^ .f^'':^'.: /:-"'^ UC-NRLF ■>.,vi.,-.-' ,-':■: V. tTfeOGRAPKICAl VSTUDY- 0^ THE ^ VPEACE- TERMS ^ MATH M .! NEW B lOl N I 1 I ^ AFTERMATH A GEOQRAPHICAL STUDY OF THE PEACE TERMS BV MARION I. NEWBIGIN, D.Sc. (Lond.) EDITOR OK THE "SCOTTISH GEOf.KAI'HICA I. MAGAZINE" AUTHOK OK " ORDNANCE SURVEY MAI'S! TIIEIU MEANI.N<; AND USK," ETC. " The quick spring like weeds out of the dead" W. & A. K. JOHNSTON, LIMITED EDINBURGH General Agents: MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED, LONDON ^r:^^ LIST OF PEACE TREATIES % Germany Austria Bulgaria Hungary Turkey . Treaty of Versailles, 28th June 1919 Treaty of St. Germain, loth September 1919 Treaty of Neuilly, 27th November 1919 Treaty of Versailles, 4th June 1920 Treaty of Sevres, loth August 1920 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PACE The Underlying Principles of the Peace Treaty 5 CHAPTER II. The Reversal of Prussian Policy in the West 15 CHAPTER III. The Reconstruction of Poland .' . . . 26 CHAPTER IV. The New Austria 41 CHAPTER V. The Dismemberment of Hungary : Czecho-Slovakia AND ITS Problems $7 ' CHAPTER VI. Greater Rumania and the Serb-Croat-Slovene State 71 ^ CHAPTER VII. Balkan Problems and the Near East ... 89 CHAPTER VIII. The Russian Border States 98 CHAPTER IX. The Fate of Germany's Overseas Possessions . no CHAPTER X. Summary and Conclusion 123 502G1)2 LIST OF MAPS FIG. 1. Distribution of Minerals in the Franco-German Borderlands ..... 2. The New Frontiers of Germany 3. The Western Frontier of Poland 4. The Dismemberment of Austria-Hungary 5. The New Austro-Italian Frontier 6. The Frontiers of Czecho-Slovakia 7. Pre-War Frontiers in the Balkan Peninsula 8. New Frontiers in the Balkan Peninsula 9. Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia ID. Russia at the Accession of Peter the Great (1689) 1 1. The Russian Western Border States 12. The New Transcaucasian States 13. Territorial Redistribution in Africa 14. New Frontiers in West Africa 15. New Frontiers in East Africa 17 31 35 45 5' 65 n 93 96 100 105 109 1 12 •'5 118 AFTERMATH : A Geographical Study of the Peace Terms CHAPTER L THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES OF THE PEACE TREATY. THE changes of frontier, and thus of territory, due to the Peace Treaty are so numerous and so compHcated that it is essential to have some broad general method of grouping them before their details can be considered. But the fact that they involved the break-up of a number of great political units, with dominions extending over more than one continent, makes a purely geographical classification useless. In detail also, the changes of boundary are often so intricate, and in some cases still so uncertain, that they can scarcely be understood without some appreciation of the principles of action which, con- sciously or unconsciously, swayed the minds of the framers of the Treaty. If we look first of all at the Treaty from the broadest possible point of view, we note that it embodies an attempt to fix, with the hope of permanence, the boundaries, not only in Europe, but over much of the globe, of a great number of states in very varied stages of political and economic development. State bound- aries in the pre-war world were the product of an age- long period of conflict and adjustment ; but the framers of the Treaty began their labours at least with the 6 AFTERMATH. hope that by a judicious re-arrangement obvious sources of strife might be avoided in the immediate future. This optimistic conception was founded on the belief that only the application of certain broad general principles was required. Now the immediate cause of the war was an attempted violation of the principle of nationality, and the instinct of the nations of Western Europe led them to believe that the attempt was made because that principle had been successfully violated by Prussia in 1866 and 1871. For them, therefore, the war was from the beginning waged with the object of vindica- ting the right to existence of the weaker nations, and the main object of the Treaty was conceived to be to re-affirm before the world, with suitable sanctions, this right. But as the war went on, it became increasingly clear that its causes were both multiple and complex, and the difficulties experienced by the Supreme Council, no less than many of their decisions, showed that much more was in question than the mere working out of a simple, clearly defined principle. That Alsace- Lorraine should be restored to France, that Italy should be allowed to claim her unredeemed territories, even that Poland should be re-established, may have seemed obvious matters of right and justice ; but fuller investigation showed both that nationality in the western sense had only a limited extension in Europe, ^ and that the problem was complicated by difficult economic questions. This is not the place either to seek to define what is meant by a nation, or to analyse in detail the nation- making factors. But it is obvious that with the latter problem both history and geography have much to do. Now it is a geographical commonplace that Europe is but a peninsular prolongation of Asia, and that its peninsular character is accentuated towards the west and south, where it is most definitely " European," and dimishes eastward, till we come finally to the region where the distinction from Asia is a matter of PRINCIPLES OF THE PEACE TREATY. 7 convcntionrather than of geographical fact. Geography, ^ and therefore history, thus help us to understand why nationality should be older, more stable, and better defined to the west than to the east. The study of land forms on the continent shows us further that these, in the west, are such as to facilitate the process of division into more or less well-defined units, and thus they help to complete the process initiated by the articulation of the coast-line. We find that France, for example, has, throughout at least its greater part, a frontier which is "natural" not only in the military sense, but in the more important one that it repels popula- tion from the margin and throws it towards the centre. Further, the arrangement of the river systems, more especially the convergence of many tributaries towards the Seine, has made the establishment of a dominating central point easy. That the great rivers of France, further, are all French throughout their course — for the Rhone is but an apparent exception — is of great im- portance. One should note in contrast that the great rivers of Germany are never German throughout, and sometimes not even for the more important part of their courses. In the case of Britain the encircling sea, wide enough to protect but not so wide as to isolate, has similarly made the growth of nationality easy. To both these Great Powers, therefore, the nation might well appear the divinely appointed unit, the assertion of its right to exist a matter of immutable justice. One other point is of great importance. The geo- graphical conditions in both cases have exerted their influence throughout a long period of historical time ; both countries were nations before the changes of the Industrial Revolution. Vast as those changes have been in both cases, but more especially in Britain, they have not affected seriously the spirit of patriotism, or the consciousness of unity. During the war patriotic fervour was constantly fanned by proofs that the spirit of Elizabethan England still lived in the breasts of the >) 8 AFTERMATH. factory workers of twentieth century Britain. To us therefore it seemed clear enough that whatever large- scale industry had done, it had not affected the great principle that men were made to dwell in nations, and to be prepared to sacrifice all for their hearths and homes. When, however, we turn to Central and Eastern Europe, we find that national states were fewer, weaker, generally of recent origin, and struggling to maintain themselves against a two-sided attack. On the one hand their existence was imperilled by the presence, close to their borders, of powerful military states of the old type, and on the other by the growth of a new conception of the state as an economic world group, itself a product of the industrial period. Their weakness, the dangers to which they were constantly exposed, and their apparent instability made the right to existence of the national state a far more debatable proposition in the minds of men than it was in the west. We have indeed to face the fact that in large parts of Central and Eastern Europe the spirit of nationality had either not arisen or was dormant. Much more obvious indeed in parts of the east than the sense of nationality as it exists in the west was the agrarian question, which, when the great land- owners, in appearance or in fact, were of a different race from the landless peasants, led to an acute racial problem. But in the west the rise of nationality had been associated with a blending, not a segregation of races. In pre-war Eastern Europe a large extent of terri- tory, extending into the adjacent parts of Asia, was included in the three military empires of Russia, Austro-Hungary and Turkey, all of which suffered disruption as a consequence of the war. All of these were military powers, and not in any sense nations, and, except in the case of Austria, modern large-scale industry had taken but little hokl. Between these military empires and the well-defined PRINCIPLES OF THE PEACE TREATY. 9 national states of the west lay the modern empire of Germany, which, unlike the other three, did not break up from within during the war. It differed alike from the eastern and western states, while pre- senting resemblances to both. From the west the great difference lay in the fact that the rise of a unified German state practically coincided with the develop- ment of large-scale industry, and did not antedate it. The German Empire was indeed organised on an industrial basis from the start. Again, though it resembled Russia in being based upon military power, and in using that power ruthlessly to keep down the subject races included within it, the fact that it was a modern industrial state introduced a sharp note of contrast. Further if, from the beginning of the war and during its course, Germany used her vast military resources . to attack weaker nations with the utmost ruthlessness, / it is probably true that the acquiescence of the nation as a whole in this was not due to the desire to attack nationality as such. The national state seemed to many Germans an anachronism in the modern world, the emphasis laid upon it in France and Britain mere hypocrisy. The industrialists believed that the old military type of state, as represented in Central and Eastern Europe, was destined to give place speedily to a new economic one — Naumann's " Economic world- group," without passing through the stage of the national state, based upon a fusion of races within a well-defined geographical unit. They were willing to use the German military power to crush the resistance of the smaller nations, but quite honestly believed that after defeat in the field the conquered states would accept inclusion in the German group, once the economic advantages of this had been made clear to them. Naumann himself puts this position with great sim- plicity. That this mode of reasoning involved a pro- found miscalculation of the power of resistance possessed by the existing national states became / 10 AFTERMATH. fully apparent during the course of the war. Its im- mediate result was to throw the German industrialists more and more completely into the arms of the military party, and the effect of this again was to increase the determination of the Allies to crush Germany at all costs. But we must not forget a fact which became increasingly apparent during the Peace negotiations — that all industrial states are more or less driven by force of circumstances to seek those things which Germany hoped to gain from the war, that is access to new sources of raw industrial material, to new markets, involving control of the great highways of commerce. Some of the terms of the Treaty, there- fore, if in more or less disguised form, are but that division of spoil to Which the world has been ccustomed from the victors in all wars, "This summary account enables us to group the territorial changes resulting from the Treaty more or less definitely into four categories. In the first place we have those relatively simple modifications of frontier, chiefly in the west, which may be said to be primarily a re-affirmation of the principle of nationality, an assertion of the injustice of tearing, without their consent, groups of people, with strongly developed national consciousness, from the state to which they desire to belong, or preventing them forcibly from uniting with such a state. But the Treaty was made in the midst of a world in arms, after a prolonged and desperate struggle. The victors had won through only with difficulty, and were obsessed with the fear that new military states might arise in Central and Eastern Europe. They held, inevitably no doubt, that they were justified in taking precautions against such a risk, even in violation of their own professed principles. Thus Italy in Tyrol demanded and obtained a " natural " but not a national frontier, for she extended her boundary to include German - speaking peoples, not definitely Italian in sympathy. The same motive vetoed the union of PRINCIPLES OF THE PEACE TREATY. II German Austria with Germany, while France felt her- self justified in takint; certain precautions which may lead to boundary changes in the future. Such boun- clary changes, actual or prospective, were determined j _ by strategic and not national considerations. Thirdly, advantage was taken of the disruption of the Russian, Turkish, and Austro-IIungarian Empires, ^ and of the complete defeat of Germany, to set up a number of new states, on professedly a national basis, but really upon a racial one. Here, as the makers of the Treaty soon found, wc come to a whole series of excessively difificult problems. As we have already seen, conditions in the areas concerned have not been favourable to the rise of national states in the past ; the geographical conditions remain unaltered, and the new states have been established in conditions infinitely more complicated than any that their prototypes had to face in earlier days. Further, since the states were virtually called into existence by the Treaty, boundary questions had chiefly to be settled, not by the repre- sentatives of the peoples concerned, but by those of the western powers, called upon to decide among a host of conflicting claims, and to keep the peace so far as might be between the claimants. It soon became apparent that here the " principle of nationality " was of relatively little value, for the intrinsic right of peoples to unite with others of their own race to form a state is of no /. practical importance unless the state so produced is Ij economically capable of survival. Further, a confusion of thought between " race " and " nation " added to the difficulty. Pure, unmixed races in tTTe anthropological sense are at least rare in Europe, and race names are often used to indicate a group or class, characterised by occupation, or religion, or economic status. Interested parties can in consequence often produce statistics which have little relation to realities, and even a plebiscite can be so manipulated as give little clue to local trends of feeling. Throughout a wide belt of territory, therefore, future boundaries either remain 12 AFTERMATH. undetermined, or are the result of a series of com- promises in which it is difficult to make out any definite underlying principle. Finally we come to the series of changes which, put crudely, may, as already stated, be regarded as a divi- sion of the spoils of war. There is, however, at least this improvement on the conditions which prevailed after previous wars that the lands so divided are either scantily peopled or peopled by groups of a low grade of organisation, showing little capacity for self-govern- ment. Further, for the first time, the responsibility of the governors towards the governed has been definitely formulated. The lands thus divided fall into two main sets, the distinction between them being of some importance. In the first we have the German tropical colonial possessions in Africa and the Pacific ; in the second those semi-arid lands, adjacent to or not far removed from the Mediterranean which have hitherto been under real or nominal Turkish rule. The fate of these in detail has still to be settled. The significance of both types of land demands a moment's consideration. Broadly speaking, industrial development in Europe, first in Britain and later on the continent, was originally based on home coal and raw material derived from those temperate or sub- tropical new lands across the seas which were capable of being settled by Europeans. But the fact that these new lands could be settled by white men meant, as the nineteenth century went on, that large-scale industry developed, to a varying degree, in them also. Thus they tended to absorb more and more of their own produce, both food substances and industrial raw material, and to strive to close their home markets against the manufactured goods of Europe. One result was a steady shift of the area of production towards the tropics. Thus tropical Africa and tropical America became more and more important, and the oceanic islands, with their combination of heat and moisture, supplied an increasing amount of the produce PRINCIPLES OF THE PEACE TREATY. 