of "The treaty, the whole treaty,

and nothing but the treaty" to the Bulgarians. It is impossible to absolve

either side from blame; for the Serbs, in formally denouncing a treaty into

which they had voluntarily entered, were doing exactly what they had so

bitterly resented in Austria-Hungary's treatment of Bosnia, while the

Bulgarians, in flouting the Tsar whom they had named as arbiter and in

attempting to uphold the treaty by brute force and treachery, abandoned the

ground of law, and placed themselves openly in the wrong.

The events of the great war have already modified the problem. The one

unanswerable argument of the Serbs in declining to surrender Macedonia

was the plea that they would then have nothing to offer Bulgaria for her

neutrality or her support when their own inevitable day of reckoning with

Austria should arrive. In short, Veles, Monastir and Ochrida were widely

regarded as a pledge to be held until Bosnia and Dalmatia could be

redeemed, but then to be handed over to the Bulgarians. It is true that the

Serbo-Bulgar War of 1913 and the passions which it aroused have converted

this feeling into one of reluctance to sacrifice what was bought at such a

fearful price. But the moment has now arrived to translate an instinct into

a reality. If Southern Slav Unity is to be achieved, a binding promise,

under the guarantee of the Entente Powers, must be given to Bulgaria, that,

in proportion as the work of Serbo-Croat unification is achieved, the

Macedonian frontier will be revised in favour of Bulgaria. It is possible

that Bulgaria may prefer a different formula, according to which the Tsar

with the approval of his Western Allies should arbitrate upon the original

Serbo-Bulgar treaty. Any such concession to Bulgarian sentiment ought not

to be resented in Serbia, in view of the great issues involved. It is

obvious that Serbia cannot hope to achieve her national unity unless

Bulgaria abstains from hostile action, or to consolidate her new position

when won unless she can win Bulgaria's active friendship. The latter by her

intervention could at any moment turn the scales against Turkey or against

Serbia, and it is thus essential that the Allies should treat her now with

a generosity proportionate to the callous neglect with which Europe left

her to her fate in September 1913.

The tendency to look down upon the Balkan States from the fancied heights

of a superior "culture" has never been so marked in France or Britain as

in Germany, where the Press is now engaged in comparing their own cultural

exploits in Belgium with the lack of culture displayed by the "bandits" and

"assassins" of Serbia, and where a man of such scientific distinction as

Werner Sombart can describe the heroic kingdom of Montenegro as "nothing

but a bad joke in the history of the world!"[1] But even here the habit

of condescension lingers, and amidst the threatened collapse of Western

civilisation it is well to remember the essential distinction between

primitive and savage. The Balkan nations have grown to manhood while

we slept, and must henceforth be regarded as equals in the European

commonwealth.

[Footnote 1: _Berliner Tageblatt,_ cited by _Observer_, November 8, 1914.]

(B) Such territorial changes as have been outlined above would vitally

affect the position of Greece, who is also fully entitled to claim

compensation for any serious disturbance of the balance of power. The first

and most obvious form which compensation would take is the final occupation

of southern Epirus; no objections will be raised to this by the Entente

Powers, and it is probable that Italy has already made her own bargain with

the Cabinet of Athens on this very point. It is to be hoped that Italy may

also consent to hand over Rhodes and the neighbouring islands to Greece, in

return for a free hand in Southern Asia Minor in the event of the Turkish

Empire breaking up. By far the thorniest problem is provided by the future

ownership of Kavala, which the Treaty of Bucarest assigned to Greece in

August 1913, but which from an economic point of view is Bulgaria's port on

the Aegean, and as vital a necessity for her future development as it is a

superfluous luxury to Greece. The statesmen of Petrograd were not blind to

these considerations, but the scale was turned at Bucarest by the active

intervention of the German Emperor, who, under the plea of seconding his

brother-in-law, King Constantine, skilfully provided a permanent bone of

contention between Bulgaria and Greece. His action may not unfairly be

compared to that of the Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza, in fomenting the

quarrel between Serbia and Bulgaria two months earlier.

