Chapter IV: Part 4

The use of Czech, Slovak, Polish, Ruthenian, Serb, Croat, and Slovene for centuries largely as rural languages, with German to a considerable extent a lingua franca for educated intercourse, and Magyar imposed in and around Hungary by an aristocracy, hindered the growth of the Slavonic languages until the nineteenth century, and in that century it has been especially Czech, Polish, and Croat that have pushed forward towards the status of languages of civilization. Ruthenian remains in a sense the most backward member of the group, so much so that its claims have been conspicuously disregarded by the makers of the recent treaties. The Ruthenes west of the Carpathians inhabit a poor region which is to be included in Czechoslovakia with a measure of local autonomy. Ruthenes in what was once Galicia are largely under Polish proprietors, and that territory is to be incorporated with Poland, while the Ruthenes of the Bukovina and the west bank of the Dniester are now included in the enormously enlarged Rumania. It may be that under the new conditions these peoples will settle into the framework created by the treaties, a framework based to a considerable extent upon physical geography. But, on the other hand, if the Ukraine should become strong and the Ruthenian language develop, there {87} is undoubtedly the possibility of the growth of an idea of 'Ruthenia Irredenta' which may bring difficulties later on. At present Ruthenes might well use Russian as their language.

This seems the most appropriate place for a brief catalogue of the peoples of East-Central and Eastern Europe whose languages do not belong to the Indo-European family, though many have already been mentioned. The Lapps moving between the high moorlands of Scandinavia and the Kola peninsula speak a language belonging to the Arctic-Asiatic group and are nomad herdsmen of the reindeer; their numbers are small, but they provide a curious background to Scandinavian life; and a certain amount of intermarriage has caused some Swedes to carry their features. Forms of Finnish speech, all more or less akin, are widespread from Finland to the Urals, and the nationalist and democratic movements of the last century have strengthened the speech of the Finlanders proper at the expense of Swedish, the old language of external culture relations in West Finland, and of Russian which the Tsarist government sought to impose. Esth is closely related to Finnish, and under the new conditions of nominal independence may maintain itself by association with Finnish in spite of poverty of land and people. Livonian is related to Esth and still survives in parts of Latvia. Various groups of Finns, retaining their languages, still remain distinct in the government of Perm and near Kazan and Saratov. The Tatar groups on the grassland and desert-border in South-east Russia so obviously belong to Asia that they may be omitted from this survey. Like so many mountain regions the Caucasus forms a refuge for ancient racial types, old customs, and old forms of speech, but a survey of these would take us far from European problems.

Bulgar has been mentioned as a language with a Tatar element, though it has been very largely Slavonized, but this fate has not overcome the Magyar tongue, which is the distinctive feature of the erstwhile ruling caste in Hungary and Transylvania. The language {88} is used both by the Magyars of Hungary and by the Szeklers, who are a people of closely related origins, in parts of Transylvania. The people are almost completely Europeanized in their physique, but as they secured some degree of national cohesion and of close attachment to their soil at an early stage of history, their language has lived on, and of late its use has been fostered by political ambition; it has become a mark of a ruling caste. It may now become the rallying ground of aspirations for national recovery after the collapse of 1918 and the severities of the recent treaty. The Powers of Europe in framing the new boundaries have at least suggested a campaign of linguistic nationalism to the Magyars, for the reduced Hungary has considerable numbers of people speaking its language who are now subjects of the states around its borders. There has been no incentive to outsiders to learn Magyar, and it remains isolated in Europe, useless beyond its homeland and unlikely to contribute much to other languages.

9

_Some Phases of Evolution of European Life before the
Industrial Revolution_

We have now glanced around all the chief language groups in Europe, and in the course of this rapid survey have noted that whereas the peoples of Romance and Teutonic speech have built up the organization known as the nation-state, in most cases on a basis of linguistic unity, the peoples of the Slavonic regions, with the partial exception of Bohemia, have hardly achieved this. The intermingling of peoples and the difference of tradition between town and country over wide areas are in part the cause of this, but it has also been suggested that, in the east of Europe, we have still surviving an earlier stage of the process of settlement in the cleared forest than farther west, while in the south-east {89} we note the persistence of elements still hardly settled at all. It will therefore repay us if we now try to make a rapid survey of the evolution of the process of settlement with its variants in different regions and of the indications of persistence of different stages of the general process in various parts, chiefly of Eastern Europe.