13 required by industry. This shift of production towards the equator is bound to become increasingly marked during the present century. Of this fact the German industrialists were perfectly well aware. It was certainly part of the German scheme that as the result of the war she would be able to extend hee tropical possessions. In point of fact it is her com- A mercial rivals, Britain, France, and Belgium, who have j been able to do this. But it would be a lack of^ candour not to admit that the motive is the same in both cases. ' Again, so long as the new lands seemed illimitable, and their production far surpassed home consumption, it scarcely seemed worth while to oust the Turk or the Arab from the great stretch of arid or semi-arid lands over which they had spread. It required indeed the experience obtained in the United States to show that the climatic disabilities from which these lands suffer are less serious than they seem, and that they can be made, by modern methods, to produce valuable raw material. Before the war France and Italy had already established themselves in North Africa, but Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the adjacent lands remained to the Turk. It was another part of Germany's scheme that the war should bring her con- trol of the possibilities of these lands. Here, again / the Allies have taken, or are about to take, the places she proposed for herself. Once again, industrial prosperity has hitherto de- / pended upon coal, and its supremacy is even yet just ^ beginning to be threatened. But there are signs at least that mineral oil is likely to increase rapidly in importance. All the industrial nations of the world, therefore, are greedy for oil-fields, and Mesopotamia at least has oil-bearing beds. The fact is likely to influence considerably the boundaries finally fixed upon. 'N Clearly, then, one result of the war has been that j the industrial position of Germany has been greatly J 14 AFTERMATH weakened while that of her conquerors has been corre- spondingly strengthened. But if it be true, as seems most probable, that the deeper causes of the war were economic, we have to admit that so far as we can see at present neither it nor the Treaty has led to the solution of the problem from which it arose. The presence of great industrialised states in Europe has hitherto involved the co-existence in some part of the globe of other more or less dependent states, with a lower standard of comfort, whose function it is to produce food and raw material and to purchase manu- factured goods. Such dependent states are always tending, in fact whether or not in name, to emancipate themselves, and to achieve this by becoming manu- facturing states in their turn. Germany desired, while yet there was time, to take possession of the lands as yet unutilised or incompletely utilised. She failed and lost even those overseas lands which she already possessed. But if the process of industrialisation con- tinues at the same rate, and industry spreads further and further into lands hitherto purely agricultural, sooner or later the problem must arise again in an acuter form. In other words the Treaty, whatever the intentions of its framers, does not establish a new world. On the contrary it is itself but an expression of the conflicting forces at work in the old one. It is those forces, and not the actions of the Allied and Associated Powers, which will in the long run determine the political destiny of the various parts of Europe and of the world. REVERSAL OE PRUSSIAN POLICY. 15 CHAPTER II. THE REVERSAL OF PRUSSIAN POLICY IN THE WEST. As has been already emphasised the German — as distinct from the Austro-Hungarian — attack upon nationality was made on the west, and it is there that the Treaty terms most definitely re-assert the rights of peoples to dispose of their own destiny. Even here, however, the terms have been influenced also by economic conditions. FRANCE. Beginning with France we find that the outstanding feature is the unconditional return of Alsace-Lorraine to that country, which thus reacquires the frontiers of the period between 1815 and 1871. The population in 1910 was about 1,870,000, while the area is 5,605 square miles. But in addition to this reparation of an old wrong, France is granted, practically speaking, two further temporary extensions of territory in this area, with the possibility that one may become permanent. In the first place, in addition to the restoration of Strasburg, the great river-port of Alsace, it is decreed that the port of Kehl, placed in Baden, on the right bank of the river, and exactly opposite Strasburg, shall for a period of seven years, with a possible extension to ten, be administered as a single unit with that town, by a French administrator appointed and supervised by the Central Rhine Commission. Second, in compensation for the destruction of coal mines in Northern France, and as payment on account of reparation, Germany cedes to France full ownership of the coal mines of the Saar Basin. The area in which the mines and their accessories lie is to be governed 16 AFTERMATH. by a Commission appointed by the League of Nations, and consisting of five members, one French, one a native inhabitant of the region, and three representing three different countries other than France or Germany. Existing German legislation will remain the basis of law, but modifications may be made by the Commis- sion after consulting a local representative assembly which it is to organise. The area concerned has been so delimited as to include all the mine shafts, the industries which depend upon the mining one, and the region inhabited by the miners and other workers. As a result it comprises not only a section of the Saar valley, from Sarregue- mines (Saargemiind) to the north-west of Merzig {i.e. to Saarholzbach), but also a region extending north beyond St. Wendel and east to the town of Homburg. Of this area only the Saar valley section was included within the French frontier of 1814 {see Fig. i, inset). Within that section the town of Sarrelouis at least still retains French traditions. While the coal mines, as just stated, are ceded in full, the political destiny of the area in which they lie is to be the subject of a plebiscite, to be held by communes fifteen years after the signing of the Treaty. The population are then to determine whether they wish the existing regime to continue under the League of Nations, or whether they decide either to reunite with Germany, or to become permanently attached to France. The provision in regard to voting by com- munes has doubtless been inserted in the belief that in part of the Saar valley region at least the traditions due to the earlier attachment to France will lead certain groupings to elect for French nationality. Since France obtains full ownership of the mines, these must be bought back by Germany at a valuation in any area which elects to return to Germany. The lands concerned have hitherto belonged in part to Rhenish Prussia and in part to the Palatinate. In 1 9 10 their total population was 649,507, of whom REVERSAL OF PRUSSIAN POLICY. 19 concerned with military tliaii with economic questions, and sacrificed iron beds of known vahie in order to obtain more space around the fortress of l^elfort. But the philosopher will be disposed to see in this less the action of an individual than an expression of the fact that it was already clear that Germany was to become, far more completely than France, an industrial- ised state. Whatever the anomalies of the boundary drawn be- tween Annexed and French Lorraine in detail, also, the Great War seemed at least to prove that the 1871 frontier as a whole had considerable and permanent strategic value. Germany, in 1914, shrank from the direct attack on the eastern frontier (tf France, pre- ferring that advance through Belgium which brought Britain at once into the conflict, and when later she essayed an advance by Verdun, she met with disastrous failure. From the economic point of view, however, as con- trasted with the strategic, great changes had taken place in the region in the interval. Those changes were such that the industrial party in Germany during the war desired to push the French frontier in Lorraine still further to the west, purely on economic grounds. There were at the same time individual expressions of opinion in France that a mere restoration of Alsace- Lorraine would be insufficient, and that the whole of the Saar coalfield was essential to the country. In other words, while in 1871 the chief concern of the French representatives was to protect the territory which remained to them, that of the Germans was to obtain a frontier which in its broad outlines should be determined by strategic considerations and in its details by economic. After the Great War, however, the importance of the economic problems involved had become perfectly clear to the French. The change was due to industrial developments in the interval, and of these the most important were connected with the utilisation of iron-ores. The pro- 20 AFTERMATH. duction of iron, alike in German and in I'rench Lorraine, increased enormously. On the one hand, the inventions of Thomas and Gilchrist of Middlesbrough (first utilised in 1879) proved that the " minette " ores were not so useless as had been previously supposed. This increased the value of the known beds of Lorraine. Further, as the result of continued research on the part of the engineers and geologists of Nancy, it was shown that iron deposits, previously unknown, and of great wealth, underlay the plateau of Briey. The discoveries were first made in 1884, but the ores were not worked commercially till 1893, and only from about 1902 did exploitation become extensive and general. This had a twofold result. In the first place it showed Germany that she had not, as her leaders had hoped, laid hands on all that was most valuable in Lorraine, and raised there a desire to renew the 1870 attack, and acquire what she had missed then. On the other hand it led to a concentration of the French iron industry in the Lorraine area, that is in a region which as the experience of the war proved was much too near the frontier. The simultaneous loss, early in the war, of the coalfields of the north and of the iron-fields of Lorraine was indeed the heaviest blow which that country had to sustain. The French loss, again, was a German gain, for during the war the iron of Ger- man Lorraine was supplemented by that of French Lorraine. The significance of the Lorraine iron to both countries before the war may be indicated briefly by a few figures. In 1913 of 28;^ million tons of iron ores extracted from German soil, over 21 million tons came from Annexed Lorraine. In the same year Germany imported in addition 14 million tons of iron ore from foreign countries, this figure being pre- cisely the annual production of the Briey fields. The acquisition of these fields would therefore have made her practically independent as regards this supremely important mineral. In 19 13 France, on the other hand, REVKRSAL OK TRUSSIAN POLICY. 21 produced 22 million tons of iron ore, but owing to the deficiency of the country in coal nearly half of this was exported. Nine-tenths of the total ore of the country were raised in French Lorraine. Now iron has both an industrial importance pure and simple and a military one. The iron industry of any country is usually taken as a convenient index of its industrial development, for all industries involve its use. Again, its importance in war does not need emphasis. The possession of the iron-fields of Lorraine is thus not purely an industrial question, either for France or for Germany. In the hands of a military power they are of infinitely greater importance than any " strategic " frontier as defined by the older writers. But, and this adds a new complication, beds of iron-ore are of little use without coal. France as a whole is poor in coal, a fact which hindered her full development of the ironfields of French Lorraine, and necessitated the export of a large amount of ore, much of which was smelted on the Westphalian coalfield. The intentional destruction wrought by the Germans in her northern coalfields will diminish her pre-war output for many years. The reason given in the Treaty for the cession of the Saar coalfield, as we have seen, is this fact. But, un- fortunately for the country, most of the coals of the Saar area are not suitable for coke production, and coke is largely required in the smelting industry. Thus her possession of these fields does not solve her iron problem. The Saar coal beds extend into what was Annexed Lorraine, and thus politically fall into three sets, the Lorraine, Bavarian and Prussian deposits. In the year 1912-13 the total production was about lyh million tons, of which the Prussian fields produced about I2f million, the Lorraine fields nearly 4 million, and the small deposits in Bavarian territory the remainder. As a contrast we may note that the pre-war production of the French fields in the departments of the Nord and 22 AFTERMATH. the Pas de Calais was considerably over 27^ million tons. Nevertheless the reserves of coal in the Saar field are estimated to be greater, and it is believed that the mines have not been exploited to their fullest extent by the Germans. They suffered from the com- petition of the superior Westpliialian coal, and by the political conditions which prevented their products finding their natural outlet towards the west and south. Improvements in the waterways, which have been already projected, especially the widening of the Rhine- Rhone canal, would give the coal easier access, under the new conditions, to eastern France, and the pro- jected schemes for the improvement of the Rhine above Strasburg would give outlets to Switzerland and so to Italy. Alsace-Lorraine, also, under German rule took a considerable amount of coal from the part of the field which lay in Rhenish Prussia, in addition to that mined within Annexed Lorraine. Generally we may say that the cession of the mines which lie within the Palatinate and Rhenish Prussia is justified not only by France's clamant need for coal at the moment, but, at least as a temporary measure, by the fact that it will help Alsace-Lorraine to pass through the critical period for her industries which must result from the sudden snapping of the long connection with Germany. For we must not forget that it was during that long period of connection that the industries of the region, especially the textile industries of Alsace, reached their pre-war dimensions. The attachment of Kehl to Strasburg for a period of years is similarly to be regarded as a means of getting over the difficulties of the period of transition. Kehl was only opened as a port in 1900, and was intended by the inhabitants of Baden to rival Strasburg. Stras- burg — the city of roads — has admirable possibilities of communication with western France by the Pass of Saverne (Zabern) and with the south-west by means of the Belfort Gap. But when Alsace as a whole passed to Germany the significance of this gap greatly REVERSAL OF PRUSSIAN POLICY. l':{ diminished, and Strasburg's connections were chiefly down the Rhine. For the town, as for Alsace-Lorraine as a whole, the reversal of the economic trends of the last fifty years will be difficult, and the holding of Kehl is a jjrecautionary measure intended to smooth the difficulties of the period of transition. BELGIUM. The changes in regard to the frontier of Belgium arc insignificant in total amount, but not without some historical importance. In the first place it is to be noticed that the country ceases to be a neutral state. Second, Germany is to recognise the full sovereignty^ of Belgium over the contested territory of Moresnet and over part of Prussian Moresnet. She is also to renounce in favour of Belgium all rights over Eupen and Malmcdy, the inhabitants of which were, however, given the right to protest if they wished within six months, the final decision being reserved to the League of Nations. The district of Moresnet lies immediately to the south of Aachen. