The Two Maps Of Europe And Some Other Aspects Of The Great War

Author : Hilaire Belloc
Publisher : Independently Published
ISBN 13 : 9781976769719
Total Pages : 54 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (697 download)

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Download or read book The Two Maps of Europe (Annotated) written by Hilaire Belloc and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2017-12-31 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an annotated version of the book 1. contains an updated biography of the author at the end of the book for a better understanding of the text. 2. This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors It is everywhere admitted that the result of the great war must be either, upon the whole, to produce a new map of Europe upon the German model, or a new map of Europe upon the model suitable to the ideas of the Allies. By this it is not meant that either ideal will be completely reached, but that in the settlement one or the other will certainly preponderate. Indeed, it is in the struggle between these two new maps of Europe as ideals that the motive of the war consists. Now, before attempting to determine in a graphic fashion what those two ideals are--before, that is, trying to draw two maps which shall represent respectively the German goal and the goal of the Allies, we must lay down certain postulates which are not always recognized but which are certainly true. Unless we recognize their truth we shall come to accept wild statements, and to be frightened of those ridiculous prophecies which propose the extermination of Germany on the one hand, or the rule of the German government over England or France on the other. I. The first of these postulates is that a modern European nation no longer desires to _annex_ white men in Europe, and the territory they inhabit. The example of Alsace-Lorraine alone has proved a sufficient lesson; the continued vitality of Poland after a hundred years has proved another, and even the difficulties of the Austro-Hungarian governments, with their subject races, a third. This does not mean that a modern European government would not annex in any circumstance. The possession of some all-important military or commercial point might occasionally make the perilous experiment worth while. But it means that the idea of annexation as an obvious corollary to military success has disappeared. II. The second postulate is as follows: It is universally recognized--by the Germans quite as much as by ourselves--that the political boundaries so long established in Europe hardly ever correspond to exact national groupings, and very often violently conflict with the realities of national life. No one is so foolish, for instance, as to pretend that the Finnish provinces of Russia are not quite separate from the rest of the Czar's dominions in tradition, and consciousness, and habit, and all the rest that makes a nation. No one in England now denies the existence of an Irish nationality. No one, to take an Eastern case, would pretend that the Serbian feeling of nationality was not very real, and was very far from being contained by the present boundaries of Serbia. The excuse for the old point of view--the point of view that political boundaries were sufficient and that the true nationalities which they cut through or suppressed might be neglected--was that in time, with the modern rapidity of communication and the power of the modern State, these divergent elements would be _absorbed_, or _digested into_, the greater nationality which governed them. But experience has falsified this very reasonable conception. It has been found not only that this transformation did not take place, but even that the old real nationalities were actually getting stronger. Poland, for instance, artificially cut through by the German, Austrian, and Russian frontiers, did seem for a time as though it were going to spring into a Russian, a German, and an Austrian type of Polish men; and in the latter case, that of Austria, some considerable advance was made towards such a result. But generations passed, and the process did not continue; on the contrary, the tide began to set backwards, and the conception of a united Poland is far stronger to-day even in the small and successful Austrian portion of Poland than it was thirty years ago.