All the evidence we have goes to show that after the Würm Ice Age the first European peoples were hunters apparently spreading up from the western Mediterranean basin. To them must be added the hunters who seem to have spread along the loess westwards. These two groups were bearers of the Aurignacian and Solutrean cultures of anthropologists. Hunting has remained a feature of European life ever since, but time has brought too many changes in the hunter's life and position to make it profitable to discuss possibilities of social survivals from so long ago. The partial regrowth of the glaciers (Bühl period) modified the hunting life; and associated with this cold-cycle civilization (Magdalenian Age of the anthropologists) was the great development of pictorial and sculptural art which has so astonished the world since its rediscovery. As the cold passed away, this time definitively, the sinking of the west converted Britain and Ireland into islands, and so brought maritime influences far into the Continent, with the result that forests spread far and wide with wolf, bear, boar, wild cats, and birds of prey to dispute them for a time with man. The zone of loess and some wind-swept or calcareous areas near the sea or on the hills remained relatively clear of forests and dry enough for occupation by man, and on these areas men practised the art of herding animals, moving from pasture to pasture, as circumstances required or, increasingly, with the cycle of the seasons. There were possibly already cultivators beginning to grow barley as a supplement to herding or hunting. We should, however, be careful not to argue that the beginning of cultivation necessarily implies {90} settling down in one place; the Vlachs often sow and reap a barley crop without making more than a very temporary sojourn.

The development of civilization was not purely and simply a development of herding from hunting, nor was the herding purely analogous in social features to that of the tribe on the grasslands. The development was accompanied by differentiation, and it seems clear that herding was very early carried on with much greater restriction of movement than on the grass-lands and desert borders of Asia. There was quite early a tendency to a regular cycle of seasonal change (_transhumance_) rather than to broad wandering, and our territorial instinct is very old.

With this statement properly goes another to the effect that some kind of cultivation became a supplement to the herder's life almost at the outset, and we may further surmise that some part of the population would soon remain near the more cultivable lands to guard them. Thus restriction of seasonal wandering to a part of the population is another very old feature of life, one judges, in many, though not in all parts of Europe. In the Val d'Anniviers, so clearly marked that territorial disputes could hardly arise, and at the same time freed from ravages of wild beasts, practically the whole population still moves up and down with the change of the seasons, though it has permanent buildings at each of its four stations. Reference has already been made to the Vlach wanderers of the Balkan Peninsula, and one might also speak of the Lapps, whose movements along the moorlands of Scandinavia were formerly a source of frontier trouble between Sweden and Norway.

With the development of the phase of civilization called Neolithic in Europe goes the making of pottery, which implies tendencies to live in one place at least for a time, the utilizing of particular types of stone from particular spots suggesting a long-continued exploitation of the special source, the making of very definite settlements on the Swiss lakes, and the developing of {91} crop-growing and weaving and so on by their inhabitants. Both settlement and trade seem indicated, but it is most probable that many of the lake-dwellers also used the spring pastures on the hills. The distribution of the great stone monuments and several other matters indicate the growth of long-distance sea trade about the end of the Neolithic Age and in the period when the use of copper and bronze was spreading round the coasts of Europe; and a recently discovered Mesopotamian tablet dated 2800 B.C. gives facts about tribute paid to Babylon from tin lands beyond the Great Sea (Spain). Development of settlement must have continued in the Bronze Age, still mainly on the naturally open lands rather than in the cleared forest, and it is a notable fact that, save in a very few areas with special explanations available, the regions of megaliths do not show examples of the kind of village, with strips once owned in common, which is so characteristic of regions of cleared forest, though not the only type there.

The hardening of bronze was one of the most important facts affecting man's advance in the Bronze Age, and we have abundant indications (see papers in archaeological and anthropological journals by H. J. E. Peake) of man's ability to attack the forest seriously ere bronze gave place to iron. The attack on the forest was undoubtedly redoubled when man acquired iron weapons, and so the Early Iron Age witnessed extensive settlement in forest clearings in Europe north of the Alps, and with that went increase of corn-growing. South of the Alps the warming of the climate after the Ice Age had helped to reduce the forest, especially in view of the large stretches of limestone and the sharp slopes which have always hindered regrowth of forest once destroyed.

The Mediterranean region, by reason of the long summer drought, has become with the establishment of its present climate less fit for pasturing of animals and more suited to the goat than {92} to cattle or sheep. As a result of this the destructive goat has reduced the forests and hindered their regrowth. The difficulty of stock-raising encouraged efforts towards cultivation, which is certainly very old in the Mediterranean region, and has passed through several phases that need elucidation. It seems probable that barley cultivation was established very early, and bee and fruit culture were gradually gathered around it, the olive proving invaluable as a substitute for animal fat. But ere the olive could be grown in quantity there had to be a good deal of organization, for it does not begin to bear till it is almost eight years old, and is in full bearing when it is nearing its thirtieth year. To wait for the olive, therefore, meant possession of some reserves and assurance of food supplies, such as imported grain, ere much land could be turned into olive groves. War and unsettlement worked against olive culture, for the risks of destruction of an olive grove were then serious, and the consequences disastrous.

