Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/12



often we read discussions about the importance of this or the other front; whether this is a war of the West or a war of the East or the South, and on which front the final decision is likely to be reached. The question is not quite clear; it may have a strategical meaning, and in that case it must be borne in mind that the importance of the respective fronts is liable to change in the course of the war. So far, however, as the political meaning is concerned, more is to be learnt from the Germans who started the war than from the Allies, who have hitherto been on the defensive. Now the Germans have stated clearly enough, both before and during hostilities, why they were looking forward to this war, and what they wish its result to be. The meaning of the present war is reflected in the voluminous political literature which propagates the Pangerman programme and the discussions which still centre round it.

Pangermanism means, in its original sense, the unification of the Germans in a Greater Germany ("Grossdeutschland"). The German national movement coincides with the kindred movements of the other nations of Europe in the late 18th century.

The various Austrian races, the Bohemians, Poles and South-Slavs, the Magyars, and Italians, began to feel strongly their nationality under the stress of Joseph II.'s policy of centralisation and Germanisation. In the Balkans we see the revival of the Serbs and Greeks, Italy becomes strongly national, and Russia also. In Germany the remarkable literary revival—Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, &c.—is at once the cause and the effect of German nationalism, which was soon strengthened by the war with France; Napoleon's attempt at a continental Empire aroused the opposition of all the nations. In Germany, Fichte, Arndt, Jahn and others became the spokesmen of the national feeling, which from that time grew and developed.

It was natural that the Germans, divided into many larger and smaller states, should proclaim the unity of the