Page:The voice of an oppressed people.pdf/16

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6
THE PROBLEM OF SMALL NATIONS

range of human life. No honest man can avoid thinking about the War; science, according to a French thinker who was the living antithesis to militarism and even to politics, has to foresee, to know beforehand, to antipate the future. The man of science does not give up his patriotism; but that patriotism cannot be blind or dumb; it must proclaim what he has found to be the truth. The highest aim of science is to understand the aims of life and to find the right means of realizing these aims. Science, then, however theoretical it may be, inevitably exists in order to be carried into practice. In a word, true science, both in morals and in politics, directs and hardens the will. The will—for it is not enough for men to wish and to imagine that we are already exercising our will—to will in morals and politics presupposes clear seeing, understanding and knowledge. This at least in my opinion is the aim of our new School of Slavonic studies: scientific work of this kind will help this country to understand not only the Slavs but also herself.

1.—It would help us greatly if I could show you a good map of the European nations; but no such map exists. This deficiency of ethnological geography is very significant of the scientific situation in this branch of sociological studies, which during this war and as a direct result of it, has become so important. Still more significant is the fact, that in spite of the war and the steady discussion of the different nationalities, you cannot buy a map showing the extent of the different nations; you will find political maps, maps of railroads, etc., but no ethnographical ones. Think of it, the very question of this war is graphically not represented, though day by day for over a year past endless discussions, alike in the press and on the public platform, turn upon the question of nationality! Only a few specialists realize the situation and give us in their treatises and books a few all too scanty ethnographical data.

So inveterate is the conception of the State as the only