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna decided that the old commune was to be divided between Belgium and Prussia. But the wording of the Treaty was not clear, and when the line came to be demarcated on the ground the two parties were unable to agree, the difficulty arising chiefly from the presence of zinc and lead mines in the contested zone. In 18 16 a provisional agreement was come to by which the contested territory, about 2 square miles in extent, received a special status, being placed under the administration of two commissioners, one Belgian and one Prussian, later replaced by a burgomaster and a Council of Ten. This provisional arrangement lasted till the Great War. Meantime the mines have been worked out, but the Societc de la Veille Montagne, which had originall}^ exploited the mines, retained a metallurgical establishment, in which ores obtained 24 AFTERMATH. from the neighbouring Prussian territory underwent preliminary treatment. The ores were subsequently exported to Belgian factories, so that the economic connections were with that country. The inhabitants, numbering 4668 in 191 4, had frequently asked to be attached to Belgium, and the fact that they renewed the appeal in November 191 8 is the justification for the transference to Belgium. The ceded part of Prussian Moresnet brings the Belgian frontier to the road between Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) and Liege. The district of Eupen, with an area of 68 square miles, had over 26,000 inhabitants at the last census, and the town lies in the upper valley of the Vesdre, which enters the Ourthe and thus the Meuse. Its commercial connections are with Verviers, placed further down the same stream. The people speak a dialect intermediate between P^lemish and German, but the same speech extends into Belgian territory to the outskirts of Verviers. The district of Malmedy (314 square miles), like Eupen, lies on the margin of the Eifel plateau. The town is situated in a mountain valley on a small tributary of the Ambleve, itself another feeder of the Ourthe. The people of the region numbered about 33,000 at the last census. In Mal- medy and the surrounding villages they are Walloon- speaking, and purely Belgian in sympathy, but these Walloons number only about 10,000, while the remaining territory is German, though the commercial connections are again with Belgium. Both districts, Eupen and Malmedy, were handed over to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna, without consultation of the wishes of the inhabitants, in order to satisfy her demand that her boundaries should be so drawn as to give her the population of 1805. Further, before the war Germany had established near Malmedy a military camp, and had laid down lines of rail which, as events showed, were not intended for purposes of commerce. The districts in which both towns lie are poor, but the forests, which cover over REVERSAL OK PRUSSIAN POLICY. 25 16,000 acres, are likely to be of some importance to J^eli^iiim, in view of the devastation of her own forests by the invaders, LUXEMBURG. By tlie Treaty Germany is compelled to renounce her various treaties and conventions with the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg which ceases to be part of the German Zollverein. She also renounces her rights of ex[)loitation over the railways, adheres to the abroga- tion of the neutrality of the Duchy, and engages to accept any international agreements come to in regard to it. Her pre-war interest in Luxemburg was due to the fact that the Lorraine iron mines extend into the country, lu the years before the war about 7-4 million tons of ore were produced, practically all absorbed by Germany, which had also control of the smelting establishments within the country. As a result of her control of these and of the railway system, the Grand Duchy, as the war showed, was practically a German dependency, despite the existence of strong national feeling. In 1919 the inhabitants voted for an economic union with France, but the latter country proved opposed to this, and at the time of writing negotiations are in progress between Belgium and the Grand Duchy. DENMARK. Though Denmark w^as not one of the belligerents in the war, the Treaty has led to her acquiring additional territory, and thus to the righting of an old wrong. When, in 1866, the three Duchies of Slesvig, Holstein and Lauenburg passed to Prussia, the French Govern- ment succeeded in having a clause inserted in the Treaty of Prague to the effect that Northern Slesvig, which is Danish-speaking, should have the right of deciding its fate by plebiscite. This plebiscite was never held, and Germany endeavoured to suppress national feeling here by the same methods which she 2G akti:rmath. practised elsewhere. The Treaty of Versailles ordered that the delayed plebiscite should be taken, and de- limited two zones for this purpose. The northern zone includes the area inhabited by Danish-speaking people. It extends south to the fiord of Flensborg, without taking in the town, and thus includes on the east the considerable island of Alsen. Westward the line passes to, the north of the island of Sylt, but includes the small but ancient town of Tondern. In this zone the inhabitants were to vote as a whole. The result of the voting, as expected, was for attachment to Denmark. The second zone, which is smaller, includes the town of Flensborg and the three western islands of Sylt, Fohr and Amrum. Here the voting was by comnmnes, and showed a majority in favour of Germany. The people of this belt are of mixed language to the east and Frisian-speaking to the west. Flensborg is a con- siderable town (65,000), with many German immigrants and is completely Germanised. The future here is, however, in spite of the voting, still somewhat uncertain, for it is believed that the town cannot continue to prosper if cut off from its natural hinterland in North Slesvig. The Treaty contains a stipulation that, after the voting, boundary lines shall be drawn by the Powers, who will take into consideration both economic and geographical conditions. CHAPTER III. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND. With the problems connected with the reconstruction of an independent Polish State, we come in contact with those which have made the settlement of Eastern Europe hitherto a task beyond the skill and resources RECONSTRUCTION OK I'OLANI). 27 of the Tovvers. At i'lrst sight it may scciii that tlic idea that the partitions should be annulled, and that a people divided without their consent among three great empires should be allowed to re-unite to form a national state, is a simple matter of elementary justice. That some such notion was originally present in the minds of the negotiators is further fairly clear. Closer examination, however, showed that social, economic, and geographical factors all complicated the question. Even could these have been settled, also, there is the further difficulty that Russia and Austro-Hungary have both crashed to the ground, and future trends of policy and of economics throughout the^ areas covered by their vast territories are far from clear, and will not be for many years to come. The result is that we find that neither the Treaty of Versailles nor that of St. Germain-en-Laye attempts to define the boundaries of Poland in their entirety. Those boundaries are still in part forming the stakes of actual fighting on the ground, and, bearing in mind the inevit- able war-weariness of the Western Powers, and the divergences of policy already discernible among them, it is by no means certain that they will be willing to use force even to ensure the carrying out of their own decisions. Since the future boundaries of Poland* are not fully determined by treaty, it seems desirable in this case to look first at the general Polish problem, and then to pass on to particularise the areas in which some sort of settlement has been reached. The essence of the problem may be briefly stated. Poland before the First Partition of 1772 — the so- called Republic — with an area of 283,500 square miles, exclusive of the Duchy of Courland, which was a Polish fief, extended over regions where the ethnic Poles were in a minority {see Fig. 10, p. 100). On the other hand the Kingdom, erected by the Congress of Vienna in 181 5, and then united to the Russian Crown, with an area of only some 49,000 square miles. 28 AFTERMATH. was far from including the whole of the territory in which the Poles formed a majority of the population. It may, therefore, seem clear that a reconstituted Poland, if the principle of nationality is to be taken into account, must be larger than the Kingdom and smaller than Pre - partition Poland, and generally limited to areas with a definite majority of nationals. But, before facing the geographical problems involved, we have an initial difficulty, which was early brought to the notice of the makers of the Treaty, and has already led to armed conflicts between Poland and her neighbours. Though it is true, as just stated, that Pre-partition Poland included non-Polish areas, it yet excluded districts, lost before 1772, in which, it is claimed, Polish majorities still exist to-day. The most important of these lie in Upper Silesia, lost to Poland so long ago as 1336. While many of the Poles in this region have become Germanised during the long period of attachment to Prussia, there was, in the y^ars before the war, a recrudescence of national feeling which the Polish representatives regard as a justifica- tion for a claim to the area. That it is richly mineralised adds another complication. But the Polish claim here has to face not only German opposition, but that of the new state of Czecho- slovakia. Again, Pre-partition Poland extended eastward and south-eastward over a large extent of territory, of uncertain or undeveloped nationality. The extension was largely the result of dynastic combinations, and brought the Poles over wide tracts inhabited by Lithuanians, Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and White Russians. Into these lands, during the period of occupation, there was necessarily Polish infiltration, but, broadly speaking, the cultivators of the land were the autochthonous peasants, though the land was owned by Polish nobles. Since the partitions, there has been a definite rise of a feeling of nationality among the peoples here, and recent events in Russia have accentu- RECONSTRUCTION OK POLAND. 29 ated this, and have complicated the national problem with a social and economic one. But even this is not all, for two other complications remain. In the first place we have the difficulty of Poland's access to the sea. The Vistula is a Polish river, the backbone of the Polish state, but its great port of Danzig is German, and a solid belt of Germans in East Prussia separates the Poles from the sea. Ihe new Poland cannot exist without a development of industry, and industry demands free access to the sea. Thus a settlement on purely national grounds would result in the formation of a state incapable of independent existence. In the second place Poland, however constituted, is bound to have a serious Jewish problem, exacerbated by recent events in Russia. It is stated that some 5| million Jews, or about half the Jewish population of the world, live within the area covered by the former Republic of Poland. In Polish territory, as elsewhere, the Jews have but little connection with the land, nor do they work to any great extent in the factories. Their activities are largely limited to com- merce, retail-trading, money-lending and small manu- factures, often carried on under very bad conditions. The fact that they have been continually oppressed, stimulates what is called " industrial unrest " among them, and this social problem, which all modern European states have to face to a greater or less degree, is here embittered by the racial question. For the Jew is essentially an internationalist : able to make a livelihood of sorts under any form of govern- ment, and among any civilised people, he has little sympathy with developing nationality, and therefore from the patriot's standpoint is a dangerous citizen in a nascent state. The fact that Poland's great enemy is Soviet Russia, and that there Jews bulk largely in the public eye, is likely to increase the feeling against them,while the other fact that in Posnania the sympathies of the Jews have been with the Germans rather than 30 AFTERMATH. ' with the Poles, is not likely to be soon forgotten. That they are present in such numbers undoubtedly adds to the difficulties of the new state. If next, before proceeding to look at details, we sum up the general aspects of the Treaty in so far as they affect Poland, w,e may say that its makers were guided primarily by ethnic considerations. They succeeded, without great difficulty, in drawing an ethnic frontier which should separate the new state from Germany on the west. The difficulties in the case of Silesia were met by laying down certain plebiscite areas. The arrangements here are highly complicated, and show signs of having been inserted in the Treaty at a late stage, with the result that some curious ambigu- ities arise, and the plebiscites, if carried out, will make the frontier difficult to draw. The difficulties in regard to the north-east frontier were similarly met by the provision of plebiscite areas. • The Danzig problem was met by the establishment of a Free City State. Of this solution it need only be said here that it appeals strongly to those who consider that political action should be based i*pon abstract principles. But unless the new world is very different from the old one, it seems doubtful if the solution can be permanent. Perhaps the most that can be hoped is that the Free City will last long enough for new economic trends to show themselves. Its presence cuts off East Prussia from Germany proper, a condition of affairs which by the old standards would be regarded as unstable. The remainder of the frontiers of the future Poland, including most of the southern and eastern, were left unsettled. The parties chiefly concerned are now engaged in making settlements on their own account which do not coincide with ethnic lines. Whether these will be recognised by the Powers, and whether they will be permanent or not is at present unknown. Turning first to the boundaries as fixed by treaty, we find that there is some evidence that the original 32 AFTERMATH. intention was to give to Poland Upper Silesia, tof^ether with those parts of the province of Posen and West Prussia inhabited by an indisputable Polish majority. It is stated, however, that the German Government made a strong protest against giving up Upper Silesia, asserting that at the elections of 1907 and 191 2 the German candidates obtained a majority over the Polish ones, that both the industrial and commercial concerns of the districts were under German management and control, and that the coal mines of the region, which produced in 1913 about 49 million tons, or approxim- ately one quarter of the total German production, were essential to the prosperity of eastern Germany. They pleaded that in consequence the assignment of the area to Poland coincided neither with the wishes nor with the economic interests of the inhabitants. It is believed that the laying down of a plebiscite area here was a response to these representations. The point is only of interest because the first statement, that Upper Silesia had been assigned to Poland, was widely published at the time, and has found its way into some books of reference and technical articles on the sub- ject in geographical journals. Some additional interest is given by the fact that the hypothesis that the plebis- cite area was a late addition to the Treaty seems to account for some of its anomalies. It does not appear necessary to follow in detail the limits of the plebiscite area, for it is defined by means of small villages not to be found on ordinary maps. It may therefore be sufficient to state that, except on the west, it coincides with the Regierungsbezirk of Oppeln, as shown on ordinary maps of Germany. Its westward limit is so defined as to leave a part of the Oppeln district to