Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/205

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THE FREEDOM OF NATIONS
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of the single strategical command, giving scope once more to the École Militaire.

But this whole record of Western and Oceanic fighting, so splendid and yet so humiliating, has very little direct bearing on the International Resettlement. There was no immediate quarrel between East Europe and West Europe; the time was past when France would have attacked Germany to recover Alsace and Lorraine. The War, let us never forget, began as a German effort to subdue the Slavs who were in revolt against Berlin. We all know that the murder of the Austrian (German) Archduke in Slav Bosnia was the pretext, and that the Austrian (German) ultimatum to Slav Serbia was the method of forcing the War. But it cannot be too often repeated that these events were the result of a fundamental antagonism between the Germans, who wished to be Masters in East Europe, and the Slavs, who refused to submit to them. Had Germany elected to stand on the defensive on her short frontier towards France, and had she thrown her main strength against Russia, it is not improbable that the world would be nominally at peace to-day, but overshadowed by a German East Europe in command of all the Heartland. The British and American insular peoples