It has been commonly said in Vienna this past year that German Austria cannot exist alone, if only for economic reasons, and that there remain to it only two possibilities: either union with Germany, or some kind of a customs union with the new states that have grown out of the Hapsburg empire. Union with Germany was very much in the air a year ago; indeed, one of the first acts of the Austrian National Assembly on November 11, 1918, was a vote in favor of such a union. But the Peace Conference vetoed the project. This was done by the rather indirect method of inserting in the Peace Treaty with Germany an article by which the latter had to bind herself to “respect strictly the independence of Austria” within the frontiers to be fixed by the Allied and Associated Powers, and to agree that “this independence shall be inalienable except with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations.” This act of the Conference has been defended on the ground that, at the close of a war in which Germany has shown herself such a menace to the world, it is scarcely expedient or even safe to gratify her with the acquisition of over six million new subjects. It is only after she has successfully passed a period of probation and has shown that she has fundamentally changed her methods and her point of view, that the rest of the world can accord her such an aggrandizement, if the Austrians at that time still desire the union. I confess, however, that I cannot help feeling that in this case the more generous attitude would have been the wiser one. As long as the Allies insist on keeping Austria in a cell by herself, they are likely to have a chronic invalid on their hands. The effort to hold asunder even provisionally two branches of a people like the Germans may easily involve embarrassments greater than any advantages that are to be derived from it. And what is most important is the essential justice of the thing. It is the great merit of the Peace Conference that it endeavored, on the whole honestly and in such sweeping fashion as was never seen before, to apply the principle of nationality to the resettlement of Europe. One cannot but regret that this work should be tarnished by denying even temporarily to the German and German-Austrian peoples the right to work out their national unity. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Joseph Chavannes’ _Physikalisch-statistischer Hand-Atlas von Oesterreich-Ungarn_, Vienna, 1887, is still the best cartographic introduction to Austrian problems. Among the best general works dealing with the late Hapsburg monarchy, one would name: A. Chéradame, _L’Europe et la question d’Autriche au seuil du XXᵉ siècle_. 4th ed. Paris, 1906. B. Auerbach, _Les Races et les nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie_. 2d ed. Paris, 1917. H. Wickham Steed, _The Habsburg Monarchy_. 2d ed. London, 1914. V. Gayda, _Modern Austria: her racial and social problems_. New York, 1915. R. W. Seton-Watson, _German, Slav, and Magyar_. London, 1916.