must be directed: but it can only be achieved as between free nations, each in full control of its own destiny and no longer hampered by the arbitrary restraints, whether political or economic, of a rapidly vanishing past. The only possible basis of internationalism is a free, contented and untrammelled nationalism. “That man’s the best cosmopolite who loves his native country best,” said Tennyson, and true loyalty to Europe presupposes perfect liberty for each man to love, and to live in, his native country without interference from alien rule. It is its frank recognition of this fundamental fact which makes the Allied Note so remarkable. Stripped of all unessentials, the kernel at its heart is the acceptance of the principle that territorial revision must precede international accord.
After all previous convulsions the main desire of European statesmen has been, so far as possible, to get back into the old groove of the status quo, with the minimum of interference with ancient vested interests, dynastic or other. For the first time we find a majority of the states of Europe definitely proclaiming their desire to escape from the old grooves, to base their existence upon new lines—in a word, to will a New Europe. This, then, is nothing less than a landmark in the history of the world. “The re-organisation of Europe”[1] is to follow that restoration, compensation and reparation which have long been regarded on all sides as the first axiom of peace. The foundations of this re-organisation are to be three-fold—a respect for nationalities, a recognition of the right of every people, small and great, to free political and economic development, and the establishment of “territorial conventions and international settlements” as guarantees for the future.
For over a century past the principle of nationality has been the dominant factor in the political development of Europe; and yet throughout that whole period it has never even been alluded to in any international treaty. At the three great congresses of Vienna, Paris, and Berlin (1815, 1856, 1878) it was consistently flouted and ignored, and the destinies of the nations were decided on other than national grounds. Under the stress of the greatest war in history this
- ↑ We would remind our readers that an article under this very title, “The Reorganisation of Europe,” was published in No. 4 of The New Europe (9 November, 1916).
2
