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25. All European States were disturbed by the social question, but that did not lead to serious international complications, whereas, the national struggles troubled and upset the whole of international relations. In the West the only acute national questions were the problems of the Danes in Schleswig, and that of Alsace-Lorraine. The Irish question is not a national question (not in the sense in which, for instance, the Polish or the Czecho-Slovak questions are national). The dispute between the Walloons and the Flemings in Belgium has never been acute, as this war has demonstrated, for the Flemings defended Belgium against Germany with a determination equal to that of the Walloons, and their representatives opposed separation from the Walloons; but in the East there have existed quite a number of acute national disputes, more serious than any of those in the West; the question of the Poles, Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs (Serbo-Croatians, Slovenes), the Ukrainian question in Galicia and Hungary, the Rumanian, the Italian, Macedonian, Albanian and Greek questions. In Russia the most acute national problems were the Polish and Finnish; but since the war, national aspirations have been strengthened in Lithuania, among the Letts and Esthonians, and in the Caucasus and the East. Quite a unique question is the Jewish question (in all lands).

This state of things was known before the war to those who paid some deeper attention to political questions, the evidence of it being found in the many publications of all these national issues. The Great Powers, some being directly interested, and others from diplomatic connivance minimised these struggles, and declared them to be “internal affairs.” The war, however, compelled official Europe to take heed of the true condition, namely, that the zone from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, the Aegean and Black Seas, which includes Prussia, Austria-Hungary, the Balkans and Western Russia, is a territory of unsettled national problems and struggles. The war is a bloody object-lesson for the world, teaching that the principal problem of the war and of the future peace is the political reconstruction of Eastern Europe on a national basis. The program indicated in the note of the Allies addressed to President Wilson, his own program, and all other programs, naturally refer to the situation in the East of Europe, the zone of the small nations, and to Russia. The now current phrase, “Reconstruction,” means reconstruction in the East. For England, France and Italy reconstruction means something quite different from what it means for the future Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, etc. In the East there must be a readjustment of political boundaries, new States and governments are to be organised, the greater part of Europe is to be politically reshaped.

26. We maintain that every national question is a complicate special problem. Therefore it would require a detailed historical exposition and analysis of the national condition of Germany-Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Balkan-Turkey and Russia to make clear the rich contents of the various national problems, and to explain why the national questions are most acute in these States. Here I can only set down the main facts and the leading principles.

It has already been noted that Germany, and especially Prussia, germanised a large part of the Slavs. From the Elbe and Saale the Germans pressed constantly toward the Slav East, until they succeeded in dismembering Poland, for it was the Prussian king, Frederick the Great,