Even more important than the loss of territory were the eco- nomic and financial disabilities imposed on Germany by the peace settlement, and the state of internal instability caused by the Revolution. The general effect was that, for the present, Germany was unable to .take any active part in European politics; she had become a passive element in the continental system and the utmost that she could do was to concentrate on the slow and arduous task of internal reconstruction, which at the best must take many years. The prime occupation of France was to secure the safeguards which would be necessary when the process of recovery had been completed.
By far the most striking of the changes was the disappearance from the map of Europe of the great Habsburg Monarchy, which since the days of Charles V. had played so important a part. This is an event. to which there is no parallel in European history. It is the first time that one of the Great Powers of Europe has, not by slow and prolonged process, but by a sudden collapse, ceased to exist. As an immediate result there was added to the European system one new State (the new Austrian Republic), and three others were so changed that they might equally well be considered as new members of the family of nations.
1. The ancient kingdom of Bohemia, which since 1526 had been merged in the Habsburg possessions, reappeared under the title of Czechoslovakia. To quote the preamble to one of the treaties signed at St. Germain:
" The union which formerly existed between the old Kingdom of Bohemia, the Margravate of Moravia and the Duchy of Silesia on the one hand, and the other territories of the former Austro- Hungarian Monarchy on the other, has definitely ceased to exist, and the peoples of Bohemia, of Moravia and of part of Silesia, as well as the peoples of Slovakia, have decided of their own free will to unite, and have in fact united, in a permanent union for the purpose of forming a single sovereign independent State under the title of the Czecho-Slovak Republic."
What this means is that to the old territories of the Bohemian Crown was added a large portion of the ancient Hungarian kingdom, which was inhabited by the Slovaks, a race closely akin to the Czechs. It was strongly urged by some that the German-speaking portions of Bohemia and Moravia should be allowed, if they so desired, to unite themselves with the new Austria or with Germany. This was wisely and inevitably re- fused by the Peace Conference, but, on the other hand, by a special treaty signed at Paris on July 28 1920, that portion of the small duchy of Teschen, the population of which was predomi- nantly Polish, was separated from the rest and united with the new Poland. In addition to these territories, that portion of the kingdom of Hungary which was inhabited by the Ruthenians was also incorporated with Czechoslovakia, but the Treaty of St. Germain gave to it the right of autonomy.
2. On the south there was achieved the union in one State of nearly all the South Slavs; the small kingdom of Serbia, which a few years before the war numbered only some three million inhabitants, was increased to an important State with a pop. of 14 millions, including Croatia, part of the Banat, and portions of the former Austrian provinces of Dalmatia, Carniola and Istria. As a symbol of the changed condition, the kingdom of Serbia took the title of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, but it is often spoken of as Yugoslavia.
3. The settlement of the frontiers between this State and the kingdom of Italy was the subject of long, arduous and often critical negotiations, which were settled finally by the Treaty of Rapallo of Nov. 1920. By this Italy acquired nearly the whole of Istria; the town of Fiume, which was the special subject of controversy, became a self-governing community, closely attached to Italy. Italy on the other hand surrendered the claims she had under the Treaty of London to other portions of the Dal- matian coast, retaining only Zara and a few islands. To the problems of Europe was added that of the Adriatic, which seems destined to become the object of rivalry between Italy, Yugo- slavia and Greece. In the north, Italy acquired the most gener- ous settlement of her claims to all Italian lands, not only Trieste and Gorizia and the Trentino, but also the whole of Tirol up to the Brenner Pass and the main chain of the Alps, and for the
first time thereby extended to her natural geographical frontier; as a result of this, 700,000 German-speaking Tirolese and a large number of Slavonic race in Istria came under the Italian Crown.
4. On the east, Rumania acquired part of the Banat and the whole of Transylvania, in addition to Bessarabia, her popula- tion thereby being about doubled. Here again it was impossible to draw a line by which all the Rumanians of Hungary should be assigned to Rumania without at the same time transferring the allegiance of a large non-Rumanian population, chiefly Magyars and Czechlers (a branch of Hungarians), who also include the German colony of Siebenburgen.
The only portion of the old monarchy which in the summer of 1921 had not been definitely assigned was the province of Galicia. It was a matter of course that the western part, purely Polish in population, should go to Poland, and in fact the incor- poration was effected immediately after the conclusion of the Armistice. On the other hand East Galicia, which comprises a pop. of over 4,500,000 and an area of some 17,000 sq. m., is inhabited by a population Russian in origin and speech, to which the name of Ruthenian or Ukrainian is generally applied. The Poles, however, claimed this, partly on historical grounds and partly because of the great interests in the country of the Polish aristocracy who owned large portions of the land. No decision was arrived at by the Peace Conference, but in July 1919 the Polish army was permitted to occupy the territory; proposals for assigning it with guaranteed autonomy to Poland broke down, and the Polish Government was in 1910-21 in practically undisturbed control. In the Treaty of Sevres of Aug. 10 1920, in which many minor frontier questions were settled, clauses were included assigning West Galicia to Poland, but the Poles refused to sign this treaty, presumably on the ground that by doing so they would appear to acquiesce in a differentiation between eastern and western Galicia; no Polish Government could afford to give up its claim to East Galicia. The result was that technically the whole of the province still belonged, in the middle of 1921, to the principal Allied and As- sociated Powers, to whom it was ceded by the Treaty of St. Germain on Sept. 10 1919. West Galicia must, doubtless, remain an integral part of Poland. The future of East Galicia, however, remained a source of anxiety. Poland would be satisfied with nothing less than complete and unconditional sovereignty; the British Government was morally pledged by the support which it gave to the Ruthenians during 1919 not to surrender them, without stringent safeguards, to the rule of a nation whom they professed to regard as their hereditary enemy, and a restored Russia or an independent Ukraine would probably try to estab- lish a claim to this district.
5. Of the old Austro-Hungarian Monarchy little remained when all these cessions had taken place. On the one hand we have the ancient crown lands of the Habsburgs, Upper and Lower Austria, Salzkammergut, Tirol and Vorarlberg. The Conference having refused to permit the union with Germany which was desired by large portions of the population, these were constituted as the Republic of Austria (the title of German Austria, which was at first taken, did not receive the approval of the Paris Conference), with a pop. of about 6,000,000. It is, except for the great city of Vienna and its suburbs, a predominantly mountain- ous and agricultural district. The problem of the future of Austria had a dual side, that of the country and that of Vienna. No city had suffered so much by the war and the peace; cut off from former trade connexions, left with a pop. of two millions of whom so many earned their livelihood from the presence of the court and the administration, the population would have been condemned to a slow process of starvation but for the assistance provided chiefly from America and Great Britain. The future of Austria remained one of the problems of Europe. France was unalterably opposed to the union of Austria with Germany, for this would, quite apart from the serious increase to German population, produce a Germany which extended from the Alps to the Baltic, and cut off western from eastern Europe. Such a Germany would be a grave menace to the other States and would compromise both Switzerland and Czechoslovakia.
