were originally intimately connected. They were the twin children of Poland and the French Revolution, and in their cradle it was hard to tell them apart, so strongly were the features of each stamped with the likeness of Liberty.

For a time it seemed that the new ideas would carry all before them. Even before France had herself abolished the monarchy, Belgium threw off the Austrian rule and declared for a republic. And when in 1792 France found herself at war with the Austrian and Prussian governments, and in the following year with practically all the governments of Europe, her victorious armies were everywhere greeted as saviours by the subject peoples. But the old dynastic states proved to be of tougher material than was expected. Moreover, it was not long before France found herself in conflict with the national aspirations which she had called into existence. The various republics which France set up all over Europe soon discovered that they were nothing but tributary states of their "deliverer"; and when Napoleon began his career of undisguised conquest, he unwittingly did even more than the Revolution to strengthen the national idea in Europe, for the nationalities had now become thoroughly hostile to France and fought in alliance with their old dynasties to throw off the yoke of the hated foreign tyrant.

This strange change in France from liberator to despot is worthy of some attention. It is not good for a nation, any more than for an individual, to be too successful. Moreover, the doctrine of liberty, whether in the individualist or nationalist sense, if carried to extreme, is liable to abuse. All to-day are aware that sheer individualism in the economic sphere is an almost unmitigated evil; sheer individualism in the political sphere and sheer nationalism are equally evil. France at the beginning of last century was suffering from too much success, too much political liberty, too much nationalism. Having overthrown the old régime within the State quickly and easily, she began to think she could do without the State altogether: the result was anarchy, for which the only remedy is despotism. Having, again, suddenly become conscious of her power and mission as a nation, she began to send her armies across her frontiers to carry the gospel of her peculiar "culture" to other and more benighted nations: the result was occupation, which degenerated into conquest. Despotism within and conquest without, both being summed up in the one word Napoleon—such was the fate of the Mother of Liberty, who had loved her child "not wisely but too well." Yet Napoleonism was a very necessary stage in the development of modern Europe. It was the tramp of the invader which did more than anything else to awake sleeping nationalism all over the Continent; it was before the roar of Napoleon's cannon that the artificial boundaries which had divided peoples crumbled to dust. Napoleon cleared the ground, and even did something toward laying the foundations of the great modern Nation-States, Germany and Italy. What Napoleon did for Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Germany, the Napoleon-State among nations to-day, is doing for Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century.

§3. The Congress of Vienna and the International Idea.—The overthrow of Napoleon was due in a large measure to the spirit of nationalism which his conquests had evoked against him among the various peoples of Europe; the rewards of that overthrow, however, were reaped not by the peoples, but by the dynasties and State-systems of the old régime. The Congress of the Powers which met at Vienna in 1814 to resettle the map of Europe, after the upheavals and wars of the previous twenty-five years, was a terrible disappointment; and we, who are now hopefully looking forward to a similar Congress at the end of the present war, cannot do better than study the great failure of 1814, and take warning from it. The phrases which heralded the approaching Congress were curiously and disquietingly similar to those on the lips of our public men and journalists to-day when they speak of the "settlement" before us. "The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World," which had become a remote dream when Tennyson first coined the expression in 1842, seemed in 1814 on the eve of accomplishment. The work of the Congress was to be no less than "the reconstruction of the moral order," "the regeneration of the political system of Europe," the establishment of "an enduring peace founded on a just redistribution of political forces," the institution of an effective and a permanent international tribunal, the encouragement of the growth of representative institutions, and, last but not least, an arrangement between the Powers for a gradual and systematic disarmament. "It seemed," writes Sir A.W. Ward, "as if the states composing the European family, free once more to take counsel together on terms of independence, were also free to determine their own destinies."[1] The Congress of Vienna was to inaugurate a New Era. Such of these views, however, as pointed in a democratic or nationalistic direction represented the expectations of the peoples, not the intentions of the crowned heads and diplomatists who met at the Austrian capital. Among the members of the Congress the only man who at first voiced these aspirations of the world at large was the Russian Tsar, Alexander I., and such concessions to popular opinion as were made were due to what the English plenipotentiary, Lord Castlereagh, described as the "sublime mysticism and nonsense" of the Emperor.

[Footnote 1: Cambridge Modern History, vol. ix. p. 577.]

Instead, therefore, of establishing a new era, the Congress did its utmost to restore the old one. Everything which had happened in Europe since the outbreak of the French Revolution was regarded as a bad dream, the principles of popular freedom and national liberty were completely ignored, and an attempt was made to rivet again on the limbs of Europe the shackles of the antiquated frontiers which had been struck off by the hammer of Napoleon. Everywhere the "national idea" was trampled upon. Germany and Italy were put back again into the eighteenth century, Austria's territory in the latter country being largely increased; Norway was unwillingly yoked with Sweden, and Belgium with Holland; Switzerland was made to surrender her democratic constitution and to return to the aristocratic cantonal system of the past; and, lastly, Poland remained dismembered.

The Allies, while fighting Napoleon, had issued the following proclamation to the world, couched in language almost identical with that used by the Allies who are now fighting Germany: "Nations will henceforth respect their mutual independence; no political edifices shall henceforth be erected on the ruins of formerly independent States; the object of the war, and of the peace, is to secure the rights, the freedom, and the independence of all nations."[1] The Congress of Vienna failed to redeem these pledges: firstly, because its members had not grasped the principle of nationality, and used "nation" and "State" as if they were synonymous terms; secondly, because they did not represent the peoples whose destinies they took it upon them to determine, and made no attempt whatever to consult the views of the various masses of population which they parcelled out among themselves like so much butter. They honestly tried to lay the foundations of a permanent peace; but their method of doing so was not to satisfy the natural aspirations of the European nations and so leave them nothing to fight about, but to establish such an exact equipoise among the great States, by a nice distribution of the aforesaid butter in their respective scales, that they would be afraid to go to war with each other, lest they might upset the so-called "balance of power." The "settlement" of 1814, therefore, left a heritage of future trouble behind it which has kept Europe disturbed