much to say that the history of Europe from 1814 to 1914 is the history of
the settlement of this vast area. The only State whose frontiers have not
altered during this period is Switzerland, and even that country seized the
opportunity which a disturbed Europe offered her in 1848, to substitute a
unified federal system for the constitution imposed upon her in 1815.
The rest of the area falls into six sections: (1) The kingdom of the
Netherlands, containing the two distinct and often antagonistic nations,
Belgium and Holland; (2) the German nationality split up into no less
than thirty-eight[2] sovereign States, loosely held together in a
"confederation"; (3) the Italian nationality, distributed under eight
independent governments, including four duchies, two kingdoms, the Papal
States, and the provinces under Austrian rule; (4) the Polish nationality,
divided up between the three Powers, Prussia, Russia, and Austria; (5) the
Austrian Empire, comprising a dozen distinct nationalities; and (6) the
Ottoman Empire, in which at least five different Christian 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.