country, was not the outrage committed upon small and neutral Belgium the cause of her intervention? And who can doubt France's motives in face of her ardent devotion to the tragic memory of the two provinces which were torn out of her national body in 1871? Is it necessary to add the case of Italy and Rumania, both of whom have long been yearning after the final accomplishment of their national union? So, wherever you look, you find the same national motives at play—outrages on living national organisms on the one hand, and national aspirations and the assertion of national rights on the other. And thus it appears that the Allied Note, with its emphasis upon the national principle and its programme of reconstruction of Europe on !the principle of nationalities, is logically built up in accordance with the prime causes of the war. If after the terrible experience of the last two years Europe is to enjoy secure peace, the obvious need is, in the first instance, to remove the conditions which have brought on the present war.
So it appears, but is it so in reality? One must give full credit to the extraordinary ability and agility with which the diplomacy and journalism of the Entente Powers have succeeded in confusing the causes and, therefore, the issues of the war in the public mind and palming off their Imperialist war aims in an attractive disguise by drawing heavily upon the stores of sympathy which had accumulated in the world for generations with the "nations struggling to be free." Indeed, who can doubt, even apart from the teachings of history, that Russia's "sympathy" with Serbia would not have induced her to raise even a finger on her behalf if she did not happen to be a very useful factor in Russia's diplomacy in the Balkans and Galicia? Again, who can doubt that but for the special importance possessed, from a strategical point of view, by Belgium, the violation of her neutrality would have been received by the British rulers, and therefore by the British Press and the British people, as coolly as the violation of Luxemburg neutrality had been, and the violation of Greek neutrality is at this very moment being received? Or shall we interpret France's case differently? Who, with a knowledge of modern French history, does not know that the question of Alsace-Lorraine had been kept in the foreground by the French Nationalists, Clericals and Monarchists with the sole object of fighting the Republic as a form of government impotent to repair national wrongs
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