If European union was difficult to achieve in past centuries, it has become even more difficult to-day. The last century has been the century of nationalities, a period during which nations and nationalistic groups developed consciousness. Group consciousness is, of course, no new thing, for all groups, possessing survival quality, have conceit, self-esteem and veneration for the bond that unites them and for all qualities, characteristics, experiences and institutions which distinguish them. To-day this group consciousness has become national consciousness, and the impulse towards nationalistic expression spreads and makes itself felt not only in organised nations but also among submerged, conquered and dispersed peoples like the Czechs, Poles, Finns and Irish. The clash of Europe's hundreds of millions for a satisfactory existence upon an insufficient area is intensified by the marshalling of these millions into nationalistic groups, speaking different languages and ruled by hostile traditions.
The antagonism is the worse because in many parts of Europe history and geography have conspired to jumble ethnic and linguistic groups without mixing them. In Bohemia, East Prussia, Dalmatia, Macedonia and Lorraine, hostile groups intermingle without fusing. Though the last century has brought about a certain approximation of state boundaries to the boundaries of nationalities, the process is far from complete. About many nations there is a fringe of people of like nationality subject to other states. Roumania, Servia, Italy, each has its Irredenta; Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey are loose bundles of nationalities, hating each other, while the Balkan States cannot discover any nationalistic principle upon which to divide up Macedonia. Each nationality seeks independence and strength to maintain itself against the encroachment of rivals, and this desire for self-preservation through size, causes a nationality, which has attained to nationhood, to oppress smaller nationalistic groups within its borders. The condition is artificial and anomalous. Absurd nationalistic claims are advanced in defence of aggression, and while learned Pan-Slavs convert Balkan dwellers into Russians, the Dutch, Flemings and Danes are proved by Pan-Germans to be only Germans once removed.
The progress of democracy has intensified this nationalistic strife and made it a matter of amour propre. So long as no citizen had rights, it mattered little whether the King were German or Hungarian. With the participation of the people in government, however, the subject nationalities feel themselves disgraced. The Pole longs for a free democratic Poland; he is not content to become German, Austrian or Russian. Rather than surrender his nationality he is willing to tear up the map of Europe and thrust the world into war.
In this condition we have the seeds of perpetual conflict in Europe. Partly for the sake of increasing the national strength and partly for the benefit of certain financial groups, the lesser nationalities are ruthlessly exploited by the dominating nationality within a given country. The oppression of Roumanians and Slavs by the Magyar ruling classes of Hungary causes a deep revulsion of feeling in Roumania, Servia and other countries across the border, just as the ambitions of Pan-Germans to make Germany a nationalistic state arouse the indignation of the French and the fears of the Dutch and Danes. Moreover the nationalistic groups often discover that they have antagonistic economic interests.
The danger of this situation is immensely increased by the fact that all these hostile nations impinge territorially on one another, and modern warfare gives an enormous advantage to the nation gaining the initial success. Austria, Belgium, France may be overrun and permanently defeated by a campaign of six or seven weeks, and it is difficult thereafter to retrieve these early defeats. European nations therefore live in the fear of immediate attack and conduct a hair-trigger diplomacy.
This is the true interpretation of Realpolitik, of a nationally selfish policy, devoid of sentiment and laying an excessive emphasis upon immediate and material ends. A nation in danger of annihilation cannot indulge in the luxury of sentiment, cannot consider long time views, cannot be over-generous or trust to the generosity of rivals. Each nation is compelled to enter into offensive and defensive alliances, and these alliances, perpetually suspecting each other, are compelled to prepare for instant war.
But preparation for war under such conditions makes war inevitable. If a nation believes that it is to be assailed, five, ten or fifteen years from now, it is tempted to precipitate the "inevitable" war at the moment when its chances are the best. The doctrine of "the war of prevention," however perilous, is, in the prevailing circumstances, natural. It is meeting a supposedly inevitable danger half way.
Still another element adds to the menace of imperialism. Just as a successful imperialistic policy depends upon the ability of the European nation to defend itself at home, so also it depends upon access to the colonies, upon a control of the seas. Had Spain been a hundred times as powerful on land as the United States, she still could not have defended Cuba. Were Germany to secure valuable colonies, she could not be sure of their retention against England (which lies on Germany's lines of communication), so long as the British possessed an overwhelming naval supremacy. It was therefore natural, and indeed inevitable, that, sooner or later, German colonial ambitions should find expression in a naval expansion, which, whatever the intentions of its promoters, was potentially a menace to the British Empire and even to the very existence of England. The desire for imperialistic expansion thus led, in the absence of any formula of reconciliation upon a higher plane, to an irrepressible conflict between England and Germany, in short, to a world war.
Herein lay and still lies the peril of imperialism, the danger that for fifty years to come Europe, and perhaps America also, will be again and again embroiled in wars immeasurably more destructive than were the long colonial wars of the eighteenth century. The present world war does not automatically end the imperialistic struggle. There is China to consider, there is the independence of Latin America, to say nothing of colonies securely held for the time being by one or another of the European powers. The allies, if successful in this war, will not necessarily remain allies. The ambitions of England, of Russia, of Japan, not to speak of France, Germany, Italy and perhaps the United States, may come into conflict. Nor upon the signing of a treaty of peace will the forces making for imperialism become extinct. In the future, as in the past, a nationalistic competition for colonies will carry with it the seeds of war.
[[1]] The Saturday Review, Volume LXXXIV, Sept. 11, 1897.