I do not wish, however, to end upon a note of pessimism. Whatever mistakes may have been made in connection with the territorial problems of Eastern Europe--and some mistakes were inevitable, in view of the tremendous multiplicity and complexity of the problems raised--the general outcome represents an immense gain for the cause of liberty and nationality. The dream which haunted Mazzini and so many other liberals of fifty years ago--the transformation of the four great despotisms of Eastern Europe--Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Turkey--into a world of free, self-determining national states--has now been in large part realized. The unification of Italy, delayed for half a century, is now virtually finished; and from the Baltic to the Aegean there has been built up a tier of national states, which may perhaps set a check upon any recrudescence of Pan-Germanism, and which some people have called ‘the new bulwark of liberty in the East.’ Of course, fears are expressed as to ‘the Balkanization of Eastern Europe.’ But if that charge implies a disintegration of the older units into a large number of small and permanently feeble states, the complaint is scarcely well founded. After all, in the area considered in these lectures, only two really new states have been created. In the main, the effort has been to round out older ones so as to make their political frontiers coincide with their ethnographic ones, to unite rather than to divide. As a result we have Poland, with about thirty million people; Czecho-Slovakia with twelve to thirteen millions; Roumania with fifteen millions; Yugo-Slavia with twelve to thirteen millions; Greece, which may attain six to seven millions;--results which scarcely fit in with the charge of Balkanization. Whatever mistakes there may have been, whatever selfish interests have occasionally come unpleasantly to light, I think it may be justly affirmed that on no similar occasion in the past has so earnest and systematic an effort been made to settle territorial questions on the basis, not of the interests or the convenience of the Great Powers, but of the rights and aspirations of the peoples directly concerned; that the Peace Conference at Paris has liberated and unified more nations than any previous European congress, or all the congresses of the last century taken together; and that the principle of nationality has never before won so sweeping and signal a victory. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE