Europe as It Should Be
Russia rules over a mixture of peoples almost as numerous as those composing Austria-Hungary. The Russians themselves are not one people. The Red Russians or Ruthenians are quite different from the people of Little Russia, and they in turn are different from the people of Great Russia, to the north. The Baltic provinces are peopled, not by Russians, but by two million Germans, an equal number of Letts and a somewhat greater number of Lithuanians. North of Riga are to be found the Esthonians, cousins of the Finns. North-west of Petrograd lies Finland, whose people, with the Esthonians, do not belong to the Indo-European family, and who would dearly love to have a separate government of their own.
Polish children
You have already been told in [Chapter V] that the country of the English, if limited by race, does not include Wales, Cornwall, or the north of Scotland, but instead takes in the north-eastern part of Ireland and the southern half of the former Scottish kingdom.
Turning to the Balkan states, we find our hardest task, for the reason that peoples of different nationalities are hopelessly mixed and jumbled. There are Turks and Greeks mixed in with the Roumanians and Bulgarians in the Dobrudja. Parts of southern Serbia and portions of Grecian Macedonia are inhabited by people of Bulgarian descent. Transylvania, with the exception of the two little mixture islands mentioned before is inhabited by Roumanians. The southern half of the Austrian province of Bukowina also ought to be part of Roumania, as should the greater part of the Russian state of Bessarabia. Whereas Roumania now has a population of 7,000,000, there are between five and six million of her people who live outside her present boundaries.
The shores and islands of the Aegean Sea should belong to Greece. Greek people have inhabited them for thousands of years. The Albanians are a separate people, while Montenegro and Bosnia should be joined to Serbia.
Turn back to previous maps of Europe in this volume and you will see that most of the changes that have been made of late years are bringing boundaries nearer where they should be. You will also note that wherever there have been recent changes contrary to this plan, they have always resulted in more bloodshed. The partition of Poland, the annexation of Schleswig, Alsace, and Lorraine to Germany, the division of Bulgarian Macedonia between Serbia and Greece, and the seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria are good examples.