Germany, without the necessity of a vote. The line starts from the point, to the east of Neustadt, where the old frontier of Bohemia makes a salient in German territory, and then follows a sinuous course northward to approach the old frontier of Posnania about 9 miles south of Kempen. RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND. 33 The complications of the voting, which have been discussed in detail by Mr. A. R. Hinks, depend upon the fact that no enclave of Germans is to be left, and should the voting in the south-west corner of the area, where Poles, Germans, and Czechs are mingled to- gether, be such as to isolate a group of Germans from Germany, then this region goes to Czecho-Slovakia whatever the votes or wishes of the inhabitants. A proviso is introduced to ensure that, in case the coalfields fall to Poland, Germany must be allowed to purchase coal on the same terms as the Poles. But there has already been fighting in this area, and the final settlement is perhaps more likely to be on the basis of some kind of adjustment, than merely on a vote. As regards the remainder of the western frontier, the province of Posen (Posnania) broadly speaking returns to Poland, but in detail an attempt has been made to ensure that an undoubtedly Polish majority exists in the region handed over, so that the new frontier does not coincide in its entirety with the old administrative boundary. The following description can be followed broadly on Fig. 3, which shows the main deviations. Beginning at the point south of Kempen already given as the limit of the plebiscite area, we find that from here to the point where the river Bartsch crosses the old administrative frontier, Poland is granted a strip of territory belonging to Middle Silesia (Regierungsbezirk of Breslau), varying in width from about 6 to 9 miles. From the Bartsch river the international frontier follows the old administrative one, as nearly as may be, to the point where it bends to the south, south-west of T.issa. From here it turns to the north- west, following the line of lakes traversed by the river Obra, and thus leaving a part of western Posnania to Germany. From the Obra it passes to the river Warthe to the west of Birnbaum, and still well east of the old frontier, and then runs north to strike it afresh. The frontier is then followed to th-e point C 34 AFTERMATH. where it is cut by the Netze near Kreuz, and this river and its tributary the Kuddow next form the boundary, till the old frontier is again struck south of Scheide- inuhl. For a short section this is again followed, then the line turns north between Flatow and Konitz, till it strikes the frontier of West Prussia in the neighbour- hood of Rummelsburg. Save for a slight deflection in the vicinity of Putzig this last boundary is followed to the sea, giving Poland a small section of coast-line to the west of Danzig. Of the boundary so defined it may be sufficient to repeat that it is obviously based upon ethnic principles ; save for some enclaves, like Bromberg, remote from the main mass of Germans, it delimits, precisely enough, the lands predominantly inhabited by the two races. But as is shown by the presence in certain sections of river boundaries, it makes no pretence to be a strategic frontier. Further, in the Obra-Warthe section it shows a singularly near approach to Berlin, and cuts across an important line of rail, A Europe in which such a frontier can be stable must be a different Europe from the pre-war one. / As we have just seen, to the west of Danzig Poland is granted a few miles of seaboard. But the tov.'n itself, with its predominantly German population, is removed from her jurisdiction, and forms a Free City under the control of the League of Nations. Danzig, with a population of 1.82,000, has only about 3 per cent. /oS. Poles. On ethnic principles, therefore, it should belong to Germany. By making it into a Free City, in- cluded, however, in the Polish Customs Union, the makers of the Treaty have accepted the principle that economic factors should to some extent override national ones. The Free City State is indeed a compromise, in which it may be said that theoretically every legitimate interest of both parties has been safeguarded. Unfortunately the solution takes no account of sentiment, which is always apt to bulk largely in national states. The area covered by the Free City is defined in Fig. 3. — The Western Frontier of Poland, < 36 AFTERMATH. detail. The points of importance are that to the west and south-west it is bounded by territory recognised as PoHsh ; to the east by territory admitted to be German, though now territorially separated from Ger- many proper ; to the south-east by an area which, as of uncertain nationality, has been the subject of a plebiscite. The form of the territory assigned to the City State is highly irregular ; it includes, however, speaking broadly, the delta of the Vistula. The southernmost point is defined by the forking of the main stream, where the Nogat takes off from it. The eastern limit is then defined by the Nogat, continued by a line crossing the Frisches Haff and the Frische Nehrung. Westward the line follows the Vistula to a point below Dirschau, then runs west, forming a sharp angle in the direction of Berendt, and turns north-west and then north to reach the shores of the Gulf north of the whaling station of Zoppot, which is thus included. The total area is about 580 square miles. As already n)entioned, this territor)- cuts off to the east a coastal belt in East Prussia, with an indisputable majority of Germans. In the interior of East Prussia, however, and in a small contiguous part of West Prussia, the racial distribution is more doubtful, and two contiguous plebiscite areas are defined in the Treaty. The more easterly includes the district of AUenstein and its prolongation eastward to the Russian frontier (circle of Oletsko). The people here, in the Masurian lake region, are nearly related to the Poles, and speak a Polish dialect, but are Protestants and not Catholics like the I'oles in general. The second plebiscite zone, which includes a part of West Prussia, covers the circles of Stuhm, with Marienburg ; of Marienwerder ; of Rosenberg, with Dcutsch-E)'lau. If this area passes to Germany, the Danzig Free State will touch German territory on its whole eastern border, and be separated by a very narrow strip of Polish territory on the west from Germany proper. RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND. 37 The votinfj in the two plebiscite areas took place in July, 1920, and was preceded by a Note of protest addressed by the Polish Government to the Allied and Associated Powers, in which it stated that the conditions were such that it could not consider the vote as a proper expression of the wishes of the people. In point of fact in both areas the vote was overwhelmingly for Germany. This does not, however, settle the frontier question, for this is to be fixed subsequently, all the circumstances being taken into account. The Treaty provides, whatever the result of the vote, that Poland shall have the right bank of the Vistula, with sufficient territory for its proper administration and control. The Poles are already claiming further that the frontier must be so arranged as to give them unimpeded use of the railway from Warsaw to Danzig via Mlawa and Eylau, which forms the shortest route. At present Poland is using the far longer route which goes by Skiernievice and Thorn. Finally, though it has nothing to do with the boundaries of Poland, we may note here for the sake of reference that Plast Prussia loses a strip of territory to the north of the Niemen including the port of Memel. The area is inhabited chiefly by Lithuanians, jK and will presumably be handed over to the new Lithu- anian State (p. 106). The above description shows that only a relatively small part of the boundaries of Poland has been settled, finally or conditionally, by treaty ; so that her future area and population remain entirely specu- lative. The frontiers which we have already considered delimit the new Polish State from Germany, and they show it as made up of the Kingdom of 181 5, plus territory returned by Germany. We have still to consider the relation to Russia proper and to former Austrian territory. As regards Russia the provision in regard to Memel, mentioned above, seems to imply a belief on the part of the makers of the Treaty that 38 AFTERMATH. the new state of Lithuania, in one form or another, will be permanent, and will be contiguous alike to East Prussia and to Poland. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was attached to Poland till its annexation by Russia at the time of the Partitions ; the area contains a considerable Polish minority, including many landowners. South of the area in which the Lithuanians form a majority^ we come to that in which White Russians pre- dominate with again a Polish, chiefly landowning, min- ority. Further south again we come to the Ukraine, with a majority of Ukrainians (Ruthenians) but not inconsiderable Polish minorities, limited eastwards, broadly speaking by the Dnieper. The complication here is greatly increased by the fact that, across the old Austro-Russian frontier, the same people, here called Ruthenians, form a majority in Eastern Galicia. In Galicia as a whole, however, the Poles have a clear majority, due to the fact that they constitute an almost solid block in the western part ; even in the east they predominate in the towns, the Ruthenians being mostly peasants. In Galicia, therefore, considered as a whole, the national problem is cut across by a social and economic one, and the same problem reappears in the western Ukraine, the Polish minority always diminish- ing, however, as one passes towards the Dnie-per. It has been generally assumed, especially by those who believe that the Ukraine will survive as an in- dependent, or partially independent, state, that while western Galicia would go to Poland as of right, eastern Galicia would, at least in part, go to the Ukraine. Quite recently, however (May 1920), it was announced that a very different division of territory had been agreed upon between Poland and the Ukraine. 1 It should be nolcd tlie terms Litluianip., \Vhite Russia (White Riithenia),* Ukraine (South-west Rulhenia) are all exceedingly anil.iguous. Old names have been revived by new states, but in a different sense, and, in the present unsettled condition of the whole area, without I he possibility of precise definition. RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND. 30 The arrangement, as announced, was that Poland should have the whole of Galicia, east as well as west, and that further her frontier should bend eastward, over former Russian territory, to take in a part of the province of Volhynia, up to the rivers Zbrucz and Styr, and including the towns of Vladimir, Kovel, and Lutsk. In return Poland renounced to the Ukraine the areas further east with Polish minorities, and gave military aid against the forces of Soviet Russia. By this agreement the new republic of Poland definitely renounced the idea that actual majorities are to deterinine national boundaries, the principle upon which her frontiers with Germany had been laboriously based by the Powers. Further, the agreement shows that the reasons — both geographical and economic — which led the earlier Poland to extend eastward still exist, and are exerting their influence already on the policy of the New Poland. The events of the Polish campaign against Soviet Russia, and the doubt about the future of the Ukraine which now exists, have deprived this agreement of even the doubtful validity which it possessed ; it was never, of course, recognised by the Powers. The arrangements as to the eastern frontiers of Poland which are now being made are discussed in Chapter VII. But it seems worth while to emphasise the fact that history here is likely to repeat itself, even in detail. In the past when Russia was weak, Poland pushed eastward, only to be flung back by the greater power as time went on. There remains for consideration one other area which has historically been a bone of contention, and where history seems also likely to repeat itself. This is Austrian Silesia, with a continuation of the rich coalfields which underlie German Silesia and part of Galicia. The history of the area has been complicated. It is sufficient to say that it was lost to Poland before the Partitions, and passed first to the crown of Bohemia and then to .'\ustria. The western section, the province 40 AFTERMATH. of Troppau, is Germanised, but for geographical reasons is TnS, was largely due to the utter collapse of Austria- Hungary, which made any other solution impossible at the moment. With the Scrbo-Croats of Croatia-SIavoin'a may be included also the Slavs of Southern Hungary, estimated at about half a million. As already ex[)lained these live in the western Banat, between the Tisza and the Danube (the Bacska), in the angle between the Danube and the Drave (Baranya), and in a small area extend- ing bc}-ond the Drave and the Mur in south-western Hungar}'. The last-named are chiefly Slovenes, of whom something will be said later, the others are Serbo-Croats. As regards religion, the percentage of Catholics increases as one travels westward, the Slavs of the Banat being mostly members of the Orthodox church. We have already said something of the new frontier which separates Rumania from Yugo-Slavia in the Banat. That separating Yugo-Slavia from Hungary, so far as yet determined, runs from Szegedin on the Tisza to the south of Mohacs on the Danube. It then cuts the Drave considerably to the north of Ezek, leaving the land at the junction of the rivers to Yugo- Slavia. Beyond it follows the line of the Drave to the south of Kanissa, where it bends to the north-west to join the frontier between Austria and Hungary at the Raab river. Even with probable future modifica- tion in detail it is obvious that the line is a difficult one, cutting across converging waterways, and dis- turbing old trade routes and economic relations at the bidding of racial distribution {see Fig. 4). There remain for consideration the Austrian Slavs outside Dalmatia, who are predominantly Slovenes. The Slovenes are apparently descended from a Wend group, and thus in origin are more nearly allied to the Czechs than to the Serbs or Serbo-Croats. Their ancestors, who appeared in the latter part of the sixth centu.ry, occupied the western part of the Hungarian 86 AFTERMATH. plain, their lands being continuous with those of the Czechs and Slovaks. They early lost ground to the Germans, however, and were pushed back to the south- eastern Alps, where they now live in Southern Carinthia, Southern Styria, Carniola, and parts of the Austrian Coastland province. Though never subjected to the Turks, Carniola was frequently ravaged by them in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,- and the effect of their coming was to cause a certain amount of immigration from the Balkans into the Slovene lands, it was, however, the foundation by Napoleon of the lllyrian Provinces in 1S09 which first gave rise to a feeling of unity with the Serbo-Croats. The Slovenes are predominantly Catholics, and their language, which runs_ into a variety of dialects, is closely allied to Serbian. The point of great importance in regard to the Slovenes, however, is that they are in close contact with the Germans on the one hand and with the Italians on the other. Further, just as Fiume is an Italian island amidst a Serbo-Croat population, so the important port of Trieste is an Italian island in the midst of a Slovene population. That at Pola, a very important naval base, the Italians have a slight majority over the Serbo-Croats, who people the centre and east of Istria, adds another element of difficulty to an already complex problem. So far as appears at present the settlement in this part of Austria is not likely to follow a wholly racial basis. Italy went to war quite frankly with the object first of "redeeming" the Italian population of the Trentino, and second, of obtaining a strategic frontier as against Austria and possession of the great port of Trieste with its predominantly Italian population. If the victory of the Allied Powers had been - less complete than it was, she would probably have had to be content merely with minor rectifications of frontier. The standpoint of many Italians is that the Slovenes and Serbo-Croats alike were, till the - RUMANIA AND Till-: SERBS. 