Page:The voice of an oppressed people.pdf/18

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8
THE PROBLEM OF SMALL NATIONS

the strict sense of the word) are all small, some of them the smallest states. Andorra, Denmark, S. Marino, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Holland, Portugal. The Papal state in Rome belongs to a category of its own.

The middle sized states and still more the large states, are all mixed, though they vary in type according to the proportion, the numbers and of course the cultural quality of the several national units of which they are composed.

As a rule, one—the ruling—nation is in the majority; in different states this majority is differently scaled. But we have at least one instance, where the minority tries to rule—the Germans in Austria, and side by side with them, the Magyars in Hungary.

Austria-Hungary represents a unique type of the mixed or polyglot state—a comparatively high number of different smaller and small nations forms a single state. The Balkan federation, of which so many idealists, and even politicians, have dreamt, would of course belong to the same type.

2.—For our present purpose it is not necessary to give an elaborate classification of the mixed states; any real sociological treatment of the problem requires exact description of the national units in each individual state; only then is fruitful comparison possible.

If we take the states directly involved in the war, we find that all of them are mixed, though in varying degree. Germany, in addition to her sixty million German inhabitants, has six other nationalities, two of them in considerable numbers (Poles—Frenchmen); the other four, Lusatians (Sorbians), Danes, Czechs, Lithuanians, only forming tiny minorities. Austria-Hungary contains ten nationalities; Turkey in Europe, three, and a few fragments of other nations in addition (Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, etc.; Asiatic Turkey is of course extremelymixed). Bulgaria is mixed, for there is a large Turkish