(7) Between these two great Slav groups, northern and southern, struck in, during the Dark Ages, a wedge of invading Mongols whose position has been of the greatest importance to the history of Eastern Europe. They were converted to Christianity nearly a thousand years ago, and the Mongol type has entirely disappeared, but the Mongol language remains under the title of Magyar, and it is the Magyar-speaking Hungarians that are the ruling race over all the eastern part of Austria-Hungary, though they are only half of the total population in their dominion. In any new national grouping this fiercely independent Magyar population must be taken for granted, though its claim to rule alien subjects is another matter.

(8) Finally, there is a curious group of the greatest importance, both because so much of its population is forbidden independence and because the remainder has attained independence. That group is the Roumanian group.

Racially, the Roumanians are probably Slavs for the most part, but their tongue is a Latin tongue; they are proud of Latin descent, and they are just as much a wedge between the Slavs of the north and south as the Magyars themselves. They everywhere overlap their nominal political boundaries; three million and a half of them extend far into Hungary, and a portion over the boundaries of Russia. For the most part they are Orthodox, or Greek, in religion. But it must always be remembered, because it is essential to understanding the new Europe, that the Roumanian-speaking people under Hungarian rule are, quite half of them and perhaps the majority, cut off from the Orthodox Church and in union with Rome.

With this summary, which has been expressed in Map I, you have a fair, though of course rough, division of Europe into its real national components.

Now let us ask what Germany and Austria would propose, in case of their victory, to make out of such materials.

MAP II. THE GERMANIC GROUP IN EUROPE

1.Luxembourg 6.Mixed Italian
and German		 11.Holland 16.Bulgaria
2.Belgium 7.Russia 12.Bukovina 17.Montenegro
3.Germany 8.Bohemia 13.Hungary 18.Albania
4.Switzerland 9.Bosnia 14.Serbia 19.Greece
5.Italy 10.Austrian 15.Roumania 20.Turkey

The boundaries of the “German feeling” group in Europe are very roughly suggested by the thick black line. Within that curiously twisted line nearly all speech and all feeling is German.

In the first place Germany would keep all that she has, indifferent to national anomalies or the unquiet of subject and oppressed peoples. She would keep Alsace-Lorraine; she would keep in subjection the Poles who are already in subjection to her; she would leave the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy under the Hapsburgs with all its present possessions, whether those possessions grossly interfered with national realities or no. Would she annex territory, in spite of the first of the two postulates which I have already mentioned?