[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.


§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 combination."[1]
In the Low Countries religion has up to the present been a stronger
nation-making force than nationality. Three nationalities, each with its
own language, live there side by side,--the Dutch, the Flemings, and the
Walloons; but of these the Dutch and the Flemings are very closely allied
racially, Flemish being only a slight variant of the Dutch language. It
would therefore seem natural on the face of it that these two sections