Serbia's cession of Central Macedonia to Bulgaria could not fail to be

distasteful to the Greeks, for it would automatically render their tenure

of Kavala highly precarious. It is to be hoped, however, that they may be

brought to realise that its surrender and the consequent improvement of

Greco-Bulgarian relations are in the highest interests of Greece and the

whole Hellenic race. Here again, the break-up of the Turkish Empire may

enable the Greeks to compensate themselves on the shores of Asia Minor. But

the real key to the problem of Kavala, and thus indirectly to the revival

of the Balkan League and all the far-reaching effects which that would have

upon the fate of Europe, lies in the hands of Britain. It could instantly

be solved by the cession of Cyprus to Greece, on condition that Kavala and

the valley of the Strymon were restored to Bulgaria. Neither strategically

nor economically is Cyprus of any value to Britain; thirty-five years ago

it was taken over by Disraeli "as a sort of fee for opposing Russia," a

foolish habit which we had abandoned long before the present war with

Turkey. Its population is predominantly Greek, and the Hellenic national

movement is steadily gaining ground. Anything that we might gain by its

retention is more than counterbalanced by its value as an instrument of

barter.

§13. _The Future of Turkey._--The entry of Turkey into the great war

marks a further stage in the winnowing process from which we hope that a

regenerated Europe will emerge. Two of the main causes of the war are the

Turk and the Magyar, whose effete and tyrannous systems have each in its

own manner and degree long kept South-Eastern Europe in a ferment of unrest

and reaction. It is a matter of profound regret that two infinitely more

virile and progressive races, the German and the Jew, should be fighting

their battles for them, and indeed bolstering up causes which would

otherwise speedily collapse by reason of their own inward rottenness. It is

the Triple Alliance which has made it possible for the iniquitous racial

hegemony of the Magyars to survive in Hungary; it is the joint policy of

Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin which has hampered the progress of the Balkan

States, and above all the development of every Slavonic nation; and in this

their most valuable allies have been the Jewish Press and the Jewish _haute

finance_ of Germany, Austria and Hungary. Just as we hope and believe that

one result of this war will be the emancipation of Germany and German

"culture" from the corroding influences of militarist doctrine, so there

are good grounds for hoping that it will also give a new and healthy

impetus to Jewish national policy, grant freer play to their many splendid

qualities, and enable them to shake off the false shame which has led

men who ought to be proud of their Jewish race to assume so many alien

disguises and to accuse of anti-Semitism those who refuse to be deceived

by mere appearances. It is high time that the Jews should realise that few

things do more to foster anti-Semite feeling than this very tendency to

sail under false colours and conceal their true identity. The Zionist

and the orthodox Jewish nationalist have long ago won the respect and

admiration of the world. No race has ever defied assimilation so stubbornly

and so successfully, and the modern tendency of individual Jews to

repudiate what is one of their chief glories suggests an almost comic

resolve to fight against the course of nature.

These cryptic tendencies of pseudo-national as opposed to national Judaism

have played a great part in the Young Turkish movement and the destruction

which it is bringing upon Turkey. The Committee of Union and Progress at

first enjoyed the moral and financial support of many men, both Christians

and Jews, to whom its methods and secret currents were a sealed book. For

a time the Young Turks, like the Magyars farther west, deceived foreign

opinion by claptrap phrases from the repertory of modern democracy. But

"murder will out," and the Committee--despite the tiny group of able, and

in certain cases honourable, men who control its destinies--has gradually

been revealed in its true colours, as a parasitic growth upon the body

politic, preserving the worst faults of the old régime and blending with it

much of the decadence which lies like froth along the backwaters of Western

civilisation.

