Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/282

 of the Turks, but also by the increasing power of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. Since that time the German Drang nach Osten has been attempted in two directions and by two different kinds of tactics. While the Habsburgs built up their Empire under the direct pressure of the Turks, by forming a confederation of the Eastern States (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary), the Hohenzollerns evolved in the North a project of colonisation and conquest at the expense of Poland. The present war is merely a phase of that long historical process, representing, as it does, the synthesis of the Habsburg and Hohenzollern tactics.

The significance of the German Drang nach Osten is explained to a great extent by the ethnographic formation of the zone which divides the West of Europe from the East.

Ethnographically and politically there are three divisions in Europe: the Western, the Eastern (Russia), and the Central. Our interest is here drawn chiefly to the central part, which consists of a peculiar zone of small nations, extending from the North Cape to Cape Matapan. Side by side we here find the Laplanders, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, Finns, Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians, Poles, Lusatians, Czechs and Slovaks, Magyars, Serbo-Croats and Slovenes, Roumanians, Bulgars, Albanians, Turks and Greeks. The largest of these nations are the Poles; next to them come the Czechs and Slovaks, Serbo-Croats, Roumanians, and Magyars; the others are smaller. If the Little-Russians (Ruthenes, Ukrainians) were considered a separate nation, as distinct from the Great-Russians, they would be the largest nation of this zone.

To the West of this zone we find the bigger nations (German, English, French, Italian, Spanish), and only two smaller ones (Dutch and Portuguese); besides these there are the so-called "fragments" of nations (Basques, Bretons, Welsh, Irish, Gaels). In the East there are the Russians, a big, indeed the biggest, nation of Europe. It is a peculiar circumstance that the outskirts of this nation are non-Russian: on its West side there are some small nations of the Central Zone, while in the North, in the Caucasus and on its Asiatic frontiers, there are also several small nations and fragments of nations.

If we compare the political frontiers of Europe with the ethnographical, that is, if we distinguish the states from the