There are a few Italians in France, also a few Walloons and Flemish. Otherwise France is largely a unit. Some of the French people are found in Switzerland and others in that part of the German Empire which was taken away from France after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
The Danes are not all living in Denmark. A great many of them inhabit the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein which were torn away from Denmark by Prussia in 1864. The high mountains of the Scandinavian peninsula separate the Norwegians from the Swedes about as well as they divide the countries geographically.
The Hollanders make a nation by themselves, but part of the northwestern corner of the German Empire is also peopled by Dutch. The territory around Aix-La-Chapelle, although part of the German Empire, is inhabited by Walloons, a Celtic people who speak a sort of French. Belgium, small as it is, contains two different types of population, the Walloons and the Flemish.
The German Empire does not include all of the Germans. A great many of these are to be found in Austria proper, Styria (sty̆′rĭȧ), and the northern Tyrol (ty̆′rol) (western counties of the Austrian Empire), as well as in the eastern half of Switzerland and the edges of Bohemia. Germans are also to be found in parts of Hungary; and in the Baltic provinces of Russia there are over two million of them.
All of the Italians are not in the kingdom of Italy. The Island of Corsica, which belongs to France, is inhabited by Italians. The province of Trentino (trĕn ti′nō) (the southern half of the Austrian Tyrol) is inhabited almost entirely by Italians, as is also Istria, which includes the cities of Trieste, Pola, and Fiume. Certain islands off the coast of Dalmatia are also largely Italian in their population.
The republic of Switzerland is inhabited by French, Italians, and Germans. Besides the languages of these three nations, a fourth tongue is spoken there. In the valleys of the southeastern corner of Switzerland are found people who talk a corruption of the old Latin, which they call Romaunsch or Romansh.
Austria-Hungary, as has already been said, is a jumble of languages and nationalities. This empire includes nearly a million Italians in its southwestern corner, and three million Roumanians in Transylvania. It has as its subjects in Bosnia and Herzegovina several million Serbians. In Slavonia (slȧ vō′nĭ ȧ), Croatia (crō a′tia), and Dalmatia (dăl mā tia), it has two or three million Slavs, who are closely related to the Serbians. In the north, its government rules over several million Czechs (chĕcks) (Bohemians and Moravians) who strongly desire to have a country of their own. It controls also two million Slovaks, cousins of the Czechs, who also would like their independence. In the county of Carniola (car ni ō′lȧ), there are one and a half million Slovenes, another Slavic people belonging either by themselves or with their cousins, the Croatians and Serbs.
The German Empire includes several hundred thousand Frenchmen, who want to get back under French control, a million or two Danes, who want once more to belong to Denmark, and several million Poles, who desire to see their country again united.
