Page:The Slavs among the nations by T G Masaryk.djvu/18

 portance for the Slavs. Let us first examine from this point of view the position of the Slavs in the world.

The Slavs are the nations with the most neighbours. What a contrast, for example, between the English and the Slavs! France has only three or four neighbours; the Italians three; the Germans seven; but the Slavs have twelve.

The part that a nation’s neighbours play varies according to the size of their territories and the nature of their civilisation.

Except for the Germans, the French come into contact only with smaller nations whose civilisation is almost the same as theirs. Taking religion, for example, the French, with certain exceptions, have only Catholic nations for neighbours.

The neighbours of the Slavs are both great and small; some indeed are the greatest nations of the world—e.g., the Germans, the Chinese, and the Japanese—nations which represent every gradation of European and Asiatic civilisation, differing in religion and in race.

The position of the Slavs in the world—in Europe and Asia—can be taken as central: on