Reformation.

Nationalism, democracy, colonial expansion, religious change, the
growth of knowledge and its application to industry and social reform,
these are the salient features which distinguish our modern from the
mediaeval world, and we have to consider how far they make for the unity
of mankind.

The sixteenth century saw both the strengthening of national governments
and the beginning of European colonization. England, France, Spain,
Portugal, Holland, all settled down under a central government stronger
and more independent than they had previously enjoyed, and pegged out
estates for themselves beyond the seas. In each case wars have been
entailed in the process, and, as we know, the backwardness of Germany at
this period has been visited upon the rest of Europe tenfold in recent
times. National expansion thus appears to be an eminent provocation of
international strife. It is with no intention either of ignoring facts
or minimizing dangers that one turns here to the other side of the
account. Where was the spark actually fired which led to the present
conflagration? In that part of Europe where the national units were
least stable and developed, where the conditions of government and
social order are most remote from our own. Who can doubt that if in the
Balkans the Turks had been able to establish even the sort of government
we maintain in India, or if, still better, the Balkan States, apart from
the Turks, had gained their own independence in a federation like the
Swiss, the aggression of the Central Powers would have been checked? The
compact, well-established national unit is not in itself a danger, but
there is a danger in weak, oppressed, or disjointed nationalities, who
have not found safety and offer a bait to their expansive neighbours.