Nations; and it is the Allies more especially whom this war is forcing to apply themselves to its solution.
The nations of this danger-zone have been free, but deprived of their independence; some are highly cultivated and their extent is considerable, they are the greatest among the small nations. Finally, it is necessary to emphasize the striking fact, that three of these nations are dismembered in different states; the Serbo-Croats are divided into four states and seven administrative bodies; the Poles into three states; the Czechs and Slovaks into two states; this dismemberment explains the special significance of the Serbo—Croatian, Polish and Bohemian questions.
II.
5.—We are always speaking of smaller and greater, of small and great nations—what then is the proper definition of a small and of a great nation? What makes a nation great? What is the problem of a small nation and how does such a problem come to exist?
The very notion of greatness and smallness is relative and correlative; the more so, if the number of the population, or the extent of the territory of a state or a nation is taken as the principle of the classification.
The most numerous population is in Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the Russians and Germans are in this sense the greatest nations; the English, French, Italians and Spaniards (we are not considering the nations outside Europe) are smaller. Some sociologists will perhaps put the Russians, Germans and English as one class (eighty-six—forty-five millions), the French, Italians, and Spaniards (forty—twenty millions) in a middle class. A third category would be formed by nations under twenty millions, say the Poles, Roumanians, Serbo-Croats and