Since 1908, then, the fate of Turkey has passed from the control of the

Turk and is being decided by an alien clique of infidels, renegades,

political freemasons[1] and Jews, in whose hands the Caliph is a helpless

tool, and to whom the teachings of Christ and of Mohammed are mere worn-out

superstitions. In fact, the Committee is in its essence non-Turkish

and non-Moslem. In the name of a secret society, based openly upon the

subversive ideas of the wilder French Jacobins, and not shrinking from

assassination as a convenient political weapon, a Jehad or Holy War is to

be preached against the British Empire, and the most sacred interests of

Islam are to be exploited in the interests of Germany. What bitter irony is

in the fact that William II., who risked universal war to avenge the murder

of his friend, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, should now find himself

closely allied with Enver Pasha, the military adventurer who barely two

years ago foully assassinated his own commander-in-chief, Nazim Pasha, and

who therefore represents everything that is anathema to the Prussian

War Lord with his exaggerated ideas of military discipline and personal

loyalty!

[Footnote 1: Not to be confused for a moment with the very different form

of freemasonry which prevails in this country.]

The die has been cast, and even those who most regret Turkey's action

cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it inevitably raises the whole

question of Constantinople and the Dardanelles. If Germany should emerge

victorious, Turkey is likely to fall under a more or less veiled German

protectorate. In the event of the victory of the Allies, Turkey may

continue to exist as an Asiatic power, but there is little doubt that

she will be eliminated from Europe. The only real question is, Who is to

replace her? Bulgaria will, it is to be hoped, recover Adrianople and the

Enos-Midia line, of which she was so cruelly robbed last year. The fact

that the Turks on their re-entry systematically wiped out the entire

Bulgarian population of northern Thrace does not weaken, but enormously

strengthens, the case for its restoration. But to offer Constantinople to

Bulgaria would be a fatal gift. She has absolutely no historic claim to

the great city of the Caesars (Tsarigrad, as it is rightly known to every

Slav); nor is there even any considerable Bulgarian population which could

rally round the new government. The administrative task is obviously far

beyond the powers of a small peasant state, most of whose present leaders

were born under a foreign yoke. Nor is Greece a serious candidate for the

vacant post. The Greeks, of course, unlike the Bulgarians, have a definite

claim, based on the traditions of the Byzantine Empire, and there is a

large Greek population in the city--at present close upon 350,000, though

their numbers are likely to be materially reduced before this war is over.

But in their case also Constantinople would be a fatal gift. The resources

even of the enlarged Hellenic kingdom would inevitably prove unequal to the

task. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that a Greek occupation would be

opposed on many grounds by the entire commercial community of every other

nation in Europe.

In some ways the ideal arrangement would be that Roumania should assume the

administration of the city, as trustee for a reconstituted Balkan League,

with proper guarantees for the commercial rights of all the Powers. But it

is to be feared that such a solution would please nobody, perhaps not even

Roumania herself. A league of the five Balkan kings, with Roumania as

_primus inter pares_, is the dream of a remote future, and until it can be

realised, Constantinople cannot assume its natural position as capital of

the Balkan peninsula.

§14. _Russia and Constantinople._--In short, as matters stand to-day, there

is only one power which can replace the Turks as master of Constantinople,

and that power is Russia. The Russians could not of course incorporate the

city in their empire for reasons of geography; and this fundamental fact

destroys at a blow the numerous objections which might have told against

the occupation, if Constantinople had been contiguous to the Russian

dominions. It would obviously be necessary to establish a special

autonomous administration under a Russian governor. It is by no means

impossible that Russia would be satisfied with the expulsion of the Turks

and the internationalisation of Constantinople as a free port under a

Christian prince or a commission of the Powers. But, though admirable

in theory, such a solution would give rise to endless complications and

disputes. Unless the Western Powers can trust Russia sufficiently to leave

her in full possession, they must make up their minds to bolstering up the

impossible Turk for a further period of years. Such a surrender to the

unreasoning and ignorant prejudices of a previous generation would be a

sure prelude to the collapse of our alliance with Russia, which it is the

vital interest of all British patriots to uphold at all costs. Happily,

"the fear of Russia," as of a strange and unknown colossus, is dying out,

vague fancies inevitably yielding to the hard logic of facts. The Disraeli

policy in the Near East must give place once and for all to the broader

conceptions of Gladstone, tempered by the cautious statesmanship of

Salisbury. The greatest of the Christian Powers must be allowed to replace

the cross upon the dome of Saint Sofia. The religious appeal of such a

change is clear enough, nor need there be any anxiety on economic grounds.

