January 3, iqiS 
LAND & WATER 
5 
feeling diftVivnlly defined ; largely by rare, in many plaee> 
still more by religion, also, bnt le^s, by langnage. The sym- 
]>athies within each gronp, intense as they were, formed a 
complex wliicli could never be quite resolved, and which 
would always leave unsatisfied minorities and over-lapping. 
The curious may consult those maps (the best of them 
have been prepared by (Germans) in which Europe east of 
thederman language-line, east, that is, of Pomerania, Saxony, 
Bavaria and the Austrian Mark, is set down in various colours, 
now to show the differences of religion ; now of language ; 
now of race. 
It is a most complicated pattern in which islands and colonies 
of tlie Slav and the German, the Catholic, the Orthodox 
and the Protestant, the Czech, the Polish, tlie Lithuanian, 
the Serbian, and even the Turkish and the Greek tongues 
make a bewildering show. Then you see a lonely Slavonian 
dot right near Berlin, an archipelago of Cierman points on 
tlic Lower \'olga ; Roumanians infiltering with Maygar and 
Saxon colonists in the Seven Towns ; Turks cut off right 
up in the Northern Dobnidja, Greeks in a strange " diaspora," 
which covers all the littoral of the Levant from Constantinople 
to Alexandria. If you turn from these modern statements 
to the historical maps you get another impression of complex- 
ity which reinforces the first. Vou have, almost with every 
generation for the last four hundred years, a ceaseless cliange 
of political allegiance, frontiers and groupings, and one rises 
from such a study with the impression that the East still 
has in it li\ing traditions of its nomadic past. 
GeographicalK- the main condition of this stade of affairs 
North of tlie Danube, is the presence of the great Northern 
European Plain, though that, of course, is only one of a great 
number. The fact that the seas connected witli that plain 
are closed seas, the Baltic and the Black Sea ; the immense 
reserve of Asia stretching out eastward ; the uni\er.sal ease 
of water carriage ; the absence of stone in most of these 
regions for building and for the metalling of roads — a hundred 
other material points could be cited. More important tlian 
these (for material causes never suffice to explain history) you 
liave the racial temperament of the SlaV aiKl his neighbours ; 
you ha\e the recent memory of the conquering Turk and his 
religion ; you have the influence of the Greek and the Latin 
Churches meeting in the pagan l)elt of Lithuania. And you 
have that odd and most productive accident whereby a 
wedge of wild pagan invasion thrust itself in between the 
Northern and the Southern Slavs a thousand years ago and 
separated them by the mass of the Magyars. 
In this highly complex and to some extent fluctuating 
society of liastern Europe there stood out at the moment 
when it was crystallising one great State, the State of Poland. 
It was not a State with exact frontiers like tiiose of the West, 
but its people were homogeneous, and it had the immense 
advantage in such a welter of having permanently excluded 
both the Mahommedai^ and the Pagan, and of bciii^ definitely 
Western in ideas. Nothing is more striking than the contrast 
in such a town as Posen (Posna). The new Prussian building 
and furniture are barbarous, exterior to Europe ; the old 
Polish cliaracter in decoration and all life is \\ estern and 
civilised. 
The story of the last 200 years is the story of the super- 
session of this normal unit, this Polish State, which is naturally 
the fly wheel or centre of the Eastern European system by 
three artificial groupings : three European arbitrary executive 
Powers dividing between them political authority over the 
Eastern Marchc-s, and, in the process, attempting the murder of 
Poland. These three Powers were the Prussian, the Austrian 
and the Muscovite, rejjfesented by three reigning families 
(all German), whose various arrangements throughout the 
period were all based upon these two conceptions : First, 
that such a chaos of peoples, religions and tongues could onlv 
be ruled despotically ; and, secondly, that the Polish people, 
the one really homogeneous, conscious and permanent ele- 
ment must be suppressed in order to allow these despotisms 
their free play. 
I'he conclusion of all this is that we have in that belt of 
country which stretches from the /Egean to the Baltic, a 
battlefield between two poHtical ideas. Either it will be 
dominated by something alien to any one part of it bnt common 
as a despot to the whole — that common Government would 
mean under modem circumstances the great Central European 
State informed by Prussia ; or vou would have a considerable 
numbcT of States varying in importance, and, perhaps, in 
degree of autonomy with a great Polish State as the norm and 
chief of them all. 
