THE NEW EUROPE
their territory, and the number of their population, belong to the category of the bigger states. We find in them a certain proportion of national minorities, most of which have no political claims. If, however, we turn towards the East, we find that the states become more and more mixed in the national sense; Germany (Prussia), and more especially Austria (and to go still further East, Turkey), show a great difference in this respect from France, or Italy, or Spain; while Russia, the easternmost state in Europe, is a type apart. It must not be forgotten, however, that whereas Russia constitutes the whole of the East, the rest of Europe, though smaller than Russia in extent, is divided into twenty-seven political organisations.[1]
In Germany, and especially in Prussia, we find the ethnographic differentiation as between East and West already apparent. There are non-German minorities consisting of French, Danish, Polish, Lusatian, Lithuanian (and Lettish) and Bohemian. The Polish minority is fairly numerous, especially as compared with the population of Prussia, and with the exception of the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine, all the above-mentioned minorities are in Prussia, although part of the Lusatians are also to be found in Saxony. To the north-east, and, farther south, to the west of the Elbe, the development of Germany was only achieved by the Germanisation of the Slavs. The Germanised character of Prussia as the easternmost state of Germany is still discernible to-day.
Ethnologically, Austria-Hungary is unique. It comprises ten nationalities—Germans, Czechs with Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Roumanians, Magyars, Italians, Serbo-Croats, Slovenes, as well as fragments of Rhaeto-Romans. None of these constitute by themselves a decisive majority. Austria is therefore an entirely artificial state, and, indeed, it was once thus described by the German leader Plener. Turkey, too, has always been, and still is, an entirely unnational state.
The foregoing facts explain the significance of the Central Zone of nations for the German Drang nach Osten. The
- ↑ The division of East from West is naturally indefinite; both those terms have a cultural as well as a geographical and ethnological connotation. The term "Central Europe," which is often used, is also vague; it must be borne in mind that we here distinguish between Central Europe and the Central Zone.
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