t may
be a general Congress, like the Congress of Vienna. Since the Concert of
Europe disappeared and gradually gave place to the two opposing alliances
of great powers, there has been no such authority in the civilised world.
The results are before us in the ruined cities and starving population of
violated Belgium.

[Footnote 1: The neutralisation of sovereign States is very recent in
origin. Switzerland and Luxembourg are the only other instances. The former
was neutralised in 1815, the latter in 1867.]

[Footnote 2: _Cambridge Modern History_, xi. 642. See for the whole
question of neutralised States, Lawrence, _Principles of International
Law_, Sec.Sec. 246-248.]

As independent States, therefore, small nations can only survive, in
the long run, if their neutrality is permanently guaranteed by some
international authority, which is itself permanently capable of enforcing
its decrees upon recalcitrant States. Sovereignty and independence,
however, are not, as we have seen, essential to full nationhood, provided
the nation possesses a certain amount of "home-rule" and regards the
government under which it lives as a true expression of its genius and
will. For example, from 1809 till the setting in of Russian reaction in
1899, the Finnish nation enjoyed all the privileges of complete nationhood
except actual sovereignty. There is, therefore, a future for small nations,
either as autonomous proteges of great powers, like Russia, or as partners
in some commonwealth of nations, like the British Empire.

But there is yet another consideration to be faced. Why, it is asked,
should we trouble ourselves about the preservation of small nationalities
at all? "The State is power," and it is only the really powerful State,
therefore, that can and ought to survive. There is something laughable in
the idea of a small State; it is weakness trying to pose as strength. And
as for nations which have lost their independence and have bowed to the
yoke of the conqueror, their fate is incorporation. How can they hope or
expect to retain their separate existence and their peculiar culture when
they have surrendered the power upon which these privileges depend? "No
nation can permit the Jews to have a double nationality"; and the same
applies to Poles, Finns, Alsatians, Irishmen, and Belgians.[1] This is the
point of view of Bernhardi, Treitschke, and the German Government. This
is the theory which is said to justify the practice of Prus