existing system of rapacious militarism and economic exploitation. Let the smaller nations be free, do not interfere, leave them alone, and these drawbacks will soon disappear.
But small nations have also some advantages over greater nations; both drawbacks and advantages are relative.
A smaller nation develops a certain many-sidedness; every individual force and talent is valued and used, labour and effort and indeed the whole working system are intensified. It is a well known fact that the lands of small farmers produce relatively much more than do large estates. The whole nation is, so to speak, well-kneaded. Palacký, our great Bohemian historian, exhorted his nation to treble and even to increase ten-fold its labours; small nations are indeed nations of workers. In a smaller community there is a more intensive inter-communion of men, ideas and feelings; people know each other, they can more easily be united, though of course this intimacy also has its drawbacks, Dr. Fisher, the Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University, in his essay on the value of small states, brings out the fact that democracy, the direct participation of the people in the government, can be better developed in small states. He adduces many instances; and it was certainly this idea that inspired Rousseau's proposal to divide the big states into small communities. Sociologists and historians know that the administrative machinery of the modern state grew out of the small administration of cities. The great cities in big states are a remedy against indefinite expansion. I will not conceal the fact that small nations also can be decoyed by tempting imperialist ideals; notable instances are the Magyars, and perhaps the Bulgarians. The poet Kollar, the great apostle of humanity and national reciprocity, rightly observed that small nations can be very intolerant.
The German Imperialists often tell us that small nations cannot produce great men; great men require, we are told, a great environment, the communion of many and great
