enough political understanding to follow an honest and reasonable policy at home and abroad, and that we should win sympathies in a democratically strengthened Europe. If the democratic principle prevails all round, one nation cannot suppress another. The history of Europe since the eighteenth century proves that, given democratic freedom, little peoples can gain independence. The World War was the climax of the movement begun by the French Revolution, a movement that liberated one oppressed people after another, and now there is a chance for a democratic Europe and for the freedom and independence of all her nations.
The Grouping of Small Peoples.
Natural as it would be for small peoples to draw near each other or to form alliances, such groupings cannot always be equal, in point of unity and central control, to larger neighbouring peoples. Alliances may arise for various geographical and economic reasons or out of political friendship or under stress of common danger. And though it is not to be expected that all the little nations, as such, will join hands, since their interests are too various, some of them seem likely to form lasting groups, such as the Little Entente. The Northern States—the Finns, the Ests, the Latvians and the Lithuanians and even the Poles—may discuss their common interests. In any case it is expedient to remember that, if the Poles were included, there would be more than 100,000,000 inhabitants in the zone of small nations. But, geographically, this zone stretches from the North to the South of Europe, and its very length tells against the association of all the peoples that dwell in it. The Finns and the Greeks, for instance, might hardly perceive, at first sight, the community of their interests.
Austria-Hungary was often thought to be a natural federation of little peoples. The Turkish danger was alleged to have drawn Czechs, Austrians and Magyars closer together. Even now, a Danubian Federation is spoken of as though the Danube were a natural link between the peoples living on its banks or on those of its tributaries. Austrian historians and geographers have claimed that the Austrian Lands were bound to each other by geographical ties, and the Magyars have said the same of Hungary. Our historians have shown, on the other hand, that our Kings of the Přemyslide dynasty supplied the impulse to the creation of Austria before any Turkish danger existed, that the danger itself was temporary, and that,
