and of retaining and strengthening, in the midst of republican institutions, the militarism of the Second Empire as an instrument of monarchist restoration? And if this constant and skilful agitation had, with some fluctuations, success among the financial and industrial bourgeoisie of France, who were neither Clerical nor Monarchist, who can doubt that this was due entirely to the wealth of Alsace-Lorraine in coal, iron, and potash, which exercised a natural fascination upon the French capitalist mind? And if even to-day you were to offer France Alsace-Lorraine in exchange, say, of Morocco and the Congo, what would be the reply? Read the instructive article by Henri Roche, the well-known publicist, in "La Voix de l'Humanité," the Swiss pacifist organ, of May 31st, 1916, and you will see that the reply would be emphatically in the negative. What can we say, further, of Italy's "national" aspirations, knowing as we do that she could have got without fighting Trentino and Gorizia, but that she refused the offer because she wants also Trieste, the entire hinterland of which is Slav, the Dalmatian coast, which is also Slav, and furthermore, southern Albania and a portion of Asia Minor? And lastly Rumania, who had previously grabbed a portion of Bulgarian country, and only intervened when she thought she could accomplish her national aims on the cheap? Do we not know that her intervention had only been brought about after she had been promised, in addition to Transylvania with its German enclave, also the Banat, which is much more Serbian than Rumanian, and a portion of Bukowina, with a Ruthenian Ulster?
The origins of the war have, in fact, nothing to do with the principle of nationalities. None of the countries of the Entente which have made this principle their stalking horse have been celebrated by their respect for it in the past, and its exploitation by them at present is only a convenient method of gaining the sympathy and adherence of the simple-minded democracies of the world. If, therefore, the entire programme outlined in the Allied Note to President Wilson were to be realised, it would solve none of the problems which have brought about this war. Germany, of course, would be crushed, Austria-Hungary would be dismembered, the Ottoman Empire would be reduced to a small and impotent State in the middle of Anatolia, whose life would not be worth ten years' purchase, and to that extent the predatory objects of
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