There is nothing to prevent Constantinople from becoming a free port under

the Russian flag, and filling a similar place to that which the free port

of Trieste would occupy under the flag of United Italy. Indeed it may be

confidently assumed that the change would give an extraordinary impetus to

trade in the whole eastern Mediterranean. The recent history of Batum and

Baku is a faint indication of what might be expected.

The fate of the Dardanelles cannot be separated from that of the capital;

both must be in the same hands. At the same time a reasonable compensation

for their cession to Russia would be the dismantlement of their forts. In

any case, whatever their fate may be, it is clear that an end must be put

to the galling restrictions upon Russia's Black Sea fleet. The essential

point to bear in mind is that if the war goes well with the Allies, and

if Russia expresses a definite desire to occupy Constantinople and the

straits, resistance on our part would be alike difficult, pointless, and

undesirable. Those who oppose have no arguments, so long as the special

international needs and conditions of the city are properly recognised and

guaranteed. With true Oriental fatalism, the Turk has always regarded his

ultimate disappearance from Europe as a certainty; the superstition which

led the inhabitants of Stamboul to prefer burial across the straits in Asia

has its parallel in the alarm aroused in the bazaars by the Young Turks'

decision to exterminate the pariah dogs which have for centuries supplied

the place of scavengers in the streets of the capital. To-day the prophecy

which made their removal the prelude to the departure of their masters

seems on the point of fulfillment, and all who believe in the retributive

justice of history will re-echo Mr. Asquith's hope that the fall of Ottoman

rule will remove "the blight which for generations has withered some of the

fairest regions of the world."

§15. _Asiatic Turkey._--What then will be the subsequent fate of the Turks

if they are once driven "bag and baggage" across the straits. The Sultan

will doubtless transfer his capital to Brussa, or even to Konieh. But can

the Khalifate survive such a loss of prestige on the part of the Ottoman

dynasty? It would be altogether premature to discuss in anything

approaching detail the vast issues of the fate of Turkey's Asiatic

dominions, but it is necessary to indicate that even after settling the

fate of the straits we shall still be confronted by issues of appalling

magnitude. It is the conjunction of the spiritual and temporal power in

a single person which has given the Khalifate its importance, and its

expulsion from the Golden Horn would transform its whole political status.

Above all, it is necessary to reckon with the Arab nationalist movement

which is already a reality and a factor of permanent importance. Here, too,

the principle of nationality must be applied, though in a very different

sense, for national feeling is of course at a much earlier stage of

development among the Arabs than in Central Europe. Hitherto they have

accepted the Khalifate of the House of Othman, though without enthusiasm;

but recent events are likely to bring to a head the resentment with which

they view the spectacle of the Khalif as the helpless tool of a clique

which in no way represents Islam. Will they repudiate him and restore the

Khalifate to some more authentic descendant of the Prophet? Is there to

be an independent Arab power? Will it be practicable to create a central

authority amid the virtual anarchy of so vast and primitive a country? Or

will Britain, as the chief Mahommedan power, be obliged to assume a loose

protectorate over Arabia and Mesopotamia? If so, will she share this with

the French in Syria, and will Lebanon be able to preserve its autonomy?

Only the course of events can provide an answer to such questions; only one

fixed point emerges from the surrounding uncertainty--the firm pledge of

the British Government that the Holy Places of Islam shall be respected.