If, however, olive culture was, on the one hand, the result of a measure of peace and prosperity, it was also in most cases the presage of further growth of prosperity; the harvest was reasonably assured and immensely valuable, especially as it could be transported far and wide by sea. The relation of olive culture to the classical period in Greece is well known. We seem to have grounds for associating city growth in the Mediterranean with trade and the spread of large-scale olive culture as well as with the question of defence.

Both north and south of the Alps the dependence of man on cereals after he gave up his milk and flesh diet seems to have made him desire salt, and the Early Iron Age settlements of Gaul are closely related to sources of salt, while the Mediterranean coast-lands had ample opportunities of salt getting. The pig had been domesticated by this time, and the salting of bacon and fish gave a reserve for the winter, but it has been claimed that salt was also in request for forms of porridge, &c. In thinking of the early {93} settlements we should remember that north of the Alps there was perpetual danger lurking in the dark forest, while in the south there were the rough goatherds of the mountains.

In the last millennium before Christ the worsening of the Scandinavian climate drove peoples southwards towards Gaul, and thus led to a growth of hill-fortress towns, of which the supreme examples were Alesia, Gergovia, and Bibracte, and from Gaul the building of these fortress towns spread, with sea commerce, up the west coast of Britain, where Tre'r Ceiri on Yr Eifl in Carnarvonshire furnishes us with one of the best examples of this type of settlement of the Iron Age or Romano-British times.

For the purposes of this sketch it is not necessary to go into great detail about the Roman efforts, but we should note that within the bounds of their Empire they spread wheat cultivation, road communications, and their legal system, and that along with this seems to have gone a cheapening of iron. All these changes helped to knit the people to the soil, to make neighbourhood take the place of kinship as a basis of association, to root a language in the people's hearts. It is the men who 'lacte et carne vivunt', as Caesar puts it, who organize on a kinship basis, move from place to place, and lack the written records which do so much for language fixation.

We thus see in Gaul villages of various types in regions of differing history and opportunity, but pre-Roman fortress towns and Roman cities between them networking the country and related to roads built or adapted by the conquering engineers, and we note the implanting of linguistic features that not all the shocks of later disruptions have contrived to uproot. In Britain again are villages of varying types, pre-Roman or Romano-British fortress towns, chiefly on the west coast headlands, Roman cities for the most part speedily ruined, and Roman roads. The difference in the vitality of the cities is to be correlated with the difference as to language; the Roman elements in our language {94} are for the most part the result of reintroduction later on. The Roman element in Welsh is usually allowed to be important.

If the spread of the rural Franks and of the Anglo-Saxons into the erstwhile Roman domains led to the submergence of the old cities and to much village foundation, there is at any rate a growing opinion that it did not destroy all continuity in either Gaul or Britain, that a good deal in our rural life goes back, as above hinted, to the late Bronze Age. The system of the manor under which the villagers give service to a military protector is too easily mixed up with the village system in discussions. The manor, with complex origins, is characteristic of post-Roman days of movement and strife. The civilizing element promoting agriculture and the law is furnished by the Church, which, with the centuries, spread its work over the Rhine, beyond the bounds of the Empire, right away to the limits of Europe-of-the-Sea, that is of the lands near Baltic or Mediterranean, or west of a north-south line near the east ends of those seas.

With the settling down which heralded the Middle Ages after the Dark Centuries of movement and war, we thus find the following broad facts. In the Mediterranean, where fruit culture and the city-state and trade were already old, that type of life reasserted itself even though the division of life on the north and the south sides (characteristic long before in Phoenician times) of the sea made grave difficulties.

In Spain the conflict between Islam and Christians inhibited the development of both and delayed everything. In both cases the military organization was unhealthily important, and the Muslim of the south kept much of their old social scheme based on the tribe, whereas they should have been adapting themselves to the rich land of Andalusia which they held. The result of the inhibitions made the Muslim far more of a misfit in the Andalusian garden than were the Christians on the heights of northern Spain, where seasonal movement of flocks and herds (_transhumance_) is still {95} very important. The Muslim of the south thus gradually declined both in value and in influence, and though in earlier times they had been far more cultured than their Christian foemen, they had dropped far behind in organization before their subjugation in the fifteenth century. One should nevertheless bear in mind possible valuable survivals from the Muslim in matters of detail or of individual work. In Gaul cultivation had spread and had improved under monastic leadership; markets were growing under protection of the cathedrals, and were becoming the town centres that have persisted as the highly characteristic market towns of the Paris basin. After years of rivalry with Frankish dialects the old Roman heritage of language triumphed with some compromises, and became the _langue d'oïl_, the speech of the Paris basin and upper Burgundy, and the progenitor of standard modern French. In Britain the rural element seems to have predominated until Gaulish influences again became strong in the eleventh century.

