results, this dominating war-aim seems rather to have been lost sight of. Mr. Lloyd George again on another occasion, said in the House of Commons that "self-determination was one of the principles for which we entered the war … a principle from which we have never departed since the beginning of the war." This, too, seems an aim that for some reason the victorious nations have not quite realized; indeed in some cases, as in Ireland, for example, there has been no great alacrity shown about trying to realize it. Viscount Bryce said that the war sprang from the strife of races and religions in the Balkan countries, and from the violence done to the sentiment of nationality in Alsace-Lorraine which made France the ally of Russia. But the fact is that France became the ally of Russia on the basis of hard cash, and since the Russian Revolution, she has been a bit out of luck by way of getting her money back. Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons, 3 August, 1914 said:
If I am asked what we are fighting for, I reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation. … Secondly we are fighting … to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith.
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