ian peoples groaned
beneath the sway of the Mohammedan Turk. Thus, if we may regard the
inhabitants of the southern Netherland provinces, for the moment, as of one
nationality, there were roughly ten great nationalities, the Germans, the
Italians, the Belgians, the Poles, the Bohemians, the Hungarians, the
Southern Slavs, the Rumanians, the Bulgarians, and the Greeks, all left
with national aspirations unsatisfied, all hampered by State frontiers
which had no correspondence with their natural boundaries. Can we wonder
that there have been wars in the nineteenth century? Should we not rather
wonder that those wars have not been greater and more numerous? For the
Congress of the Powers in 1814 having failed to give the nationalities what
they wanted, nothing remained for them but to seize it for themselves. The
only alternative to settlement by conference is "blood and iron," and it
is with "blood and iron" that nearly every nationality which has attained
nationhood in the last hundred years has cemented the structure of its
State.

[Footnote 2: Napoleon had succeeded in reducing the number from 360 to 38.]

It is not our purpose in the present chapter to deal with the whole of this
vast area; the three eastern sections, Poland, the Austrian Empire, and
Turkey, present special problems of their own, and therefore need special
treatment. Still less do we intend to write a history of the nineteenth
century, or even to adhere to a chronological treatment. Rather our object
is to exemplify the principle of nationality by watching it at work in
the three western sections of the central European area; to show how the
national idea has been moulded in Belgium, Italy, and Germany, by the
various problems which the nationalities in these countries have had to
face, and the forces which they have overcome; and, lastly, to indicate the
part which an over-developed nationalism in Germany has played in bringing
about the war of 1914.

Sec.4. _The National Idea in Belgium and the Problem of Small Nations_.--The
problem of the Netherlands, which it will be convenient to deal with first,
introduces us to an aspect of nationhood which we have hitherto not touched
upon. "The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it
to constitute one state," wrote Sir John Seeley, "are three,--common
nationality, common religion, and common interest. These may act in various
degrees of intensity, and they may also act singly or in combin