In the lands beyond the Rhine the abbeys were promoting agriculture, with towns growing some time after the corresponding phases were carried through in Gaul, and with the power of the war lord very strongly marked. In the Slavonic lands the phases of settlement and town growth are later still with the church and the war lord in close association, as is exemplified both by the Teutonic Knights in East Prussia and by the inclusion of the cathedral in the castle precincts in Prague and Cracow.

Growth of market towns and of communications, still largely mule tracks no doubt, was leading to fixation of language as discussed in an earlier chapter. One may mention, incidentally, that old mule tracks persist on lands in old-fashioned corners like the Channel Islands, where they are very numerous, and may form rings around the demesnes of the more important houses. The growth of markets was bringing neighbours together, weakening dialectal differences, and so helping to fuse local groups into {96} nations on a basis of common language and common tradition expressed in growing poetry and prose in the evolving languages. Against these influences must be set that of the Roman heritage of universalism so vigorously represented by the Church, which the Holy Roman Empire tried so hard to imitate.

The poverty of the villagers and their weakness in face of the dangers of the forest and its wanderers, outlaws, and adventurers is an outstanding fact of the development of the next phase. There was insufficient freedom for agricultural experiment save to some extent in the monastery gardens, and insufficient knowledge for useful discussion, so cultivation methods remained in the grip of custom, with the modification due to the spread of the three-field system. Even the fallows could not keep the land up to a proper grade of fertility.

So traditional cultivation on lands owned or worked in common by the villagers was ever under threat of disruption, and doubtless the severities of climate and plague in the fourteenth century contributed their quota to the disintegration of the old mode of life. The complaint of diminished fertility made itself heard far and wide, and the end of the Middle Ages witnessed the breakdown of the old village system in the west. Trade and the voyages of discovery furnished supplementary sources of wealth, and the beginnings of larger industry grew out of this. In East-Central Europe change was delayed partly because there was still much forest land to be adapted, but largely because of the absorption of the people in struggles against Turk and Tatar. Even there, however, the old village system decayed in the end, and it is only in central Russia that it has maintained itself among the Slavonic peoples, who, almost to this day, from one point of view, may be looked upon as colonists spreading in the forests and their borders in Muscovy.

Of the lands north of the Mediterranean, France was most favoured agriculturally, and owed most to the Roman heritage {97} of unity, and here grew _la grande nation_, while farther east national growth was delayed largely by attempts at an imperial unity, worked up as a device for defence against the Turk and Tatar. National growth in isolated or semi-isolated lands like the English plain, Holland, Sweden, and the central Scottish lowland was also a feature, while the diverse outlooks of the diverse coasts of Ireland and the weakness of that country's interior made the Green Isle the tragic type of the island which is so generally disunited.

Villagers with common lands gave place, with many a struggle, to landholding by proprietors with labourers under them, and if in Britain the labourer became landless and so fitted himself to become machine-fodder in the Industrial Revolution, in France he struggled to keep his link with the sacred soil of that sunny land, and ultimately won his position of ownership in the Revolution of the end of the eighteenth century. This change made itself felt as far as the Rhine, beyond which the peasant still remained subject to heavy seigniorial dues. It is claimed that during the recent war there has been a great move towards peasant proprietorship or something akin to it in the lands near the eastern border of Europe-of-the-Sea, carrying eastward, as it were, the work done one hundred years ago in France.

Facts about decline of the old village communities are legion, and cannot even be listed here, but attention may be drawn to the spread of root crops (for winter food for man and beast) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This helped materially to break down traditionalism, for it interfered with the old right of the villagers to free pasture of all the village cattle all over the stubble left after harvest: the lands with root crops had to remain enclosed. Of the new wealth brought in by individual proprietorship and root crops and other agricultural experiments, we have much evidence in the farmhouse buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; those of the years 1720-60 or {98} so seem specially characteristic in Guernsey, Channel Islands. But the problem of fertility was not solved, even though leguminous crops were ploughed in and the chemical decomposition of the soil was speeded up by liming. Trade and long sea voyages loomed larger in the lives of the European peoples and industry grew ever larger, so that the urban element gained immensely in numbers and influence. We thus have a picture of the preface, as it were, to the Industrial Revolution, but another series of changes had been working to the same end.

