These instances taken at random show that each case must be judged on its own merits, and that no argument holds good except the ascertained wish of the living population actually concerned. Above all we must be on our guard against “historical sentiment,” that is, against arguments taken from conditions which once existed or were supposed to exist, but which are no longer real at the present moment. They are most easily illustrated by extreme examples. Italian newspapers have described the annexation of Tripoli as “recovering the soil of the Fatherland” because it was once a province of the Roman Empire; and the entire region of Macedonia is claimed by Greek chauvinists on the one hand, because it contains the site of Pella, the cradle of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C., and by Bulgarians on the other, because Ohhrida, in the opposite corner, was the capital of the Bulgarian Tzardom in the tenth century A.D., though the drift of time has buried the tradition of the latter almost as deep as the achievements of the “Emathian Conqueror,” on which the modern Greek nationalist insists so strongly. [Sidenote: We must understand nationalistic aims and diversities.] The national problems of Europe are numerous, and each one is beset by arguments good, bad, and indifferent, some no more specious than the above, some so elaborately staged that it requires the greatest discernment to expose them. Vast bodies of people, with brains and money at their disposal, have been interested in obscuring the truth, and have used every instrument in their power to do so. It is therefore essential for us in England to take up these hitherto remote and uninteresting national problems in earnest, to get as near to the truth as we possibly can, both as to what the respective wishes of the different populations are, and as to how far it is possible to reconcile them with each other and with Geography; and to come to the conference which will follow the war and is so much more important than the war itself, with a clear idea of the alternative solutions and a mature judgment upon their relative merits. To accomplish this we need a coordination of knowledge on a large scale, knowledge of history, geography, religion, national psychology and public opinion.... [Sidenote: Individuality and tolerance must be our international ideals.]