Page:Mead - The Overthrow of the War System.pdf/112

 of empire which seeks to prescribe for the world the domination of a single race and its type of civilization. This idea created the transitory empires of Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Rome and Napoleon. It still persists as a vestige of the past in the visionary Pan-Asiatic, Pan-Aryan, Pan-Slavic, and Pan-German empires. Some of the most restive products of this imperialistic formula of racial relations may be seen in the Balkan States whose artificial political frontiers are more closely related to the supposed interests of the European Powers than to the racial, lingual or religious affinities of the Balkan populations.

Repeated and dissimilar dissections of the Balkan peninsula have resulted in perhaps the most continuous and most tragic refugee movements in history. For each change of frontiers was followed by attempts to eradicate through conversion, banishment, or massacre all elements alien in religion or speech, no provision having been made, even when the Great Powers did the shuffling, for safe-guarding personal and property rights. Had the European Powers unselfishly and sincerely aided co-operation in the Balkans, and planned their organization in harmony with religious, language