The spread of the habit of sea trade from the Mediterranean to North-west Europe led to changes in the design and construction of ships. By the middle of the seventeenth century old difficulties about disease due to stinking bilge-water had largely been overcome, and ships were being built with better proportions for speed and manoeuvring, and in the early eighteenth century came the full adaptation of the fore-and-aft sail and the use of mahogany and other hard woods from the tropics for ship furniture, and so for house furniture too. With all this went increased size and speed of ships and ability to tack effectively, and so, broadly, to follow a course even if winds were variable. With all this new power and also the development of armaments, Europe found herself in a position to exploit the other parts of the earth inhabited by other races less well equipped. They gradually, nay almost suddenly, became the producers of raw materials, food-stuffs, and fertilizers for the vastly increasing populations of industrial Europe, which began to teem in the manufacturing cities when coal and steam machinery were added to the European equipment.

Along with this industrial development has gone the nationalist revival to which reference has already been made in several places (pp. 23, 33, 35, 49, 62-3), a cultural movement which in the nineteenth century became politically embittered, and which through its imperialistic outgrowths in England, Germany, France, and Russia has been a main factor of the recent war.

{99}

10

_Aspects of Modern Europe_

The Industrial Revolution supervened in England first. Her landless labourers, her rather uncertain harvests, her severance from the Roman tradition at the religious schism, her growth of sea-power and trade, as well as the invention of James Watt, all contributed to this end. The necessary coal was found in places mostly remote from the great centres of English tradition, and industry grew where the civic heritage was weak and the lands, even the common lands of the market towns, had been enclosed by proprietors, who also often replaced the monks of the Middle Ages as landlords without attempting to fulfil their other functions. The growth of our huge industrial agglomerates on private land with an oligarchic government of landowners, and, since 1830, factory owners and their associates, has naturally had as a result the policy of non-interference, so that crowding has been permitted and even encouraged, and the slum, which is now deteriorating the quality of the population, is the inevitable result, bringing in its train practically all the most serious social problems of our day, the stunting of growth and judgement, the craving for excitement and emotion as a substitute for thought, the aesthetic degradation which carries with it the loss of keenness on one's work. To compensate for this we have only got a vast accumulation of profits in the form of mobile capital, so much of which has been blown into space in 1914-18. The accumulation of capital, it should be appreciated, would have been far less had it not been that industrial primacy and the primacy of the carrying trade happened, as above suggested, to be closely associated in one and the same people.

From England the Revolution has spread along the coal belt through northern France and Belgium, Germany, Bohemia, and {100} Poland to Russia, with characteristic modifications from region to region, according to the local circumstances and social heritage of the people affected. But before proceeding to note these differences it is important to realize one general change which has many aspects. In the old village with its law based on the custom of the neighbourhood, each had his or her place unless cast out: one's status was all-important and not easily changed. In England the labourer became landless, drifted to the factories, made a contract for his labour, and so changed the organization of society from an organization based on status to one based on contract. That change is still going on, and the remnants of old ideas of status have struggled hard against such measures as death duties, super-tax, and the rest, which all tend in the direction of making labour, however disguised, the great medium of exchange. This big alteration from status to contract has affected the whole of industrial Europe and has spread thence as a ferment of change far beyond our continent, but in Europe the change has hardly anywhere gone so far as it has in Britain.

In France coal was far less abundant than it was in England, and the struggle for the soil went in favour of the peasantry rather than of the plutocracy as with us. Both these facts, added to those of the sunny climate, have made the Industrial Revolution far more feeble in France. The antiquity and continuity of life in the market towns has led to the persistence of small industries, often with a very long-standing personal link between master and men; hence the difficulty of the impersonality of industrial organization from which we suffer so badly in Britain is less general in France, though they also have the limited company to contend with. The wealth of the country for so many centuries has encouraged high-class--one might say, luxurious--manufacture, and jewellery, porcelain, and silk are characteristic products.

The persistence of special quality lines in the cloth trade {101} is another feature, but on the whole the story of French industry has been one of half-hearted effort only. The Treaty of Versailles puts an enormous amount of iron ore into the French Customs Union, so that France becomes by far the greatest European producer of iron minerals, though her coal supply is deficient. It remains to be seen whether the French people will develop more industrial activity in consequence of this, and also whether they will go in for increased use of the hydro-electric power they have within their territory.

