with itself.

It also collides with overwhelming economic facts. Racially Trieste is
semi-Italian, but if Italy acquires the city (and includes it in her
customs union), a vast Austrian and German _hinterland_ is deprived of
a necessary commercial outlet. Italy can hold the East Adriatic only
by smothering Serbia. Moreover many of these foetal nationalities are
too weak and geographically too insecure for independent political
existence. What reality would attach to an independent Bohemia held in
a vice between two hostile German neighbours, and with a German
population in its own territory? Even in peace the {277} Teutonic
powers could gently strangle the new nation by means of discriminating
tariffs.

Finally many of the claims for nationalistic expansion are inspired by
a motive quite different from what appears on the surface. What the
nation usually wants is not merely its own unredeemed brethren, but
more territory and people. Its unredeemed brethren are the easiest to
take. But while Roumania demands sovereignty over the Roumanians of
Transylvania, she will not let the Bulgarians of the Dobrudja go. In
the one case she upholds the sacred principle of nationality; in the
other she discards that principle for the sake of a strategic frontier.
Serbians and Greeks ask not only for the right to recover their ancient
territory but also for the right to rule over Bulgarians and Turks.
What they really desire is access to the sea, ample resources for an
adequate population, and the national power, without which an
independent existence is an illusion.

It is too late to dream of a really independent existence for each
pigmy nationality, strewn about in Eastern Europe. In the absence of a
Balkan Confederation, Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece
may preserve their separate sovereignties, though only if they submit
to the "advice" of greater nations, as Portugal submits to Britain.
But for such nations to have conflicting nationalistic aspirations, to
wage bloody wars for larger territory and more subjects, is a
ridiculous and a tragic situation. Servia, dreaming of the restoration
of the empire of Tsar Stephen Dushan, whose armies marched to the walls
of Constantinople, Greece aspiring to the Empire of the East, are a
menace to the peace of the world. It is doubtful whether all of these
ambitious nationalities can even preserve their separate national
existence. If the welfare of Europe conf