in
Germany, with the kingdom of Prussia as its leading State and the King of
Prussia as its monarch, with the title of German Emperor. This was a step
forward, though the new Germany was neither a unitary nor a constitutional
State. The Austrian territories have also come in for their share of the
general ferment, and Francis Joseph came to the throne in 1848 amid the
uprisings of his subject peoples; but these were successfully tided over,
though the Hungarian portion of the Austrian dominion achieved national
recognition and institutions in 1867.

After 1871 the national movement moved farther east. In 1878 Roumania and
Serbia, both national States, were declared sovereign powers independent
of Turkey; Bulgaria achieved its recognition as a principality; and
Montenegro, a small mountain community, which had never submitted to the
Turks, increased its territory and became a recognised European State.
In 1908 and 1910 Bulgaria and Montenegro became kingdoms like their
neighbours; and in 1913, after the two Balkan Wars, all the five Balkan
States--Roumania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro--obtained
accession of territory, and the principality of Albania was constituted
out of the Albanian portion of the old Turkish dominion. Finally, in quite
another region of Europe, Norway, which had been joined in an anomalous
union with Sweden since 1814, satisfied her national aspirations unopposed
by becoming an independent Constitutional Monarchy in 1905.

All this represents a considerable clearing up of the Central European
problem. Nevertheless, much still remains to be done. Poland is as she was
in 1814, a dismembered nation. The Czechs of Bohemia, the Roumanians of
Transylvania, and the Southern Slavs, not to mention other and smaller
subject races, continue to demand their freedom from the joint tyranny of
Vienna and Budapest. Russia has not yet solved the problem of Finland, nor
England the problem of Ireland. The Turk still occupies Constantinople. And
finally, the Prussianised nationalism of Germany has created new questions
of nationality in Alsace-Lorraine and Schleswig. All these problems
together were as so much tinder ready to take fire directly the spark fell.
They were the cause of the "armed peace" of the past forty-three years;
they are the cause of the war to-day. The conflagration of 1914 is a proof
of a profound dissatisfaction among civilised nations with the existing
political structure of the Cont