87 peace, technically enemies and that it is therefore unreasonable to say that the complete defeat of the Central Powers has created a situation so novel that Italy should be asked to ijive up part of the fruits of victory. Further, Trieste as a port is the natural outlet of the Slovene lands, and has been largely developed by Slovene labour. It does not seem at present that the new Yugo-Slav state can prosper unless it possesses either Trieste or Fiume as an outlet. But if it obtains I'lume there is at least a possibility that trade may be artificially diverted from the former port, which may thus decay in Italian hands. This, as much as the presence of an Italian majority at Fiume, seems to be at the back of the Italian claim to both ports. The frontier between Yugo-Slavia and Italy is as yet unsettled. But the idea seems to be that Italy will claim at least the Coastland province including Istria, Gorizia-Gradisca and the city and district of Trieste. The whole area contains over 800,000 people of whom 357,000 were in 1910 returned as Italians, 267,000 as Slovenes, and 171,000 as Serbo-Croats, the Slavs having thus a clear majority on the total. On the other hand Carniola, with an overwhelmingly Slovene population, is attached to Yugo-Slavia. The Slovene population of Southern Styria and of Southern Carinthia is cut off by the boundary described on p. 56, and these lands also go to Yugo-Slavia ; the name Slovenia being given to the whole area. The Slovenes are the most westernised of the South Slavs, as the Czechs are of the West Slavs. Like the Czechs they seem to have learnt much from their contact with the Germans, and before the war had, in Carniola especially, made a considerable amount of progress, and will probably play an important part in the new state. That state is estimated to include over 14J million people inclusive of the half million in Montenegro, and to include an area of over 100,000 square miles. Like S3 AFTKRMXTH. Czecho-Slovakia and Greater Rumania, though perhaps to a lesser degree, it suffers from the long historical separation between its different elements, and their different stages of social and economic progress. In the kingdom of Serbia, however, it has an important nucleus, for this state has shown great power of resist- ance in its short modern history. If, in conclusion, we take a broad general view of the settlement which has resulted in the establishment of the new or enlarged states of Middle Europe, we find that the Treaty makers, appalled by the complexity of the problems presented, seem to have clung desper- ately to the "principle of nationality" as giving at least some form of logical basis. But this solution is not adapted to sootlie the feelings of the parties chiefly concerned, who point with justice to the fact that the Western Powers, and Britain especially, hold territories not inhabited by their co-nationals, and this for historical, strategic, or economic reasons, or a com- bination of all three. They justly complain that they are asked to accept an idealistic solution by Powers not prepared to accept a similar one on their own account. If this protest be disregarded we are still left with the fact that a state, before it can persist, has to be a going concern, and that there is no proof that the arbitrary grouping together, more or less on a racial basisj of peoples who have long been separated will result immediately in the formation of a stable state. The most perhaps that can be hoped is that the new frontiers will last long enough for natural trends to show themselves, and that the necessary readjust- ments will take place slowly and peacefully. Even this however, is perhaps a sanguine view. HAI.KANS AND NEAR EAST. 89 CHAPTER VH. BALKAN PROBLEMS AND THE NEAR EAST. \\\ the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seiiie, signed on 27th November 1919, the new boundaries of Bulgaria were delimited. In the first place this Treaty made some comparatively trifling changes in the Serbo-Bulgarian frontier. More important from Bulgaria's stand-point is the fact that by a modification of her southern frontier she loses access to the /Egean, and thus all that she gained in 1913, after two exhausting wars. The changes on her western frontier involve the loss of three areas to Serbia, or rather to the new Serb- Croat-Slovene state. The motive in all three cases appears to be the same, to give to Serbia the additional protection which the experience of the last two wars shows that she needed, in the days when she was a small state. But the conditions have obviously altered with the putting into force of the Austrian Treaty, and Yugo-Slavia would appear to have but little to fear from a reduced Bulgaria. The terms, in this case as in several others, may thus be said to mean that the treaty-makers have not entire confidence in the stability, in their present form, of the new states of Europe, and are unwilling to miss the opportunity of guarding against old recognised risks, even if these have apparently ceased to exist. J^eginning from the north we find that the fiist area in which Bulgaria loses territory is in the Nishava valley. Here the old frontier made a salient in Serbian territory. This salient has been rounded off, giving Serbia a strip of new territory, with a section of the railway between Pirot and Sofia, and the town of Tsaribrod. A little further south we come to the region where the old boundary was formed by the watershed between the Struma and the Morava, and 1)0 AFTERMATH. where Bulgarian tcrritor)' again made a salient. Here again conditions are reversed, Yugo-Slav territory now forming a salient in 13ulgarian, and the frontier being shifted eastwards from the watershed to cut one of the tributaries of the Struma. Finally, in the region of the Strumnitsa there existed the most pronounced salient of all, in a region where some of the most desperate fighting took place during the last war. This Strum- nitsa salient has been cut off, leaving the town and the greater part of the river to Yugo-Slavia. In the south the new frontier, instead of turning south near the Mesta river, as did the 1913 frontier, continues in an easterly direction, following the water- shed between the Maritza system and the rivers which flow direct to the /Egean Sea. There is thus cut off from the Bulgaria of 191 3 a block of land between the lower course of the Mesta and that of the Maritza, including Bulgaria's yEgean port of Dedeagach. This area by the Bulgarian Treaty was to be placed at the disposal of the Allied Powers, but has since been assigned to Greece. In 1915, as the price of her entry into the war, Ikilgaria obtained a cession of territory from Turkey on the Maritza river and to the north-we.st of Adrianople, with a view to obtaining complete control of the railway to Dedeagach. Most of the territory thus gained is also lost by the Treaty, but a small portion of it is left to the north-west of Adrianople. The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine thus definitely excludes Bulgaria alike from the greater part of Mace- donia and from Thrace, and as against her one-time ambition to extend to four seas — the Black, Sea of Marmora, /Egean and Adriatic, she is restricted to a narrow frontage on the first-nained, with Rumania close to her port of Varna. Even more serious, from the Bulgarian standpoint, than the blow dealt by this Treaty is that contained in the Turkish one, which permits her great enemy Greece to advance eastward almost to the walls of Constantinople, and north- liALKANS AND NEAR EAST. 1)1 westward far bcyoiul the iMios-Midia line, which Bulgaria, after the first Balkan campait^n of 1912, expected to obtain as frontier. To Greece there falls also the town of Adrianople. liefore going on to give some details in regard to the Turkish Treaty, it may be well to say a word about Albania, a region of tiie Balkan Peninsula with which no treaty has as yet attempted to deal. Albania as an independent state was a product of the Ikdkan wars, and of the intrigues connected with the short-lived settlement which followed those wars. Its present position remains obscure. A suggested solution, which had some popularity at one time, was that Italy should be given some kind of protectorate or mandate in connection with it, while retaining her position at Valona. The existence of friction between Italy and the Scrb-Croat-Slovene state would appear to make this solution undesirable. It has been announced recently that Italy is prepared to withdraw from Valona, retaining only the island of Saseno, opposite the port, where she would establish defence works and a wireless station. Such a withdrawal would un- doubtedly tend to promote peace in the Balkans, for in the past it has been chiefly the interference ot powers outside the peninsula which has led to so much intrigue and bitterness within it. But the problem of Albania is likely to remain an exceedingly difficult one. While the Bulgarian Treaty deals only with Balkan affairs, the Turkish one is necessarily concerned both with Europe and Asia, as well as confirming the entire loss of Turkish territory in North Africa. Its provi- sions, in so far as they deal with territorial changes, may be said to fall under three heads. In the first place, with the exception of Constantinople and a small area around it, sufficient to ensure its defence and its water supply, the last of her European territories pass from Turkish control. Second, while she keeps Constantinople,~the strategic significance of the town is 92 AFTERMATH. nullified by the establishment of a " zone of the straits," which extends inland on both sides of the chain of waterways leading from the Black Sea to the Aigea.n, and is to be placed under the control of a Commission appointed by the League of Nations. The \vatervva}'s, including the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora and the Bosporous, are henceforward to be open, both in peace and war, to every vessel of commerce or of war and to military and commercial aircraft without distinction of flag. Finally, the disruption of Turkey in Asia, which occurred during the war, receives full recognition in the Treaty, and Turkish lands there are now restricted to a part of Asia Minor, the whole of the Arab- speaking provinces being separated from the former empire. Taking these three points in order, we find that European Turkey is now bounded approximately by the Chatalja lines, the northern part of these lines being, however, advanced in a north-westerly direction so as to include the whole area of Lake Derkos, from which Constantinople obtains its water suppl5^ Out- side this frontier all remaining Turkish territory in Europe (Thrace) is ceded to Greece, as well as the islands of Imbros, Tenedos, Lemnos, Samothrace, Mytilene, Samos, Nikaria and Chios, all of which, except the first two, are at present occupied by Greece. To Italy she gives up the Dodekanese Islands, at present occupied by that power, as well as Castellorizo. According to a subsequent announcement, however, Italy is handing over to Greece the Dodekanese, with the single exception of Rhodes, which will be allowed to vote for union with Greece if and when Britain cancels the annexation of Cyprus. Greece thus obtains the whole of the north coast of the ^gean and almost all the islands of that sea. The Zone of the Straits includes the large island of Mytilene, and then strikes the mainland at the Gulf of Edremid, whence it runs in a north-easterly direction, passing to the north-west of Brusa and the east of Fig. 8. — New Frontiers in the Balkan Peninsula, 94 AFTERMATH. Ismid, and thence in a north-westerly direction to the Black Sea. On the opposite shore it starts from the new boundary of European Turkey, runs parallel to the Sea of Marmora, includes the peninsula of Gallipoli, and passes between Samothrace and Imbros to its starting point west of Mytilene, thus covering the approaches to the Dardanelles. In addition to obtaining the yEgcan Islands already mentioned Greece acquires, provisionally at least, a foothold on the west coast of Asia Minor, where an area round Smyrna, extending from the Gulf of Scala Nova to the boundary of the Straits Zone, and inland to the east of Odemish, is to be placed under her administration, without loss of Turkish sovereignty. A local parliament is to be established here which, after the lapse of five years, may ask the Council of the League of Nations to incorporate the area in the kingdom of Greece, in which case Turkey/ has to renounce all rights. From the above account it will appear that Greece not only acquires a considerable accession of territory, but in marked contrast alike to Bulgaria and to Yugo- slavia, as the latter is at present delimited, a con- siderable stretch of important coast-line. Her hold upon Salonika is confirmed, and in addition to Dedea- gach, she obtains, temporarily at least, the valuable port of Smyrna. This attribution, whatever the diffi- culties, is at least in harmony with her development as a maritime and commercial nation. Much of the commerce both of the Balkans and of Asia Minor must necessarily pass through her ports, and recent develop- ments in Southern Macedonia suggest that she will tend, in her new lands, to produce primarily for export, and not, like the Balkan Slavs, primarily for home use. It is to be hoped, therefore, that as the passions roused by the war die down, there will grow up between her and Bulgaria a feeling of tolerance founded upon mutual interest. For it will certainly be to Greek interest that both Serbia and Bulgaria, which form the BALKANS AND NEAR EAST. 95 / hinterland of lier European ports, should prosper, that their trade should develop, and their communications be improved. The question as to how far Greece will be able to deflect to Smyrna the trade which formerly passed throuijh Constantinople is an interesting one, which only the future can decide. Greater Greece has an estimated population of 8 millions, of whom about 6 millions are Greeks. The area in Asia which remains to Turkey is best defined negatively — that is as the region not given to new states or mandator}' powers — rather than positively. Thus Turkey is to recognise the independence of Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and the Ilejaz, and is to confer autonomy on Kurdistan, with the possibility that there may be ultimately set up an independent Kurdish state. Turkey also recognises the French protectorates over Tunisia and Morocco, and Italian sovereignty over Lybia, and renounces all rights over Egypt and Cyprus. Of the once vast Asiatic possessions there is thus left only a part of Asia Minor, reduced in the west by the Greek enclave round Smyrna and the Zone of the Straits, and in the east by independent Armenia and autonomous Kurdistan. The state of Armenia, so far as it is at present con- stituted, is limited to a small area round Erivan, that is outside the old Turkish frontier (Fig. I2, p. 109). But the Treaty provides for the drawing of a new boundary within the vilaj'ets of Trebizond, Erzerum, Bitlis and Van. Such a frontier would give the new state outlets on the J^lack Sea, but not, as was claimed by the Armenian Delegates at the Peace Conference, one on the Mediterranean. Autonomous Kurdistan is to include the predominantly Kurdish areas east of the Upper Euphrates, south of the as yet unsettled frontier of Armenia, and north of the southern frontier of Turkey, as this may be finally fixed. Provisionally it is given as a line from the mouth of BALKANS AND NI'AR EAST. 97 the Sihun River eastward between Marash and Aintab, and about 30 miles north of the Bagdad railway, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia are provisionally recognised as independent states, subject to the tendering of admiin'strative advice and assistance by a mandatory in each case, till they are able to stand alone. Nothing is said in the Treaty either as to their boundaries or the mandatory powers, but according to .subsequent announcements Britain is to hold the man- date for Mesopotamia and Fale.stine, and France for Syria. Mesopotamia is to have a native Government, with an Arab president at its head and a popular assembly elected by the people. The boundaries are as yet unsettled, but 'it seems possible that they will extend at least as far as Mosul on the Tigris, and Anah on the Euphrates. Between Western Mesopotamia, therefore, and the French zone in Sj'ria there will extend a belt of land, largely desert, which will form part of the independent Arab dominions. The limits of Palestine, as against Syria to the north, and the Arab lands to the east, are not yet fixed. The former boundary will, however, presumably lie not far to the north of Acre. By the Treaty the declaration in favour of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, made in 19 1 7, is re-affirmed. Finally, it may be noted that by a special clause the following Eastern ports, form.erly in Turkish territory, are declared to be of international interest, and the nationals, flags, and goods of all States who are members of the League of Nations are to enjoy complete freedom in the use of these ports, and absolute equality of treatment. The ports are as follows : Constantinople from San Stefano to Dolma Bagtchi, Haida-Pasha, Smyrna, Alexandretta, Haifa, Basra, Trebizond and Batum. Free zones are to be established at all these ports. Further, Turkey is assured of free access to both the Mediterranean and ^gean Seas, and Georgia, Azerbijan, Persia and G 28 AFTERMATH. Armenia to the Black Sea by Batum, Armenia being granted similar facilities in respect to Trebizond. These provisions are of much interest, and if the conditions laid down in the Treaty are fulfilled in practice, will constitute an experiment of much value for the world at large. CHAPTER VIII. TJIE RUSSIAN BORDER STATES. Russia was of course not represented at the Peace Conference, and the future status of much of her vast territory is very obscure. The establishment of a large number of independent states within her former borders has been announced, but the permanence of most of these is very doubtful. Since, further, in regard to the majority little or nothing can be said as to frontiers or population, no useful purpose seems served by mentioning their names. Matters are, how- ever, somewhat different as regards the western border states, where in several cases a strong national move- ment existed before the war, and the people are frequently not Slavs. In spite, therefore, of all the uncertainty which exists, something must be said of Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Ukraine ; Poland, which includes some territory formerly Russian, has already been discussed. FINLAND. Finland was proclaimed by her House of Repre- sentatives a sovereign and independent state on 6th December 1917, and her independence has been recog- nised by the Powers. The former Grand Duchy had RUSSIAN r.ORDER STATES. 