tion—in high degree it continued what the Thirty Years’ War had begun.
In the World Revolution three mighty theocratical monarchies fell—Orthodox Russia; Catholic Austria-Hungary; Lutheran Prussia-Germany. When the conflict began over the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia and the German attack on Belgium, who could have foreseen the overthrow of these three Empires, pillars of masterful theocracy and of monarchical aristocracy? Before the war, 88 per cent of mankind lived under monarchical and only 17 per cent under republican systems. To-day, the preponderant majority is republican; the minority, monarchist. In 1914 France was the only great Republic in Europe. The others were Switzerland, Portugal, San Marino and Andorra. To-day there are eighteen Republics, among them the two largest States, Germany and Russia.
Equally significant is the spread of self-government in various States. The Irish Free State is now a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire; and twenty-one Republics and autonomous territories are united in Soviet Russia. For administrative reasons several small States were suppressed in Germany after the war; but, in the new Austria, a strong autonomous and federalist tendency is noticeable. It was a similar tendency towards self-government that led to the division of the three Great Empires into smaller independent entities. Centralization ended by rendering monarchical absolutism impossible. The large, thinly-populated States, created by occupation and expansion in an earlier age, were susceptible of extensive administration. Under modern conditions, extensive administration no longer sufficed and had to give way to the intensive administrations of independent States. There are now thirty-five States in Europe. Before the war there were twenty-five.
“Balkanization”.
Thus the war set up a new order in Europe, in Central Europe particularly. Seven new or reborn States may be reckoned—Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Danzig and Czechoslovakia. Changes occurred in six older or existing States. Germany lost her non-German regions (with the exception of Lusatia); France regained Alsace and Lorraine; Belgium got a bit of the Rhineland; to Italy were added parts of what had been Austria; Bulgaria lost territory on the Aegean; Denmark recovered some Danish districts
AA
