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
complete political structure; if ever the powers should meet again to
establish a political system by which wars of conquest would be rendered
impossible and the rights of all guaranteed, the Congress of Vienna, as
a preparatory assembly, will not have been without use."[1] There is a
prophetic ring about this, very welcome to us of the twentieth century.
We cannot think altogether unkindly of our great-grandfathers' ill-judged
attempt to avert the calamity which has now broken over us.

[Footnote 1: Friedrich von Gentz, quoted in _Camb. Mod. Hist._ vol. x. p.
2.]

Nor was the Congress altogether barren of positive result; for it gave
birth to that conception of a "Confederation of Europe," which, though
never realised, has been one of the guiding ideas of nineteenth-century
politics. As this solution of the world's problems is likely to be urged
upon us with great insistency at the conclusion of the present war, it will
be well to look a little more closely into it and to see why it failed to
secure the allegiance of Europe a hundred years ago. The Congress had met
at Vienna and settled all outstanding