The Flemings have an old-established industrial and commercial tradition much less divorced from peasant life than in our country. Their Walloon neighbours, on the other hand, have entered into industrialism recently, and their country has changed suddenly from a backward rural area to a very busy manufacturing one, using large quantities of imported raw material. The people were cultivators and stock-raisers by long tradition, and they have tried to keep up this activity in some measure, while a protective customs duty on meat keeps up the stock-raising business. Another traditional (in fact racial) feature here is the genius for co-operation, and this works itself out in widespread insurance schemes maintained by the people.

Among the Germans the background of industrial development was very different from that which we have noted in Britain. Where the river valleys leave the hills for the northern plain are old cities of great dignity and fame, and though they were somewhat decadent after the decay of the Hanse, they were strong enough to keep their common lands and their tradition of city government from the Middle Ages. Coal was found along this zone, and it became industrialized, but the new movement had to respect the cities, which grew often on public land. The old city of Nürnberg developed industrial refinements on the basis of craftsmanship, which owed a great deal to the old business of distributing goods from the East brought up from Venice to its {102} mart. There was thus neither on the one hand the same general growth of slums as in Britain, nor on the other the accumulation of immense profits from slum development to be used as liquid capital for speculative purposes. Moreover, the industrial effort in Germany was contemporaneous with the effort to make Germany a real nation-state, and each movement influenced the other. Much thought was given to the question of the national balance-sheet, and industry was made to help agriculture by conversion of waste products into fertilizers. Thus, though Germany was experiencing the same cityward drift of people as Britain, her agriculture remained in a far stronger position than ours, and with that went the probability of better maintenance of the quality of the people. The wasting of resources on war, the distrust created by aggressive intrigues, the loss of territory and minerals, and the loss of health of the people through the blockade, all imply changes in the situation of the German people, the consequences of which it is difficult to foresee.

German industry utilized Polish labour in large quantities, and was much concerned with the westward-flowing Slavonic stream which was said to be altering the character of the German people. On the other hand, a German stream of organization flowed eastward and south-eastward, and the industrial fever made great strides in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Bohemia, in Austria proper, in Upper Silesia, and in Poland. In Bohemia it emphasized the differences between German and Slavonic elements of the people; in Upper Silesia and in Poland the Germans were mainly found in the towns, especially in the leader class, and often difference of language and sentiment between masters and men was a very undesirable feature.

Polish industrial centres were correspondingly notorious for their bad social conditions before the war.

The industrial fever spread to Russia, and of its entry into that country we get a useful sketch in Kropotkin's _Fields, Factories, {103} and Workshops_. Here was a country with marked seasonal cycles, and often at first manufacture was made a winter occupation, and was hoped by some to offer a means of rescuing many of the people from some of the evils of the severe Russian winter. In the Ukraine Poles seem to have done a good deal of the industrial organization, and it was natural that German experience should carry great influence. It was said that the co-operative, even communist, traditions of the people accounted for much in the form of organization of industry, the guilds or artels being a distinctive feature. Needless to say that, with transport ill developed, education neglected, and self-government impossible under the Tsar, Russian industry was of doubtful efficiency and social conditions bad. One must, however, remember that industry was only beginning.

In addition to the main zone of industry which we have now followed along the coal zone from Britain to Russia, the attempt was made near small coalfields elsewhere, and even at times away from coal, to glean some of the wealth industry brought. About 1895, however, hydro-electric power became transmissible over long distances and thus much more applicable. This change created new regions of industry in Scandinavia and around the Alps. Both Sweden and Norway use this power, and it has made an immense difference, especially to Norway. In the case of Norway the weakness of class distinctions has led to the careful organization of good social conditions, in spite of serious difficulties because of the very limited sites available. In Switzerland, South Germany, and Italy, up to 1914, the use of hydro-electric power was creating a valuable community of interest and problems that was drawing the whole region together, while Switzerland was becoming strong economically in a way undreamed of before. Post-war developments will need to be watched with care and breadth of view. Hydro-electric power was being developed in pre-war France, and will probably be a great help to that country {104} if greater care is taken on the social side than was taken in the early stages of the movement. It has been claimed that a hydro-electric power system could be developed all around the Iberian plateau, and something is said to have been done recently towards its development. In the British Isles only a few spots can give enough power to make an installation an economic success in the present state of knowledge, so that in a water-power age Britain would have a minor position. It seems doubtful at present whether this form of power will become anything more than an accessory. It is noteworthy that in the Alpine region it helps a population fundamentally inclined to patient detailed work to build up an industry in fine electrical machinery partly developed from an old watchmaking tradition.

The utilization of tidal power has been debated, and a scheme for the Severn estuary, as well as one for the north coast of Brittany, has been elaborated. Should this line of development be followed in the future, Britain's position and the power of the tides at several points would assist greatly.

