The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of EuropeBénézet, Louis Paul
History
The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of Europe
Bénézet, Louis Paul
Europe -- History; World War, 1914-1918 -- Causes
The German Empire includes several hundred thousand Frenchmen,
who want to get back under French control, a million or two
Danes, who want once more to belong to Denmark, and several
million Poles, who desire to see their country again united.
[Illustration: Messen Europe as It Should Be]
Russia rules over a mixture of peoples almost as numerous as
those composing Austria-Hungary. The Russians themselves are not
one people. The Red Russians or Ruthenians are quite different
from the people of Little Russia, and they in turn are different
from the people of Great Russia, to the north. The Baltic
provinces are peopled, not by Russians, but by two million
Germans, an equal number of Letts and a somewhat greater number
of Lithuanians. North of Riga are to be found the Esthonians,
cousins of the Finns. North-west of Petrograd lies Finland, whose
people, with the Esthonians, do not belong to the Indo-European
family, and who would dearly love to have a separate government
of their own.
[Illustration: Polish children]
You have already been told in Chapter V that the country of the
English, if limited by race, does not include Wales, Cornwall, or
the north of Scotland, but instead takes in the north-eastern
part of Ireland and the southern half of the former Scottish
kingdom.
Turning to the Balkan states, we find our hardest task, for the
reason that peoples of different nationalities are hopelessly
mixed and jumbled. There are Turks and Greeks mixed in with the
Roumanians and Bulgarians in the Dobrudja. Parts of southern
Serbia and portions of Grecian Macedonia are inhabited by people
of Bulgarian descent. Transylvania, with the exception of the two
little mixture islands mentioned before is inhabited by
Roumanians. The southern half of the Austrian province of
Bukowina also ought to be part of Roumania, as should the greater
part of the Russian state of Bessarabia. Whereas Roumania now has
a population of 7,000,000, there are between five and six million
of her people who live outside her present boundaries.
The shores and islands of the Aegean Sea should belong to Greece.
Greek people have inhabited them for thousands of years. The
Albanians are a separate people, while Montenegro and Bosnia
should be joined to Serbia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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