99 an area of about 125,700 square miles, and a population, in 1914, of about 3I millions. LMnns predominate, but there is a considerable Swedish minority, and both languages are used. In the Aaland Islands, however, which formed a part of the Grand Duchy, the people arc almost entirely of Swedish descent ; they 5peak Swedish, and have many ties with that country. The islands have already been a bone of contention between Sweden and Finland, and the question of their political destiny has been referred to the League of Nations. ESTHONIA AND LATVIA. The founding of these two small independent states, on the Baltic coast of Russia, can only be understood by a brief consideration of the pre-war conditions in this part of Russia. For it should be realised that here, no less than in the Ukraine, the movement away from Russia was not a product of war conditions. Rather was it the culmination of an agitation which had been going on for a prolonged period, as the result of attempted compulsory Russification. Until the sixties, when the name was officially dis- carded — though it survived in practice — there were three Baltic provinces in Russia. These were Esthonia, Livonia and Courland, and were all characterised by the fact that Russians were represented only by a small official class, the majority of the population being Esths and Letts. The province boundaries, however, did not correspond to the actual distribution of races, for while the Esths formed a large majority of the in- habitants of Esthonia, and the Letts of Courland, Livonia was divided between the two, the Esths in- habiting the north and the Letts the south. The Esths are related to the Finns of Finland, while the Letts are of the same stock as the Lithuanians. ]3oth peoples were conquered in the early part of the thirteenth century by the Teutonic knights, who converted them to Christianity, seized their lands, and reduced them 100 AFTERMATH. to the condition of serfs. The descendants of these Teutonic knights form the German Baits of the area, who constitute the landowners, most of the clergy, and Fig. lo. — Russia at the Accession of Peter the Great (1689). (Note the similarity of the present frontiers.) generally the upper classes as against the Esth and Lett peasants. Till the period of Russification began in the late sixties, conditions in all three provinces were virtually medi.x-val. The Baits are Lutherans, RUSSIAN IJORDER STATE:-;. 101 and the Lutheran church, whose pastors were recruited from their ranks, was a strong supporter of their rights and privileges. Though serfdom was legally sup- pressed between 1816 and 18 19, and forced labour in 1868, the latter persisted in practice till quite recent times, and the peasants were excessively poor and depressed. Till Russification began the whole of the administration was in the hands of the Baits, who were then loyal subjects of the Russian Crown, which permitted them to maintain their position of dominance. Such a condition of affairs could not persist indefinitely in the modern world, more especially in view of the fact that this Baltic coastline contains a considerable number of minor ports, through which a certain amount of foreign trade was increasingly carried on. The history of the area was, however, complicated by the attempts of the Tsar's government on the one hand to deprive the Baits of their control of administration, and on the other, by means of the schools, to de- nationalise the Esths and the Letts. The Baits, it should be noted, made no attempt to interfere either with the language or the customs of either people. The process of Russificntion was resented, almost to an equal extent, by landowners and peasants. The former saw their privileges threatened, and gradually turned more and more towards Germany, as against Russia. The attempted forcible denationalisation of Esths and Letts produced, here as always, a rise of national fpeling. Under other circumstances the revolt against Russia might have led to the development of a feeling of community of interest between the Baits on the one hand and the Esths and Letts on the other. But the acute agrarian question rendered this impossible. Both Esths and Letts show acute land hunger, and as early as 1863 the Baltic Diets gave certain facilities for the purchase of land by the tenants. The inten- tion was to establish a land-owning peasantry, on a relatively small scale, so that a large number of 10?^ AFTERMATH. landless peasants would be left to till the lands of the great owners. It is asserted, also, that the interests of the landowners were so carefully guarded that the new peasant holders were loaded with debt. Tile essential point, however, is that before the abortive Russian revolution of 1905 there was a certain number of smallholders in all three provinces. In all, however, in addition there was a very large class of landless peasants, among whom great poverty reigned. As the ports developed, therefore, especially in Courland, there was a steady movement from the land towards the towns. The result was that these gradually lost their German appearance — in earlier days the peasant was tied to the land, and could not emigrate to the towns without the consent of his lord, so that the towns were entirely German in character. This movement meant the gradual development of what is commonly called a proletariat class in the towns. Since industries are but little developed, poverty remains great, and the doctrines known as Bolshevist made considerable progress, especially among the Letts. With the collapse of Russia as a great power, there- fore, three trends of policy became apparent in the former Baltic provinces. Before the final collapse of Germany the Baits natur- ally turned towards that power, and the attempt, in the spring of 191 8, at the time of the German advance in France, to unite the three provinces in a Grand Duchy, the crown of which was to be offered to the King of Prussia, indicates clearly enough their policy. The military collapse of Germany, the advance of the Russian Bolshevists into Esthonia, and the flight of many of the German barons put a speedy end to this project. The next influence to mais-e itself felt was that of Bolshevist Russia. The Bolshevist doctrine, as just stated, had gained a considerable amount of popularity among the Letts, especially among the poorer classes RUSSIAN BORDER STATES. 103 of the towns, and the landless peasants, and to a less dctjree anionf^ the l-^sths. In Esthonia, however, it is statefl that the chief I^olshevists were Russian soldiers, and the Russian workmen who entered the country during the war to work at the making of munitions, in the shipyards, and on the fortifications. In any case what actually happened was that after the second Russian Revolution in November 191 /, the Bolshevists seized power in Esthonia. But the fact that their official journal and their decrees were published in Russian, no less than their anti-national principles, brought them almost at once into conflict with the strong national feeling in the province. Actual experi- ence of Bolshevist methods, after the withdrawal of the Germans, accentuated the anti-Bolshevist feeling, and the Esthonian troops took an active part in the fighting' both against the Germans and the troops of Soviet Russia. National feeling, both among the Esths and the Letts, was accentuated by the land hunger of which we have ahead}' spoken. Now this desire to become possessed of land was not likely to be satisfied by an attachment to Germany, for such an attachment would probably have increased the power of the Bait barons, whose lands the peasants desired to obtain. Nor was it likely to be satisfied by a close connection 'with Soviet Russia, for the antagonism of its leaders to the prosperous, land-holding peasant is openl}' expressed. As we have seen, in the lands inhabited by the Esths and Letts there was already a class of peasant pro- prietors, and the flight of a number of the Bait land- owners as the German occupation came to an end, gave an opportunity of increasing the numbers of this class b}- the division of the derelict lands. Thus after the attempt to found a Grand Duchy attached to Germany had been followed by a brief period when it seemed possible that the Baltic provinces might be induced to accept Soviet rule, we come to the third trend of policy, which has led to the founding of two 104 AFTERMATH. independent states, Esthonia and Latvia. It will be noted that self-determination on a national basis meant inevitably a separation of the provinces into two states ; for the Esths and Letts have little in common save their desire to oust the alien landlords, and could only be kept together if both were attached, in some form or another, to a larger unit. Esthonia was finally proclaimed an independent and autonomous democratic republic on 19th Way 1919, when the constitution was formulated. The area claimed by the new state includes the whole of the former government of Esthonia, the northern half of Livonia, a small part of the government of Petrograd beyond the Narova, and a small part of the government of Pskov to the south of the lake of the same name. The islands of Dago and Oesel are included, and the total area claimed is stated by the Esths to be about 23,000 square miles. Reval is the capital, and Dorpat is another town of some importance. The population is estimated at about 1,600,000, who are predominantly Esths. Latvia consists of the southern half of Livonia and the whole of Courland, while parts of Vitebsk, with Dvinsk, and of Pskov are also claimed. An in- dependent democratic republic was proclaimed in 1919, and the area and population seem to be rather in excess of those of Esthonia ; provisional figures given are for area 24,500 square miles and for population 2i millions. Riga is the capital of the new state, and other ports are Windau and Libau. LITHUANIA. P'undamentally, the Lithuanian problem may be said to be similar to that presented b}' Esthonia and Latvia ; for here again we have a peasantry who in the years before the war were developing a sense of nationality as a reaction against compulsory Russification, and an alien land-owninr class. The differences are never- S L V A K I A En6lisli Miles 100 150 Railways 25 Fig. II.— The Russian Western Border States. lOG AFTERMATH. theless very marked. In the first place national feeling among the Lithuanians is a much more recent develop- ment than in the case of the Esths and Letts, and, secondl)', in marked contrast to the former, they do not constitute the majority of the population in the lands which they claim, for in the province of Vilna the White Russians far outnumber them. Final!}', tiie land-owning class is Polish, not of German descent, and in this case the Russification was directed more at the Poles than at the Lithuanians ; for owing to the historical attachment of Lithuania to Poland, and the imperfect development of national feeling among the peasants, their existence as a separate people was scarcely recognised by the Russian authorities. Lithuanians have a definite majority in Suwalki, but as this province was attached to Congress Poland, it is regarded by the Poles as clearl}' a part of their territory. They are also in a majority in Kovno, which must necessarily form part of the independent state. On the other hand, though they regard the town of Vilna as their historical capital, and claim both it and the government, in the town they seem to be outnumbered by Poles and Jews, and in the government by White Russians.^ In addition Lithuanians occur in the northern part of Grodno, and in that strip of territorj-, including the port of Memel, which was detached by the Treaty of Versailles from East Prussia {see p. 37) ; it is assumed that this will pass to the Lithuanian state. At the time of the Russian collapse, and the German occupation of this part of Russia, a movement towards Lithuanian independence arose in the country, and received some support at Berlin. The motive was clearly a desire to prevent a possible annexation by the Poles, and fundamentally was probably influenced by ^ In all this part of the world statistics of nationalities are very doubtful and liable to be manipulated by partisans. It is stated that a number of those enumerated as I'oles are really Catholic White Russians: thus some authoiities assert that there are more White Russians than Toles in the town of Vilna. RUSSIAN BORDER STATES. 107 the ag^rarian question, for land hunger exists in Lithuania as well as further north. The Poles had not given even such facilities for land purchase as existed in the Baltic provinces, and their lands also are said to be badly managed. Any idea of an independent Lithuanian state under German auspices disappeared of course with the Armistice; but the desire for independence remains. According to recent reports, Soviet Russia would appear willing to agree to a frontier giving the Lithu- anians most of what they claim, partly, no doubt, with the idea of forming a buffer state as against Poland. But tlie Lithuanian frontiers as shown on the accom- pan}'ing map have not yet been recognised by the Powers, and are highly provisional in nature. According to the terms of the Treaty between Lithuania and Soviet Russia, as published, the latter is to obtain the whole of Kovno and Suwalki — if Poland will give up the latter — the greater part of Vilna except a strip on the west and south-west, and the northern part of Grodno. In detail the frontier is to start at Druya, east of Dvinsk on the Western Dvina, and to follow the old frontier of Kovno to Braslav. It then runs south to Molodenco on the Vilna-Minsk railway, turns south-west to pass just south of Lida on the Vilna-Rovno line, follows approximately the line of the Niemen, then turns north-west to cut the Grodno- Warsaw railway not far from that town, and joins the old southern boundary of Suwalki. This line would cut off from Poland much that she hoped to gain, and the suggestion of the Allied Powers that she should give up Eastern Galicia, withdrawing to a line east of Lemberg, still further reduces tlie probable area of her lands. It is difficult to form an opinion of the numbers of Lithuanians in Europe, for the last Russian census, which did not of course include the Lithuanians of the Memel area, was taken so long ago as 1897. Different authorities give over 2,000,000 and over 3,000,000 as lOtt AFTERMATH. probable figures. It is certain that there has been very extensive emigration to the United States, where it is asserted one-third of the total Lithuanian population of the world was living before the war. What is at least clear is that a boundary resembling that described above would include a large number of non-Lithuanians, especially White Russians, Jews and Poles. In v.iew of the present uncertainty, no reliable statement as to the probable area or population of the Lithuanian state can be made ; a figure of 5,000,000 has been mentioned as a possible one as regards population. At present the Lithuanian Government is established at Kovno, but the intention is to make Vilna the capital and Memel the port. If the Memel area is conceded to the Lithuanians, their western frontier will march with East Prussia on the north and with Poland on the south. The feeling between Poland and Lithuania is likely to be bitter, in view of the acuteness both of the agrarian and the territorial question. But the Lithuanian educated class, as distinct from the Lithuanian Poles, is small, and the Lithuanians have had little experience of administration, and are likely to require assistance in the early years of their in- dependence, if that independence is acknowledged. It is just possible, therefore, that German influence may become strong in the state, if territorial continuity between it and East Prussia is obtained. "" THE UKRAINE. We have already said something of the LIkraine problem in connection with Poland. It may be sufficient to add that at the moment the question as to whether the independent state is destined to survive, and if so in what form, is incapable of solution. The area originally claimed is vast, some 500,000 square miles, with an estimated population 0^46,000,000. English Miles " ^ • ^^<^^^T^ )9 a —I — — 1 1 I V vP ^*» Approximate area now administered by Armenian Government. \ \ Limit of Possible extension a% \ ^*\ provided in Turkish Treaty. _ — — Fiic. 12. — The New Transcaucasian Stales. no AFTERMATH. GEORGIA AND AZERBIJAN. To this account of the western Border States a word may be added on those of the south-east. Here the essence of the problem lies in the difficulty of com- munication across the Caucasus, which almost inevitably led to a secession of the Transcaucasian peoples, when the Central Government collapsed. In this area three states have provisionally established themselves (see Fig. 12). Round Erivan is an Armenian Government within former Russian territory. We have already spoken on p. 95 of the possible extension of an independent Armenia into former Turkish territory, but the details are not yet settled. The area round Tiflis and Batum forms the republic of Georgia, founded at the be- ginning of 191 8, in a region where constant fighting has been going on. On the shores of the Caspian, similarly, we have the republic of Azerbijan, also recognised by the Allies. At the moment little can profitably be said of either republic. The capital of Azerbijan is Baku, with an important _ petroleum industry, connected with Batum by a railway through Tiflis. There is also a petroleum pipe-line between the two ports. CHAPTER IX. THE FATE OF GERMANY'S OVERSEAS POSSESSIONS. One of the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles states that " Germany renounces in favour of the Allied and Associated Powers her overseas jwsscssions with all rights and titles therein." These possessions fall GERMANY'S OVERSEAS POSSESSIONS. Ill into three very unequal groups: (i) The African colonies ; (2) The protectorate of Kiau-Chau in China ; (3) The Pacific territories, including a part of New Guinea and a number of island groups. THE AFRICAN COLONIES. These are four in number — Togo, Kamcrun, South- west Africa, and East Africa, the last being by far the most important, both as regards size and popula- tion. Togo is comparatively small, being comparable to Ireland in area, and lies between the Britisli Gold Coast Colon)' and French Dahomey, and South-west Africa is chiefly desert, with a scanty population. The position of Kamerun, on the other hand, makes it of much importance, for in 19 14 it abutted on the Belgian Congo on the east, just as German East Africa abutted on this wealthy territory on its western border. Till 1911, however, the Kamerun was separated from the Belgian Congo by a wide belt of territory belonging to the French Congo. In that year, it will be remem- bered, the Morocco crisis occurred, when Germany demanded compensation for French action there. Germany's first demand was for such a cession of territory in the French Congo as would give her a common frontier with the Congo Free State from the coast to the junction of the river Sanga with the main stream, and a cession also of the French right of pre- emption over the Belgian Congo. The compromise finally arrived at added a great belt of land to Kamerun on the east and south, and enabled Germany to put out two "feelers" of territory, which brought her down to the junction of the Sanga with the Congo near Bonga, and to the Ubangi south of Bangui. This involved the cession by France of over 100,000 square miles of territory, increased the difficulty of com- munication with the Shari and Lake Chad area, and placed the remnant of French territory on the Middle Congo in an awkward position as regards communica- 112 AFTERMATH. tions. More important than these two points, however, was perhaps the very definite impression left that the two arm-Hke prolongations of German territory to- wards the Congo system were meant very literally to Fig- 13- — Territorial Redistrilmtion in Africa. be tentacles, were an intimation of an intention, when the time was suitable, to engulf not only the French Congo, but the Belgian Congo also, and thus to create a broad belt of German territory, extending right across Equatorial Africa, and cutting the continent into two parts. GERMAN\"S OVERSEAS POSSESSIONS. 113 We find, therefore, tliat the German protests against the cession of all her overseas possessions were met with a blank refusal to reconsider the decision ex- pressed in the Peace Terms, on the double ground that Germany's treatment of the indigenous popula- tions had been too cruel to render it possible to restore any of her colonies, and that " the Allied and Associ- ated Powers felt the need for guaranteeing their own security and the peace of the world against a military imperialism which sought to create for itself points d'appui for the exercise of a policy of intervention and intimidation against the other Powers." It should, however, in justice be pointed out that in the years before the war the administration in German East Africa at least seems to have been fairly en- lightened and progressive ; it was indeed to a con- siderable extent based upon British methods. Nor does there spem to have been serious friction between the administration of German East Africa and those of the adjacent British territories, while the sustained resistance offered by the German native troops casts at least a doubt on the view that German rule was here unpopular with the inhabitants. While, there- fore, admitting that, all things considered, Germany's loss of her whole colonial empire was probably in- evitable, it seems only fair to add that one of the two reasons assigned is not altogether cogent so far as German East Africa is concerned. The four African colonies ceded by Germany under the Peace Treaty are to be administered by the Powers to whom they are attributed as mandatories of the League of Nations. But the exact significance of this remains at present somewhat obscure, more especially in those cases where the ceded areas become integral parts of existing colonies or territories. H 114 AFTERMATH. TOGO. Proceeding next to consider in detail the attribution of the different territories, we find that in the case of Togo, which is a narrow strip of territory, lying between French Dahomey on the east and the Gold Coast on the west, two-thirds of the whole area, including the whole of the littoral, with the port of Lome, goes to France, the remaining portion being united to the Gold Coast. The course of the new frontier is shown on the accompanying sketch-map (Fig. 14), but a brief note on the surface relief of Togo is necessary to appreciate the significance of the line. Togo has, roughly speaking, a quadrilateral shape, with a littoral of only about 31 miles, owing to the direction of the old British frontier, but a considerably greater breadth further north. From the point where British territory makes a sharp salient, due to a sudden deviation from the Volta river as boundary, there runs, in a north-easterly direction, a range of hills, highest in its south-eastern portion, where Mt. I^aumann rises over 3300 feet, and lower and wider to the north-east. The range traverses the whole of Togo and is con- tinued into French territory, and it separates the river Oti, a tributary of the Volta, from the Mono river, the lower part of which formed the boundary between Togo and Dahomey. The new frontier runs near, though not altogether on the watershed, and may be said, in general terms, to give the plain of the Lower Oti to the Gold Coast, and the coastal plain and the Mono valley to Dahomey. To this general statement, however, two minor corrections have to be made. In the south-west, owing to the course of the old Togo- Gold Coast boundary, there was included in the former a triangular belt of territory containing the headwaters of streams which flowed in their lower reaches through Gold Coast territory, either to join the Volta, or to IIG AFTERMATH. enter the sea direct. This belt, though lying to the south-east of the hills, falls to Britain. In the north again, there is a deviation from the hill boundary. The frontier is for a section formed by the river Oti, and then by other rivers, with the result that only a narrow belt of land falls to Britain, the territory left to France being much wider. The object of this is to facilitate communication between the French territories which lie to the north of Togo and the sea. The region of Mossi is particularly rich and densely peopled, but has hitherto suffered from its isolated position at the north of Togo. It is hoped that the French possession of the port of Lome will give a great stimulus to its development, and a new French colony, the ITpper Volta, has been recently constituted here from those parts of Upper Senegal and Niger which lie immediately to the north of Gold Coast, Togo, and Dahomey. The area of Togo is 33,700 square miles, and its estimated population well over a million, only a hand- ful of which were Europeans. The Germans had con- structed three lines of railway, diverging from Lome. All these fall into the French area, as determined by the arrangement made between the two powers of France and Britain in July 1919, which allots about 12,500 square miles to Britain. This agreement, how- ever, will require to be submitted to the League of Nations. As regards Kamerun, France not only receives back the territory lost in 191 1, but four-fifths of the whole colony, including the port of Duala, the whole of the existing railway system, and the important route which leads from the coast to the Shari river, and will con- stitute a valuable outlet for the Chad territories. The remainder of the colony, forming a narrow strip on the north-western border, with the ports of Buea and Victoria, falls to Britain, and is to be united to Nigeria. Since b}' another of the articles of the Treaty Germany renounces all interest in the French GERMANY'S OVERSEAS POSSESSIONS. 117 Protectorate of Morocco, it will be seen that the Franco-German agreement of 191 1 lapses, Germany losing all she stood to gain by it. The new frontier in Kamerun gives to J^ritain the isolated volcanic mountain of Kamerun, and further north is broadly speaking a watershed boundary, giving to Nigeria the headwaters of the Cross river, and those of the left bank tributaries of the Benue, but not of the head stream. Where it crosses the Benue, indeed, it coincides with the old Nigerian-Kamerun boundary, but further north deviates to the east, giving Britain an extension of territory in the Bornu region. In 1914, Kamerun had an area of over 190,000 square miles, and an estimated population of 2-J millions. It is a region of considerable natural wealth, but the chief value of the territories attributed to P'rance lies in the fact that their possession will greatly facilitate the development of the Chad and Shari region, by giving better access to the sea. Of the remaining German African colonies, South- west Africa may be dismissed in a word, for the whole area is to be administered by the Union of South Africa, and there is no change in boundaries to record. The estimated area is over 320,000 square miles, but the population is very small (239,000 in 191 2, but stated to have diminished since), and much of the country is excessively barren and waterless. German East Africa requires somewhat more detailed consideration, owing to its relation to the adjacent British territories and to the Belgian Congo. It was bounded on the north by British East Africa and Uganda, on the west by the Belgian Congo, and on the south by Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Portuguese P^ast Africa. It thus formed a block of land separating equatorial British Africa, which is continuous with the Sudan and Egypt to the north, from the British territories of the south, and its presence has hitherto rendered impossible the gran- diose scheme of a continuous, all-British Cape-to- 118 AFTRRMATH. Cairo line. Again, it shut off the eastern part of the Belgian Congo from direct access to the sea, across the waters of Lake Tanganyika. Finally, in the north-west a quadrilateral of land, lying between the north end of Tanganyika and Lake Kivu on the ^'"'g- 1 5- — New Frontiers in East Africa. west, and Victoria Nyanza on the east, includes the rich provinces of Ruanda and Urundi, claimed by the Belgians as forming a natural part of the Congo territories. The coast includes a number of fairly good ports, of which the most important is Uar-cs-Salaam, and the Germans had constructed a transverse railway GEkMAKV'S OVERSEAS POSSESSIONS. 119 line from this port to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, via Tabora, with the obvious purpose of tapping the trade of the rich territories of the Western Congo. From Tabora, again, it is now proposed to construct a new railway line, connecting up with Uganda, which would ultimately form a part of the Cape-to-Cairo route. The settlement actually arrived at betu cen Belgium and Ikitain, subject of course to the approval ol the League of Nations, is based upon a recognition of these diverse interests. The greater part of the former German colony, including the coast-line and railway system, is to be confided to Britain, and is to be known as the Tan- ganyika territory. The interests of Belgian trade across the Kigoma-Tabota-Dar-es-Salaam line, and at the port, have, however, been adequately protected. Almost the whole of the province of Urundi, on the other hand, except for the district of Bugufi in the north-east, and the greater part of Ruanda have been assigned to Belgium. A strip of territory on the east side of Ruanda has been reserved to Britain, the exact boundary being left undetermined until the route of the proposed railway is fixed. This line will, in any case, run through British territory. German East Africa had an area of over 384,000 square miles, and an estimated population of over /i millions. ASL/\. In 1898 German}-, who had previously seized Kiau- Chau, on the east coast of the Chinese province of Shantung, made a treaty with China by which the town, the harbour and the surrounding district, with a total area of about 200 square miles, were transferred to her on a ninety-nine years lease, and the district was declared a German Protectorate in the same year. Other agreements also give Germany certain rights in the region. A special article in the Peace Treaty 120 AFTERMATH. deals with the Kiau-Chau Protectorate, and by it Germany cedes all her rights, privileges and titles to Japan, as well as all German State property in Kiau-Chau. The ultimate fate of Kiau-Chau remains unsettled. PACIFIC POSSESSIONS. These were for administrative purposes arranged in two groups of very unequal size. Thus under the name of German New Guinea were included both Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, or German New Guinea proper, and the Pacific islands with the exception of Savaii and Upolu, the two islands of the Samoan group be- longing to Germany, which formed a separate depend- ency. The islands included in the colony of German New Guinea were those of the Bismarck archipelago, two belonging to the Solomon group, the Pelew. Caro- line, and Marshall Islands, lying east of the Philippines and north of the equator, and the Marianne or Ladrone group, which lies north of the Carolines. The mandate for the islands lying north of the equator, that is the Pelew archipelago, the Carolines, the Ladrone group, and the Marshall group, with the exception of the isolated island of Nauru (Pleasant Island) formerly attached to them, has been assigned to Japan. Nauru has been assigned to the British Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, the Bismarck aichi- pelago, and the two Solomons to the Australian Commonwealth, and the Samoan islands to New Zealand. Kaiser Wilhelm's Land is the northern section of south-east New Guinea and has a short common frontier with Dutch New Guinea, and a much longer one with British New Guinea, to which it is now attached. It has an area of about 70,000 square miles, and an estimated population of 1 10,000. Copra is the chief product, but there seem to be valuable minerals which have not hitherto been worked. GERMANY'S OVERSEAS POSSESSIONS. 