But there is much more behind the i^-oblem than this 
political arrangement. To the East of that belt of which we 
are speaking lies Russia — to use the old familiar term , perhaps 
no longer now an accurate one. The two outstanding features 
of what was once the Russian Empire east of the Lithuanian 
March are (i) immense natural resources, and (2) the absence 
both of internal capital and of intcrnnl human initiative 
for the development of those resources. To these two main 
features \ery many nuist be added — that the outlet to the 
sea is through narrow gates in foreign hands or by ports dis- 
tant and ice bound : that communications' arc still rare, 
and population as a w-hole still sparse : that there is nor 
avenue for trade (in the Central and Eastern part) to the 
North or South : that the great part of the products available 
are tlie products of the North (no tropical or sub-tropical 
Dependency), etc. But the immense potential resources 
coupled with the absence of capital and initiative are the 
two main things. 
"Middle Europe" 
It is, or sliould be, tlie clearest point in the whole European 
situation, that if th'e war results in the permanence of a 
Prussian " Middle Europe " — already in existence — which 
shall control the gates into this land, there will follow, to the 
advantage of that vast new State, one of the most formidable 
economic exploitations in historj-. 
In other words, if Western Europ? were to be content 
with the solution of its own local problems to its own advan- 
tage, Prussia and her modern Dependencies would yet be iti 
the near future far stronger than ever she had been before, 
and this through her economic regimen of the Slavonic 
Plains and their resources. 
There is here no need for garrisons, still less for annexation. 
Someone must find the ore, design communications and build 
them and develop this immense untilled field. Capital moves 
by the signing of paper ; initiative consists in the pregence of a 
few managers and foremen. 
In the past the Western nations competed with the Ger- 
mans and their Dependents in this task, and the whole was 
controlled by a powerful Central Government at St. Peters- 
burg. The presence of that Government forbade economic 
power turning into political domination ; it also largely 
moderated the foreign economic power itself, conserving for 
its subjects a major part of the benefits. That Government 
has disappeared. The machinery and the stocks (largely 
French property and masked under the form of loans) pass 
by repudiation (if repudiation be permitted — and one of the 
tests of our \ictory or defeat will be our power or impotence 
to prevent it — ) nominally to the peoples on whose teiritories 
they stand ; really to the new exploiting power of Prussia. 
There must at this moment be a sort of fe\-erish licking- 
of-the-lips in the great organised capitalist world of North 
Ciermany as it looks eastward upon this new field delivered 
up — largelv by their compatriots — to their adventures. 
This is tlie great economic and political fact of the moment. 
It is this which overshadows all the eager German demands 
for peace, and therefore it is this which none of the dupes of 
that demand notice or debate. 
The next of the great political departments to be surveyed 
in the present European position can be dealt with much more 
briefly because it is and has long been fully familiar to English 
opinion ; I mean the economic and political question define<l 
within the old limits of the Turkish Empire as it stood before 
1877. Even the Balkan problems — a symbol of that com- 
plexity of wliich I have spoken — have been studied here in 
some detail and have been in their largest lines for two 
generations, a commonplace of our foreign policy. 
Here the issue is almost as simple as it is well known- 
conditions rare enough and welcome enough, Heaven knows, 
in Foreign Policy. 
Peace with an unbeaten Prussia 'would necessarily mean the 
dependence of an existent Turkish Power seated at Con- 
stantinople upon tluit ^reat Central European State which it 
is tlie object of the enemy to create. 
It is obvious enough that such a situation would close the 
Black Sea at the will of the successful Power. In other words, 
it would consolidate Ihat economic grip upon the future 
production of what was once the Russian Empire, which we 
have seen to be a consequence of such a peace. It is equally 
obvious and equally a commonplace that the Narrows of 
Constantinople and the Dardanelles are not only the door to 
traflic from the Black Sea ; they are the " nodal point " of 
power and commerce moving from and to the East. The 
railways to restore Asia Minor, to recreate Syria and Meso- 
potamia, will start from the Bosphorus or (more probahlv) 
pass under it in a tunn(>l. But there is something more. .\ 
still standing Turkish Empire with Constantinople dependent 
upon Prussia as it would necessarily be, would he economically 
developed and for military purposes organised by its suzerain. 
One hears a certain amount of discussion as to where the 
limits of restricted Turkish Power would lie in case of a 
negotiated peace : How far north of Bagdad the " new 
frontier " might lie, whether it be advisable fn jiracticable to 
rescue Armeniii : where in Syria or Palestine the line might 
be drawn. .All these discussions are futile in tlie absence of 
victory, for no line could be permanently held. On *!•» 