For the present, however, the fashionable power is oil, of which, so far as is known, Britain has only a very little, and in which the whole of Western Europe is also poor. But oil is rather easily transportable, and Western Europe's powers of transport are being used to exploit sources of oil in such places as are not already in the sphere of influence of the United States of America. However this may be disguised, it is none the less an indication of Europe's increasing dependence on other regions for what her industry needs. Large amounts of raw products now come from outside Europe, and if power also comes from afar, Europe's advantages will be restricted to her climate in its relation to efficiency, her capital, her tradition of skill which she has endangered by the enormous amount of specialization developed among her workers, and her ownership and control of transport by sea. On this last point it is noteworthy that the great advance made by the {105} United States of America does not seem to be fully maintaining itself.

For the immediate future the incalculable water-power available in the monsoon lands, the immense and easily workable deposits of coal in Shansi (North China), the coal and oil available in and near the United States of America, the huge water-power that might be utilized in several parts of America, the possibilities of tidal power in many regions, and the production of power-alcohol from equatorial vegetation, are all interesting factors of a situation the precariousness of which for the thickly populated areas of Western Europe is obvious to all. With their organization based upon skill and patience, the peoples of Central Europe may well go on developing, perhaps even exploiting, the Russian and Turanian lands on their eastern flank, as these latter do not seem likely to become industrial for some time. On the other hand, a Sino-Japanese development of industry on a large scale is always possible, and, if wisely managed, should have the benefit of the skill, taste, and honesty of the Chinese merchant as well as of the skilful industry of the Chinese workman, whose frugality and cheerfulness would make him a formidable competitor. The signs of the times are thus in favour of the departure of industrial primacy from Europe, however much political effort may contrive to delay the change.

Before following out this thought it will be best to mention some of the collateral developments in European and other lands more indirectly affected by industrialism. The huge factory populations need food, and the imported food supply of Europe is an enormous problem. Cereals and some fruits may be carried with ease, but the factory hands and especially the miners and furnacemen need meat, and though meat can be carried in refrigerators or alive, yet imported meat suffers through transport. While therefore Australia, Argentina, and other regions are very busy supplying stock products, there is a good deal of stock-raising {106} and dairy work to be done in Europe. Holland and Denmark have specialized in this matter, and the latter made herself a centre for dairy produce from Holland and Lithuania and even Russia before 1914. With political and social peace Ireland would undoubtedly develop in this way. Several hill regions, like Central France and parts of Switzerland, were also busy stock-raising, and are likely to prosper in this direction if European industry maintains itself.

In Switzerland the high ledge-pastures or alps have a remarkable growth of hay in spring after the snow melts, and this gives advantages over our British high lands. For their better utilization it would be necessary to improve the breeds of grasses, and important experiments for this purpose are in progress in Wales. In the Highlands of Scotland the population is decreasing fast, and thus Britain is losing a most valuable element in her population, an element trained to endure hardness and traditionally interested in serious thought.

The large financial resources of industrial populations and the thriftlessness so inevitably developed under the circumstances of their life in its present anarchic phase, further lead to a demand for luxury foods, flowers, and so on, and Holland and the Channel Islands are notable providers of these extras. The increase of fine machinery and other factors make it fairly certain that olive oil will have a good market for a long time, even if pea-nut oil is used alongside of it. Olive oil and fruits offer opportunities for the Mediterranean.

Thus practically every part of Europe is directly or indirectly brought into the process of industrial development, and all are increasingly dependent on the world outside, however much the German people may have tried to maintain their agriculture.

This dependence and the precariousness of Europe's industrial position, added to the fact that with an effort and some amount of goodwill the peoples of Europe could grow to understand one {107} another, especially in view of their common debt to the Roman heritage, make it unthinkable that what is practically civil war can be tolerated much longer in Europe. Before 1914 the Labour Movement was clearly working towards the weakening of the idea of the nation-state and its sovereignty, but the events of 1914 showed that the movement had not yet gained a real hold on men's imagination. The new League of Nations movement is an evidence of development of the same line of thought among the thinkers of the Continent, and is slowly gathering momentum through the creation of institutions with laws for their guidance, and the promise of the growth of a body of lawyers as interested to maintain those institutions as the lawyers of the nation-states have been to maintain that form of organization. The League has had to take up the question of the relations of Europe to distant lands, and has stood for a principle of trusteeship, the fate of which is trembling in the balance. The more hopeful Europeans see signs of the growth of co-operation, and find indications of it even as between France and Germany. Britain is torn between the attitudes of solidarity with Europe and of aloofness from Europe and association with distant lands of English speech. Perhaps the improvement of the League of Nations scheme or its transformation after discussions with the leaders of the United States of America will give a means to put an end to this dilemma by reconciling both aims.