121 The Bismarck Archipelago was the name given by the Germans in 18S5 to islands previously known as New Britain. The largest island, New Britain, was named by them Neu i'ommern, and the next in size, New Ireland, was called by them Neu Mecklenburg. The total area is about 15,500 square miles. The islands are very fertile chiefly producing coconuts for copra; New Britain has one of the largest coconut plantations in the world. It has a very good harbour, Simpson's harbour, on which is placed Rabaul, the administrative capital of German New Guinea. At the outbreak of war Germany owned two of the Solomon group, Bougainville and the smaller island of Baku, the others belonging to Britain. The whole group now becomes British, although administratively they are divided between the Colonial Office and the Australian Commonwealth. The island of Nauru, which lies virtually upon the equator, has despite its small size great economic importance. Its area is about 8 square miles and it rises only 20 feet above sea level. But it has been frequented by sea-birds for countless ages and con- tains an enormous amount of guano, estimated at 80 to 100 million tons, which furnishes a high grade of phosphate. The island is indeed believed to contain the richest phosphate deposits in the world. Before the war the beds were worked by a British company holding a concession from Germany. The mandate, as already stated, was assigned to the British Empire, but, independently of the League of Nations, an agreement was come to between the Governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, to buy out the company's rights and work the deposits themselves on a non-profit making basis, the three governments to have first claim on the phosphate, at cost price, in the proportion of their contribution to the purchase money. When the bill embodying the agreement was submitted to Parliament fierce opposition was expressed on the ground that it violated the article of the Covenant 12ii AFTERMATH. of the League of Nations, which provided for equah'ty of opportunity in mandated territories for all members of the League. The reply made was that the League could refuse its consent to the agreement when it came to be submitted to it, and the bill was passed by a majority. The whole question is of considerable interest, however, in view of the present uncertainty as- to the real significance of the League of Nations. The Pelew, Caroline, and Marianne or Ladrone islands, with the exception of Guam, the largest of the Marianne group, were purchased by Germany from Spain in 1899, while the Marshall islands have been under German rule since 1885. None is of any great importance except that high-grade phosphate occurs in Angaur, one of the Pelew group. It is of some interest to note that there are already a certain number of Japanese in the Carolines, and fairly ex- tensive Japanese settlement will doubtless be possible. Savaii and Upolu in German Samoa have areas respectively of about 660 and 600 square miles, and a combined population of about 41,000 in 1917. Apia in Upolu is a good port and the islands are fertile. Their real importance lies, however, in the fact that they are on the direct route between New Zealand and the Panama Canal and the Pacific coast of North America generally. This gives them much strategic value, as has long been recognised by New Zealand, no less than by Germany and also by the LTnited Slates, which owns the other smaller islands of the group. Under German rule a considerable amount of land had passed from native ownership to that of Europeans, who had planted it with coconuts, cocoa, and rubber. But the natives are unwilling to work regularly in plantations and are steadily diminishing in numbers, and the labour supply was obtained from the Solomon Islands and China. The Colonial Office and the Australian Government alike have stopped the supply of indentured labour from the Solomon Islands, and since the occupation by New Zealand many of the SUMMARY AlSf!) CONCLUSION. 11^3 plantations have gone back owing to the difficulty of obtaining coolies. The fact that here, as in Australia, Chinese coolies do not bring their women folk with them introduces a very difficult moral problem, and it is not clear ineantime how the necessary labour is to be obtained. CHAPTER X. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. Havinc. thus surveyed the main territorial changes due to the Peace Treaty, we may turn back and look at them for a moment as a whole. We have seen that the Austro-Hungarian and Turk- ish Empires have suffered complete dissolution, new states having been constructed out of their dismembered fragments, states which produce a complete change in the balance of power in central. Europe and on the margin of Asia. Germany also has lost territory on practically all her borders, and her overseas possessions have been distributed among Britain, France, Belgium, and Japan. The break-up of Russia has been as complete as that of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, but save as regards the western Border States and those provisionally established in Transcaucasia, the future of her parts remains wholly obscure. Though our survey has not included the Americas, and we have not done more than touch the borders of Asia, the effects of the new conditions are visible enough in these continents also. Asia is seething with unrest almost from end to end, and the political future of wide tracts of land there is at the moment uncertain in the extreme. What is at least clear, however, is that the war has given a tremendous stimulus to 124 AFTERMATH. the industrial development of Japan, a country which, as compared with those of Europe, lost little and gained much from war conditions. In consequence the post-war industrial world has to face a powerful rival in the east, and one, moreover, well fitted to take advantage of the chaos which reigns in the interior of the continent of Asia. Industry in the United States has also received a great stimulus from the absorption of the Old World in war, and from the destruction of capital there. Another effect, if somewhat less obvious, is also of considerable importance. As we have seen in discuss- ing conditions in Eastern Europe, a great feature of the years before the war there was the emigration of landless peasants, largely to the States, Now while the emigrants of earlier days, who came chiefly from the west, frequently established themselves on the land, it was a characteristic of the various branches of the Slavs, no less than of the non-Slav peoples, such as the Lithuanians, Letts, and so forth, that despite their land hunger at home, in America they tended to con- gregate in the towns and were largely absorbed by the factories. Here they were frequently exploited, the process being facilitated by their ignorance of English and the difficulty of combination. It is scarcely too much to say that in the years before the war and during its course, industrial progress in the States was due to copious supplies of young and energetic workers from Central and Eastern Europe. But the current has now been reversed, Czechs, Slovaks, South Slavs, and so forth, are streaming back across the Atlantic to take their places as full citizens of their own new states, and American industry is already feeling an acute labour shortage, a curious indirect effect of territorial changes in Europe. If this return current continues it may be a factor in promoting the growth of industry in Japan as against the States, for Japan with a rapidly increasing population is not likely to feel a shortage of labour SUiMMARN AND CONCLUSION. 125 for many years to come, and the vast resources of China are at her doors. But the fact that at the moment the New World is sending emigrants to the Old has a more direct bearing upon our special post-war problem here, the birth of new states in Central and Eastern Europe. It can scarcely be too often repeated that at the outbreak of war the great division line in Europe was between the industrialised north-west and the agricultural east. Industry, broadly speaking, meant a fairly high standard of comfort for the actual workers, agriculture meant a low one, and this is true whether we compare the agricultural workers of South and East England with the industrial population, or the mass of the community in East Europe with that in the west. One of the causes at least was the relatively rapid opening up in North America of vast tracts of virgin land at a time when means of transport and machinery generally had seemed to annihilate space, and largely substituted the machine for muscle. The lands of the Old World could not compete with those of the New on equal terms, and diminished in relative importance. Western Europe reacted to the new conditions by a great development of industry, which brought untold wealth. Eastern Europe lagged behind in political, social, and economic development, remained in a condi- tion which often approximated towards the medi?eval. But the war made clear to all that the industrial supremacy of Western Europe was menaced at its very source by the new growth of industry across the seas, where the new countries were emancipating themselves rapidly from their thraldom to the European economic system. The military empires of Eastern Europe were ripe for dissolution and have gone. But if it has seemed to most that it was the racial problem which produced the final collapse, we must not forget that behind the obscurities of "race" there lies the deeper and more important agrarian question. 126 AFTERMATH. In the United States the wealth of the virgin lands has been largely squandered ; the day of conservative farming has definitely dawned for many of the lands which seemed to possess inexhaustible fertility. The competition which the agricultural lands of Europe have to face is therefore less severe than it was. Again, just as the United States learnt from the Old World the lessons of industrialism, and improved upon them till they could in some departments beat the European in his own market, so Europe has learnt much from the agriculture of the States, and from the experiments on the grand scale conducted th^e. It may be, therefore, that we are to witness a great revival of agriculture in those parts of Europe which have hitherto failed to yield even the barest livelihood to the worker on the land, in the areas which have been on the one hand the seat of intensive emigration, and on the other regions of the most grinding poverty. Throughout this book we have had constant occasion to point out the difficulties, the inconsistencies, the apparent instability of many of the frontiers laid down in the Peace Treaties. The notion that every little group of people which can, on more or less doubtful anthropological grounds, be described as a " race," should have a ring fence drawn round it, and be regarded as a "nation" exercising the right of "self- determination," proves to be as impracticable as it is fantastic. But, as we have suggested in such cases as those of Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania and so forth, the real motive, behind the use of fashionable shibboleths, is the desire to get rid of the remnants of media^valism, to obtain a real grip on the land. It would be folly to suggest that the solution which the Esths and Letts favour, the formation of as great a number of small holdings as possible out of the large estates of the Bait barons, is the only right one, just as it would be foolish at this stage to discuss the relative merits of the various schemes struggling for mastery amid the ■ chaos of Russia. These are problems which the peoples V" SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 127 concerned must settle for themselves. But the point of real importance is that the members of many of the new states are setting themselves with passionate fervour to reconstruct a new Eastern Europe on a regional basis, with a new utilisation of local re- sources. It may be that these hitherto despised lands will be able to evolve a new form of social economy, in which agriculture and industry will work hand in hand, instead of being in perpetual enmit}'. Europe, regarded as an entity, led the way in industrialisation, and for a long period her supremacy was unchallenged. First the United States, and, quite recently, Japan, learnt from her all she had to teach in this direction. Not a few geographers and econo- mists are of the opinion that the exhaustion of the war gave the coup de grace to European domination in the industrial field, and that her decline has begun. But industry only flourished in a section of Europe, and while this part advanced the remainder stood still or went back. The north-west exported manufactured goods, the east and south exported men. At the moment, in both cases, exports have become imports ; at the moment, we must not forget, Europe seems incapable of feeding any proportion of her own popula- tion. If the current of emigrants is not again to be reversed, the land must produce more, and it is the Europe of the new states which seems most capable of doing this. That the enthusiasm with which the peoples of many of these states have begun their new life should not spend itself in stimulating a barren racialism, but should be utilised in the carrying out of the urgent practical tasks before them, is the immediate necessity for them and the world. Of these tasks the most important is to increase the productivity of the soil ; only if they succeed in doing this can they justify their existence. It is at least a hopeful sign that many of them recognise the fact, and are facing the land problem seriously, both in its legal and practical aspects. 128 AFTERMATH. It is not the purpose of this book to enter into speculations as regards the future ; all that has been attempted is to give an outline picture of the Europe which emerges from the various peace treaties, without assuming that " Conference " Europe is likely to remain permanent. It may, perhaps, be added that we have no reason to think that the future is as dark as many would have us believe. It is true that criticism of many of the Peace Conference decisions is easy, and that not a few of the proposed settlements have already proved unstable. But amid all the conflict and turmoil of Central and Eastern Europe there is yet much idealism ; there are also the beginnings at least of an enlightened public opinion among peoples who have hitherto been little more than chattels. "As the nine- teenth century was the century of the west, and saw an entire change of the whole basis of life in industrialised Europe, so the present century may be destined to witness vast changes in the east. But the future lies in the hands of the peoples themselves ; sooner or later they must solve their own problems, and it is possible enough that their solution will differ markedly from that proposed for them by the Western Powers. RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED CmCULATION DEPARTMENT This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. w-r '" ■^ r — h ■J -» »• ai.v. '-'''^•>j tt^^ -^ '77 I i LD 21-327/1-3, '74 (R7057sl0)476 — A-32 J 1974 9 , General Library University of California Berkeley I CAN qEPT. LD 21-10Om-7,'39(402s) U C BERKELEY LIBRARIES |||n|i| III III i| ii|i i|i |i|n M |,| || III ill ill Jil il llli III llljl II ill CD5ElbS7^0 502(;i)i UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRAKT I >-V r^