Even this does not exhaust the possibilities of the immediate future. Is

Palestine to become a Jewish land? In recent years there has been a

steady emigration of Moslem and Christian and an equally marked Jewish

immigration, and among other factors in the movement the potentialities of

Jewish nationalism in the United States deserve especial notice. America

is full of nationalities which, while accepting with enthusiasm their new

American citizenship, none the less look to some centre in the Old World as

the source and inspiration of their national culture and traditions. The

most typical instance is the feeling of the American Jew for Palestine,

which may well become a focus for his _déclassé_ kinsmen in other parts of

the world. The Jews quite realise that they can have no exclusive claim to

the possession of such a religious centre as Jerusalem, and it is clear

that whatever happens to the Holy Land as a whole, the city itself must

be subject to an impartial administration, which would be neither Jewish,

Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant nor Moslem in any exclusive sense, but would

secure free play to the religious and educational aspirations of them all.

Herzl himself, the founder of modern Zionism, dreamt of Jerusalem as the

shrine of all religions and never looked forward to the day when it would

be a purely Jewish city.

Lastly, what is to be the fate of Asia Minor? There can be no question that

the Russians must be allowed to occupy and retain the whole of Turkish

Armenia. They will thus be conferring a benefit upon humanity and ending

one of the most grinding and barbarous tyrannies that the modern world has

ever seen; the progress made by the Armenians under Russian rule during the

past twenty years is a happy augury for the future of this race when once

united in common allegiance to the Tsar, under a wise system of local

autonomy. But will the Ottoman Empire be able to survive when shorn of its

European possessions, of its Armenian and Arab populations? Will not Italy

demand her share of the spoils, and side by side with the French in Syria,

assume in friendly rivalry the protectorate of Cilicia from a point east of

Adalia as far as the gulf of Alexandretta? Will it be possible to arrest

the process of disintegration even at this stage? Will not Greece attempt

to annex Smyrna and at least a portion of its hinterland, or has she not

at least as good a title as any other competitor? Here, again, it would

be absurd to attempt any answer for the present, but we must at least

be prepared for the possibility of a transformation as rapid and as

overwhelming in Asiatic Turkey as that which freed the Balkans from the

Turkish nightmare two short years ago. In Asia, as in Europe, the war is

the prelude to a new era, and Britain is faced with the alternative

of weakly abandoning her Imperial mission or assuming still greater

responsibilities. "The Turkish Empire has committed suicide, and dug with

its own hand its grave," and to Britain will fall more fully than ever

before the leadership of the Mahommedan world. The loyalty and devotion of

the Moslem community in India can best be repaid by the most scrupulous and

sympathetic attention to the interests of Islam throughout the world.

