less powerful and the smaller States of Europe must become their subjects.
And the policies of this dominant State or confederation of States are not to be policies of their peoples. They are to be the expression of the absolute and unfettered intentions of the ruling family or families—policies that the Hohenzollern or Hapsburg dynasty, or both, may desire for their own family self-aggrandisement. The nations and the peoples over which these families or either of them shall reign are to be but pawns in the game. Rights and interests are to be determined by the rulers; the peoples and nationalities are to live lives and engage in activities ruled and regulated at their masters' pleasure. Such principles, to the free peoples of modern civilisation, are abhorrent.
Intelligently to understand the true bearing of the foregoing, and of the international relations which, during the last forty years, have steadily moved forward towards the present stage, a state of war, and which are the subject of the succeeding pages, it is necessary to set out here, very generally and perhaps roughly, a succinct account of European policies and forces dominant during that period.
The supreme struggle is and has been, as already indicated, between two fundamental and absolute political principles. On the one hand Austria and Prussia, and until recently Russia with them, have always stood for the principle of absolute dynastic monarchy. This principle has involved an international ex- pression as well as a national. If it had never meant more than a solely national expression, that is to say, the creation and maintenance of despotic States whose internal arrangements and affairs would not come into conflict with the rights of other States, there would then have been no such international developments as have in fact taken place, under the devastating result of which the world is now suffering. But from the days of the settlement of Europe in 1815, the States of this class have ever worked together for the furtherance of their characteristic interests. Until 1827, they worked in open and solid union as the Holy Alliance, designedly carrying on a propaganda for the spread of their pernicious principles amongst the leaders of other States, and supporting this propaganda by pressure in international relations. These other States were those that were more or less founded upon, or in sympathy with, representative or popular government. To support despotic governments by force against constitutional parties in various States appeared to the Alliance to be just and charitable, if not peaceable. Austria was busy enslaving Italy; France was dealing with Spain in the same way; and Prussia was
