Europe

A Europe Divided by Race, Language, and Natural Boundaries:

In the course of history, maps were drawn by kings and marked off by diplomacy and through bloodshed. Let us now examine a map of Europe divided according to the race and language of its various peoples. It often happens that the boundaries set by nature, like seas, high mountains, and broad rivers, divide one people from another. It is natural that the people of Italy, for instance, hemmed in by the Alps to the north and by the water on all other sides, should grow to be like each other and come to talk a common language.

In the same way, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, Great
Britain, and Switzerland have boundaries largely set by nature. On
this account, it is not surprising that the map of "Europe as it
should be" which unites people of the same blood under the same
government, agrees rather closely in some places with the map of
Europe as it is.

The boundaries of the kingdom of Spain and those of the kingdom of
Portugal fit pretty closely the countries inhabited by Spanish and
Portuguese peoples.

There are a few Italians in France, also a few Walloons and Flemish.
Otherwise France is largely a unit. Some of the French people are
found in Switzerland and others in that part of the German Empire
which was taken away from France after the Franco-Prussian war of
1870.

The Danes are not all living in Denmark. A great many of them inhabit
the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein which were torn away from
Denmark by Prussia in 1864. The high mountains of the Scandinavian
peninsula separate the Norwegians from the Swedes about as well as
they divide the countries geographically.

The Hollanders make a nation by themselves, but part of the
northwestern corner of the German Empire is also peopled by Dutch. The
territory around Aix-La-Chapelle, although part of the German Empire,
is inhabited by Walloons, a Celtic people who speak a sort of French.
Belgium, small as it is, contains two different types of population,
the Walloons and the Flemish.

The German Empire does not include all of the Germans. A great many of
these are to be found in Austria proper, Styria (sty'ria), and the
northern Tyrol (ty'rol) (western counties of the Austrian Empire),
as well as in the eastern half of Switzerland and the edges of Bohemia.
Germans are also to be found in parts of Hungary; and in the Baltic
provinces of Russia there are over two million of them.

All of the Italians are not in the kingdom of Italy. The Island of
Corsica, which belongs to France, is inhabited by Italians. The
province of Trentino (tren ti'no) (the southern half of the
Austrian Tyrol) is inhabited almost entirely by Italians, as is also
Istria, which includes the cities of Trieste, Pola, and Fiume. Certain
islands off the coast of Dalmatia are also largely Italian in their
population.

The republic of Switzerland is inhabited by French, Italians, and
Germans. Besides the languages of these three nations, a fourth tongue
is spoken there. In the valleys of the southeastern corner of
Switzerland are found people who talk a corruption of the old Latin,
which they call Romaunsch or Romansh.

Austria-Hungary, as has already been said, is a jumble of languages
and nationalities. This empire includes nearly a million Italians in
its southwestern corner, and three million Roumanians in Transylvania.
It has as its subjects in Bosnia and Herzegovina several million
Serbians. In Slavonia (sla vo'ni a), Croatia (cro a'tia),
and Dalmatia (dal ma tia), it has two or three million Slavs,
who are closely related to the Serbians. In the north, its government
rules over several million Czechs (checks) (Bohemians and
Moravians) who strongly desire to have a country of their own. It
controls also two million Slovaks, cousins of the Czechs, who also
would like their independence. In the county of Carniola (car ni
o'la), there are one and a half million Slovenes, another Slavic
people belonging either by themselves or with their cousins, the
Croatians and Serbs.

The German Empire includes several hundred thousand Frenchmen, who
want to get back under French control, a million or two Danes, who
want once more to belong to Denmark, and several million Poles, who
desire to see their country again united.