resistance of any natural man to insult or injury committed or threatened against his mother, wife, or daughter. The lions and tigers do as much. A moving answer of a different sort is found in words written by Mme. le Verrier to the parents of Victor Chapman on her return from his funeral in the American Church in Paris-"It . . . has brought home to me the beauty of heroic death and the meaning of life." The answer from history is that primitive Governments were despotic, and in barbarous societies might makes right; but that liberty under law has been wrung from authority and might by strenuous resistance, physical as well as moral, and not by yielding to injustice or practicing non-resistance. The Dutch Republic, the British Commonwealth, the French Republic, the Italian and Scandinavian constitutional monarchies, and the American republics. have all been developed by generations of men ready to fight and fighting. So long as there are wolves, sheep cannot form a safe community. The precious liberties which a few more fortunate or more vigorous nations have won by fighting for them generation after generation, those nations will have to preserve by keeping ready to fight in their defense. The only complete answer to these arguments in favor of using force in defense of liberty is that liberty is not worth the cost. In free countries to-day very few persons hold that opinion.

NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE1

ARCHIBALD C. COOLIDGE

[Archibald Cary Coolidge (1866- ) was educated at Harvard, and, after several years' connection with the American diplomatic service in European capitals, returned to Harvard and is now Professor of European History. In 1914 he was Harvard Exchange Professor at the University of Berlin. He has written "The United States as a World Power" (1908) and "The Origins of the Triple Alliance" (1918). The discussion below, from which some paragraphs have been omitted, summarizes with admirable detachment the basic facts on which a settlement of the World War in accordance with the principle of nationality must be made.]

Apart from whatever sympathies we may feel in regard to the war now devastating Europe, most of us fervently hope that at least it may not soon be followed by another; that is to say, that when peace is concluded, the settlement arrived at may contain the elements of some sort of permanence. This does not mean that every one can be or will be satisfied and that many seemingly reasonable desires, even of the victors, will not have to be relinquished. It does mean that in as many cases as possible the settlement shall be based on broad grounds of human rights and legitimate interests which will content those who profit by them, while not appearing too unjust to the rest of the world.

A first condition of this is that in the Europe of the future, so far as may be, no people and especially no great people shall be forced to live in a manner to which it cannot be expected to resign itself. The defeated parties in the conflict will doubtless have to give up or postpone indefinitely what are to them natural and proper ambitions. This is the common lot of the vanquished. Nevertheless, if peace is to be lasting, 1 From Yale Review, April, 1915. Reprinted by permission.

existence must not be made intolerable for them. For instance, such a régime as Napoleon imposed on Prussia cannot in the long run be fastened on a defeated enemy, nor can any complete economic or geographic servitude. Thus it is safe to predict that if Germany, as a result of victory over Russia, were to hand over Finland to Sweden and to take the Baltic provinces for herself, Russia would sooner or later risk another struggle in order to regain a sufficient shore on the Baltic. Conversely, in the case of the triumph of the Allies, a treaty of peace which should deprive of direct access to the Adriatic the German populations not only of Austria but, through her, of the German Empire, might be pregnant with trouble for the future. Even the retention of certain isolated positions of vantage, however tempting as immediate booty, might mean such serious consequences that the advisability would be more than questionable. Could any good that Germany might obtain from the possession of Constantinople compensate for the permanent hostility of Russia, which such possession must engender? Would it even be wise for England to take back Helgoland when experience has shown that Spain can never get reconciled to her owning Gibraltar, which will always remain a stumbling-block to good relations between the two countries? A permanent sore spot should not be lightly created even by the most successful power.

Another class of considerations turns on the desire of the populations themselves in any future determination of frontiers. We Americans in particular believe in government with the consent of the governed. When exceptions must be made, we think of them as justified only by temporary necessity, as in the South after our Civil War, or by the racial inferiority of the governed, as, let us say, in the case of the negro. None the less, we hold to the general principle, and it is one that is admitted even by the most reactionary autocracy as being desirable. Now, in the disputed regions of Europe to-day, not only the consent but the ardent aspirations of the governed on the whole correspond with what

we call nationality. And aspirations of the nationalities to shape their own destinies are not a matter of internal politics only. In the last hundred years, the strivings of Greeks, Italians, Germans, Magyars, South Slavs, Alsatians, and others against foreign rulers have been of the utmost international as well as national consequence. It is true the discontent of the Irish has seldom, owing to the insular position of the United Kingdom, been of more than local importance, but the Polish question has been a running sore in general European politics ever since the partitions in the eighteenth century.

Let us hope, therefore, that in the reconstruction of Europe the wishes of the various nationalities shall be important factors in determining the bounds of the different states. There may be confederations among the smaller ones for the common advantage, but such unions should be voluntary and should leave sufficient play for the individuality of each. At first sight this seems simple. We take a race map of the Continent, note the chief splashes of color on it, and evolve the ideal Europe of the future to correspond with these splashes, leaving out of account the little detached ones that interfere with the general scheme. This kind of map-making has been popular of late. Any imaginative contributor to a newspaper may indulge in it, it can be understood by the meanest intelligence, and it appeals to the sympathies as a generous attempt to reconstruct society in accordance with the fundamental rights of man. Unfortunately, when we come to look at solutions of this sort with a little care, we perceive that they bristle with difficulties. We soon learn that our race map alone is not a safe guide, for it leaves out such physical features as mountains. Ethnical and natural physical frontiers seldom coincide exactly. For instance, they do not in a good part of the western Alps, or of the Pyrenees, or of the Carpathians. To which frontier are we to give the preference, the geographical or the racial? This is perhaps a minor problem that can often be solved by a few mutual concessions; but it is a part of the general question as to

what extent rights of nationality are superior to those based on other considerations.

At the very outset, we are faced by uncertainty as to the meaning of our terms. What is nationality? On what is it based? Not on race most of the nations of Europe are of too mixed and uncertain origin to have blood count for much. The skull measurements in the different parts of the Continent suggest totally different divisions from the modern political and linguistic ones. It is worth remarking here that an imaginary descent may be of more importance than the real one. It matters little whether the modern Greeks are or are not descended from the ancient Hellenes. What is of consequence is that they believe they are. This belief affects them profoundly; it permeates their national consciousness and is a fundamental part of their psychology. In the same way, we need not care to what extent the modern Rumanians are the children of the Roman legionaries and colonists and to what extent they are of Dacian, Slavic, or other origin. The thing that counts is that, speaking a Latin language, they regard themselves as a Latin people, akin to the French, Italians, and Spaniards, something different from the Slavs about them, something more western, the heirs to an older civilization. Although they belong to the Greek Orthodox church, they turn for inspiration not to Constantinople and Moscow, but to Rome and Paris.

We know that the Swiss are a nation though composed of several nationalities, and that as long as these prefer to remain in their present glorious little republic no one has a right to interfere with them, though this doctrine is hardly acceptable to the extreme partisans of Pan-Germanism or of Italia Irredenta. We apply the same principle to the Belgians though they speak two languages; but of what nationality are the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine? The Germans claim the Alsatians as German by speech and descent as well as by most of their history. The French base their arguments on what they regard as a more modern conception, that of