§16. _Russia and Poland._--It is no mere accident that Germany,

Austria-Hungary, and Turkey should be ranged on the same side in the great

European struggle; for they represent, each in its own way, those false

conceptions of nationality which have so long envenomed the public life

of Europe, and which, for want of better words, have been described as

Germanisation, Magyarisation, and Turkification. It would, however, be

flagrantly untrue to suggest that those three States enjoyed a monopoly of

racial intolerance; for the ideas on nationality which dominated official

Russia under the old absolutist régime and which so rapidly regained the

upper hand under Stolypin and the triumphant bureaucracy, struck at the

very root of tolerance and political liberty. But recent years have

revealed a subtle change of attitude. The policy of Russification had not

been abandoned; indeed in Finland and the Ukraine it survived in its most

odious form. But it was none the less possible to detect a growing note

of interrogation even among the bureaucracy, and still more an increasing

movement of impatient protest on the part of thinking Russians. Without in

any way ignoring what has happened in Persia, we have every right to point

to the essential fact that Russia has of her own accord raised the question

of nationality and thus set in motion vast forces which are already shaking

Europe to its foundations. In proclaiming as one of her foremost aims the

restoration of Polish Unity, Russia did not, it is true, commit herself to

any concrete project of autonomy. But whether her action represents genuine

feeling on the part of the Tsar and his advisers, as M. Gabriel Hanotaux

so positively asserts, or whether it was originally a mere manoeuvre to

prevent the Polish question being raised against her, it is at least

certain that Russia has entered upon a new path from which it will be

very difficult if not impossible to recede. The Russian Poles, under the

leadership of M. Dmowski, have rallied loyally round the Tsar; and there

are many signs that the long-deferred Russo-Polish _rapprochement_ is at

length on the point of fulfillment. Here economic interests play their

part, for in recent years the district between Warsaw and Lodz has become

one of the chief industrial centres of the Russian Empire, and its

annexation to Austria or to Prussia would place a tariff wall between it

and the South Russian markets upon which it chiefly depends. The Poles

of Galicia, having enjoyed the utmost liberty under Austrian rule, have

naturally been almost immune from the discontent so noticeable among their

kinsmen in Russia and Prussia, and have indeed for a generation past formed

the backbone of all parliamentary majorities in the Austrian Reichsrat.

But even among them the first faint signs of Russophil feeling have

been noticeable in the last two years. This is partially due to the

encouragement given by the Austrian Government to the Ruthenes in Galicia,

but also to the disintegrating effect of universal suffrage upon the Polish

political parties, the growth of democratic tendencies at the expense of

the Austrophil nobility, and the consequent increased influence of the

Poles of Warsaw. Though the Polish parties in Galicia issued declarations

of loyalty to Austria at the beginning of the war, and though their

_franc-tireurs_ are fighting in the Austrian ranks, there is a growing

perception of the fact that the only serious prospect of attaining Polish

Unity lies in a Russian victory. Austria, they argue, might, if successful,

unite the Russian and Austrian sections (at the expense of the former's

economic future!), but never the Prussian; and Prussia, out of loyalty to

her ally, could at best add _Russian_ Poland to her own territory: Russia

alone can hope, in the event of a victory, to unite all three fragments in

a single whole. However profoundly they may differ on points of detail,

all Poles agree that the first essential is the attainment of that unity

without which they may at any moment become, as now, the battleground of

three great Empires, and which provides the key with which they themselves

can unlock the portals of their future destiny. Should their dream be

fulfilled, the valley of the Vistula, restored to geographical unity, may

soon play an important part in the political and economic life of Europe.

Russia, then, is faced by one of the greatest choices in history. An

opportunity will present itself after this war, for solving her own racial

question which has in the past presented scarcely less grave embarrassment

than the parallel problem of Austria-Hungary, and which, if left unsolved,

may at no distant date endanger the unity and welfare of the Empire. The

grant of Polish autonomy, the restoration of the Finnish constitution, the

recognition of the special position of the Ukraine or Ruthene language and

cultural traditions, the relaxation of linguistic restrictions among the

lesser races of the Empire, and the adoption of a humaner attitude towards

the Jews of the Pale--these are steps which follow logically from the

proclamation of the Grand Duke Nicholas, and indeed from the alliance with

the Western Powers. Incidentally much will depend upon the attitude adopted

by the Russian Government towards its new Catholic subjects. Its relations

with the Vatican will require to be placed upon an entirely new footing,

and due respect must be accorded to the Uniate Catholic Church of the four

million Ruthenes of Galicia. In this respect the Concordat signed a few

weeks before the outbreak of war between Serbia and the Vatican should form

a very valuable precedent for the whole future relations of the Catholic

and Orthodox Churches, relations which are likely to assume increasing

importance in the not too far distant future. And here it is worth while to

emphasise, for the benefit of those who still regard Russia with misgiving

or dislike, the indisputable fact that it is just the most democratic and

enlightened of the smaller Slavonic States, and the most intellectual and

enlightened politicians and thinkers in those States, who have always

looked with the greatest confidence and enthusiasm to Russia, and who

to-day are most unanimous in welcoming her as the herald of a new era of

humanity and progress.