Therein lies one of the greatest hopes for the salvaging of civilization, though Britain's other problem of rescuing her population from degenerative tendencies due to industrialism is as clamant for solution if the world's peace is to develop. That industry should spread, that every people should maintain an agricultural background, and that the peoples of Europe should find means to co-operate in matters of imports from the tropics, transport arrangements, and labour conditions, must be the hope of all who think of the future seriously, even if this means the {108} discarding of ambitions of power which in less critical times disguised themselves under the cloak of patriotism. This does not mean the destruction of patriotism, but rather its ennoblement into a passion for the well-being and the health of future generations of the people, for the enrichment of each heritage of language, literature, tradition, and art by active effort, and for the growth of that toleration which is the accompaniment of self-control and its attendant liberty and peace.

[NOTE.--The writer wishes to express his most sincere thanks to his friends and fellow workers in the fields of research concerned, especially to Miss R. M. Fleming and Mr. H. J. E. Peake, and the late Professor V. Giuffrida-Ruggeri.]

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Among the most important general reference works one must mention the chief encyclopaedias, Reclus's _Géographie universelle_ (also in English), the _International Geography_, the _Dictionnaire de Géographie universelle_ (V. de S. Martin). Ratzel's _Anthropogeographie_ and Brunhes's _La Géographie humaine_ and _Géographie humaine de la France_ should also be mentioned here. Bowman, _The New World_, has a fine collection of maps relating to the political resettlement of Europe.

On Race Questions the standard book is W. Z. Ripley's famous work, _The Races of Europe_, supplemented by G. Sergi's _Europa_ in Italian and by a number of papers by Keith, Parsons, Peake, Fleure, and others in the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_ during the last ten years. Dr. Haddon and Mrs. Quiggin have issued a valuable revision of Keane's _Man, Past and Present_. Déchelette's _Archéologie_ is the standard work in its field and may be supplemented from Burkitt's _Prehistory_ and Macalister's _Archaeology_.

On Languages and their Distribution the student may begin by consulting A. Meillet's _Les Langues dans l'Europe nouvelle_ and L. Dominian on _Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe_. From these books a bibliography can be compiled to suit the student's purpose.

The evolution of social conditions in Europe is so complex that it has not as yet received synthetic treatment, but some tentative efforts are useful if read critically. Among them one may note the files of _La Science sociale_ and Demolins's _Comment la route crée le type social_, Guizot's _Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe_, Kropotkin's _Mutual Aid_, his _Fields, Factories, and Workshops_, and his _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_, as well as Jenks's works, such as the little _History of Politics_, and Geddes's _Cities in Evolution_.

It is impossible to give an adequate list of books on special regions, but the following will be found of value for various parts of the Continent involved in the recent treaties:

P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Géographie de la France_; P. Vidal de la Blache, _La France de l'Est_; R. Blanchard, _La Flandre_; H. J. Mackinder, _The Rhine_; _Atlas de Finlande_; P. Leroy Beaulieu, _The Empire of the Tsars_; A. B. Boswell, _Poland and the Poles_; J. Cvijic, _La Péninsule balkanique_; M. I. Newbigin, _Geographical Aspects of Balkan Problems_; M. E. Durham, {110} _The Burden of the Balkans_; E. de Martonne, _La Valachie_; A. Philippson, _Das Mittelmeergebiet_; D. G. Hogarth, _The Nearer East_.

Further guidance to books on regions of Europe will be found in the valuable handbooks issued by the British Government in two series, i.e. the handbooks issued by the Intelligence Department of the Admiralty, and the handbooks issued by the Historical Section of the Foreign Office.

The reader interested in some of the problems may wish to consult J. Fairgrieve's _Geography and World-Power_, H. J. Mackinder's _Democratic Ideals and Reality_, H. J. Fleure's _Human Geography in Western Europe_, and C. B. Fawcett's _Frontiers_.

The standard journals have issued important articles by Hinks, Lyde, Newbigin, and others on the rearranged boundaries of European states, and among books concerned with the new Europe one may mention J. M. Keynes, _Economic Consequences of the Peace_; I. Bowman, _The New World_; M. I. Newbigin, _Aftermath_; and H. J. Fleure, _The Treaty Settlement in Europe_.

The new _Times Atlas_ is invaluable, and may be supplemented on the historical side by use of the well-known historical atlases of F. Schrader, Poole, Ramsay Muir, Diercke, and others. Several valuable maps occur only in Vidal de la Blache, _Atlas général_.

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