The Allies, while fighting Napoleon, had issued the following proclamation
to the world, couched in language almost identical with that used by the
Allies who are now fighting Germany: "Nations will henceforth respect their
mutual independence; no political edifices shall henceforth be erected on
the ruins of formerly independent States; the object of the war, and of the
peace, is to secure the rights, the freedom, and the independence of
all nations."[1] The Congress of Vienna failed to redeem these pledges:
firstly, because its members had not grasped the principle of nationality,
and used "nation" and "State" as if they were synonymous terms; secondly,
because they did not represent the peoples whose destinies they took it
upon them to determine, and made no attempt whatever to consult the
views of the various masses of population which they parcelled out among
themselves like so much butter. They honestly tried to lay the foundations
of a permanent peace; but their method of doing so was not to satisfy the
natural aspirations of the European nations and so leave them nothing to
fight about, but to establish such an exact equipoise among the great
States, by a nice distribution of the aforesaid butter in their respective
scales, that they would be afraid to go to war with each other, lest they
might upset the so-called "balance of power." The "settlement" of 1814,
therefore, left a heritage of future trouble behind it which has kept
Europe disturbed throughout the nineteenth century, and is directly
responsible for the present war. The real settlement is yet to come; and if
we of this generation are to make it a final one we must avoid the errors
committed by the Congress of a hundred years ago.

[Footnote 1: Alison Phillips, _Modern Europe_, p. 8.]

Yet, when all is said, the Congress of Vienna represents an important
milestone along the road of progress. It is a great precedent. As a
disillusioned contemporary admitted, it "prepared the world for a more