§17. _General Aims._--It would lead us much too far afield to consider

the possible effects of the war upon colonial development and upon the

political and commercial development of the Far East. Here again, the

central fact to remember is that we may, indeed, that we must, defeat

Germany or perish in the attempt, but that a nation of 65 million

inhabitants cannot be effaced or permanently reduced to impotence. After

the war the two nations will have to live peaceably side by side once more,

and repair so far as possible the wreckage to which this gigantic struggle

has reduced their political, social, and commercial intercourse. Any peace

settlement will be good only so far as it avoids placing obstacles in the

path of so difficult an achievement. It will be the first duty of our

statesmen to watch over the alliance between Russia and the Western Powers,

sealed as it is by the fiery ordeal of war, and to neutralise the occult

influences which are even now working to undermine it, to the advantage of

interests which are anything but British. But it will also be their duty to

create a situation which, while safeguarding the Empire's vital interests,

shall not render improved relations with the central European Powers

impossible from the very outset. It is one thing to abandon our allies

and friends, it is quite another thing to perpetuate a feud which, though

converted by circumstances into a struggle between two unanimous nations,

was in the first instance the work of mischievous if powerful minorities.

The final settlement will inevitably bring many disappointments and

errors in its train. We can best guard against such a result by preparing

ourselves for all eventualities and giving the most careful consideration

to each of the many problems at issue. Our obvious aim must be a settlement

which shows some reasonable prospect of permanence, and this can best be

achieved if we respect so far as possible the wishes of the populations

concerned. The principle of Nationality is not a talisman which will

open all gates, for in some parts of Europe the different races are so

inextricably intermingled as to defy all efforts to create ethnographic

boundaries. This does not, however, affect the central fact that

Nationality is the best salve for existing wounds, and that its application

will enormously reduce the infected area. But if the peoples are to make

their wishes felt there must be a regeneration of diplomatic methods

throughout Europe. Attempts will be made to revive the pernicious

principles of the Congress of Vienna, by which a few autocrats and

aristocrats carved out the fate of millions according to their dynastic

appetites or fancies, and thus tied a whole series of unnecessary knots for

subsequent wars to sever. A healthy and informed public opinion--especially

in the West--must watch over the doings of those who represent it at the

fateful Congress, according loyal support to their declared policy, but

promptly checking the reactionary tendencies which are certain to reveal

themselves. It is still unhappily possible for the arrogant impatience of

a single ruler or the persistent intrigue and misrepresentation of an

ambassador to embroil the European situation. Unless the nations in council

can devise some practical checks upon irresponsible meddling, the flower of

their manhood will have massacred each other in vain. The antecedents of

Sir Edward Grey, and more especially his attitude during the crisis which

led to war, justify us in the hope that his entire influence will be

employed in the right direction when the decisive moment arrives, and that

he will insist upon such crucial questions as the reduction of armaments,

the substitution of "citizen" for "conscript" armies, the control of

armament firms and their occult influence, the effective extension of

arbitration and the elimination of impossible time-limits, being discussed

in all seriousness, and not merely dismissed with a few ironic platitudes

and expressions of hypocritical goodwill. We must not be unduly discouraged

if some of these ideals prove impossible of realisation, for it would be

childish to suppose that when the great war is over the nations will at

once convert their swords into ploughshares and proclaim for the first time

in history the sway of Right over Might. But it is obvious that in a world

which has long ceased to be merely European, the European Powers cannot

long continue with impunity such internecine strife, and that unless some

real shape and substance can be given to the Concert of Europe--so long and

so justly a byword among all thinking men--our continent (and with it these

islands) will inevitably forfeit the leadership which has hitherto been

theirs and surrender the direction of the world's affairs into the hands of

the extra-European powers. It will be remembered that Sir Edward Grey, in

a last despairing effort to preserve peace,[1] broached the idea of "some

more definite rapprochement between the Powers," and though admittedly

"hitherto too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals," it may

be hoped that the enormous difficulty of the task will not deter him from

pleading before the future Congress the outraged cause of international

goodwill.

[Footnote 1: White Paper, No. 101.]