of paramountcy in China. This is in addition to such confirmation in the Lansing-Ishii agreement. Such being the case, it appears that the better policy of the Chinese delegates would have been to curry favor with Japan and form an alliance for mutual defense than to curry favor with Anglo-Americans, who, as Mr. C. T. Wang has said, "left China in the lurch." Other parts of the treaty of peace stipulate for a few blessings to China, outside of the prevalent policy of right of conquest. The astronomical instruments seized by Germany in 1900 are to be restored to China. It may be borne in mind that a few years ago the German government made an offer to the same effect. It is well to have it done now, as showing that the peace conference has done something for China. The new treaty of peace also stipulates that the Chinese need not pay any more Boxer indemnity to Germany. What the Chinese have asked for, one of the desiderata, is that the Boxer indemnities due to all countries be relinquished. All that can be expected is that the allied and associated governments now agree that Germany must comply with China's wishes. It is also stated by Baron Makino that Japan restores to China, in return for economic rights to go to Japan, complete sovereignty in Shantung. It was never known before that Chinese sovereignty in Shantung had ceased or that it had been claimed by Japan. Japan merely pretends to give to Chinese that which was already China's and not Japan's. On the mere matter of justice, as comprehended by ordinary minds, and so by 400,000,000 of Chinese, it looks as if it had no place in the decisions reached at the Peace Conference concerning China, one of the Allies arrayed against Germany. All in all, the Great War has worked havoc to China, and the agents have been those of our own household, and not those who are barbaric and conquered. THE PROBLEM OF THE NEW AND SMALL NATIONAL-STATES IN CENTRAL AND By Harry E. Barnes, of the Department of History and International Relations, Clark University I. INTRODUCTION Never before in history has a peace congress been faced with such extensive problems in the matter of reconstructing the political map of Europe. Even the treaties of Westphalia, Utrecht and Vienna seem petty in their territorial redistributions as compared with the changes which the present conference must bring about, regardless of the nature or the justice of the details of the settlement. In view of the immense importance of the problems involved in the settlement of the conflicting national claims, for both the present and the future, it has occurred to the writer that a brief but comprehensive historical and ethnographic survey of the contested districts might be of value in serving as the background against which to estimate in a critical manner the results of the work of the peace conference. While it is obvious that an article covering so many problems in so short a space will lack utterly in originality, it may at least possess the merit of being relatively comprehensive and complete as regards the major aspects of the question. As far as it has been humanly possible, the writer has kept his own opinions wholly in restraint and has endeavored to base all assertions upon evidence of the highest reliablity and impartiality. Upon matters of detail, which may be contested, no opinions have been expressed, for our information is often in such cases relatively incomplete and the exact facts can be discovered only through a local investigation by a field commission of experts.1 II. THE OPPRESSED NATIONS ON THE EVE OF THE WAR In the following brief survey of the European nations not completely united and emancipated, one is justified in omitting any discussion of the case of the Irish, the French in Alsace-Lorraine, the Danes in Schleswig, or the Italians of the Irredenta district, as either too well known to demand any special consideration or as questions concerning the solution of which there can be no debate as to the larger issues involved. Attention may be centered upon that confused field of thwarted national aspirations and conflicting national claims which extends from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia on the north to Crete on the south, and from the Erz Gebirge on the west to the delta of the Danube on the east. The northernmost of these oppressed nations are the Finns of Finland Esthonia and northern Livonia. Orig 1 For a survey of the historical development of the problems of nationality and nationalism, which would serve as the logical introduction to this article, the reader may be referred to the article on "Nationalism: Its Historical Development," in the forthcoming edition of the Encyclopedia Americana. 2 The citing of authorities for every statement in this brief sketch of the submerged nations would not only be pedantic and wearisome, but quite impossible within the space limitations imposed. A general note of indebtedness must suffice. For all matters concerning racial distribution I have relied upon W. Z. Ripley's Race of Europe, the most brilliant American contribution to European ethnography, always keeping in mind his convincing demonstration in Chapter II of the lack of any definite correlation between race, language and nationality. On the question of language distribution the chief authority has been Leon Dominian's, The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe. The guides chosen in the field of the general problems of nationality in this district have been A. J. Toynbee's Nationality and the War, Stoddard and Frank, The Stake of the War and the several detailed works of R. W. Seton-Watson, as well as his brilliant summary of these problems in the chapters he contributed to the coöperative volume on The War and Democracy. The admirable chapter by James Bryce on "Nationality" in his Essays and Addresses in Wartime. has also been very helpful, as have the many valuable and scholarly articles in The New Europe, The Journal of Race Development, The Current History Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The National Geographic Magazine and other leading contemporary journals. The brief historical sketches are inally constituting the stock which inhabited most of the great plain of Russia, they have been forced north against the Lapps by the successive invasions of Slavs from the south. They were converted to Christianity by Bishop Henry, an English missionary, in the middle of the twelfth century. In the fourteenth century Finland was annexed to Sweden and about 1350 Denmark, which had controlled Esthonia, surrendered it to the Teutonic Knights. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the vigorous Swedish monarch, Gustavus Adolphus, obtained for Sweden both Esthonia and Livonia. While the Swedes were able to control the Finns politically for a considerable period, they were never able to impose their culture upon their Finnish subjects beyond inducing them to accept Swedish Protestantism. In 1721, by the Treaty of Nystad, Peter the Great obtained for Russia Esthonia, Livonia and part of Finland, and by 1809 Russia had secured complete political control of all the Finnish peoples. For some ninety years thereafter the Finns enjoyed practical cultural autonomy, but in 1899 the advocates of the Russification policy of Pan-Slavism induced Nicholas II to extend these measures to Finland. The Finns, however, took advantage of the weakness of the czar in the revolution of 1905 and compelled him to restore the Finnish constitution and to consent to the many liberal political reforms proposed by the Finns. A revival of Russification policy by the Russian bureaucracy in 1913-14 was terminated by the outbreak of the World War, but was probably instrumental in inducing the Finns to declare their independence from Russia in December, 1915. From the racial standpoint Ripley, the leading authority on the racial distribution of Europe, holds that the Finns are a branch of that primordial Nordic stock which inhabited the region now known as drawn mainly from the recent and scholarly manual on medieval history by Lynn Thorndike and from the excellent surveys of modern history in the works of Hayes, Hazen, Robinson and Beard, Andrews, Seignobos, Fyffe and Schapiro, as well as special articles in historical and critical journals. Details regarding population and religion have been obtained from the above mentioned works and from the Statesman's Year Book and articles in recent and authoritative encyclopedias. Russia and from which have been differentiated the Teutonic, Letto-Lithuanian and Finnish types. The Nordics were pressed north by the invasions of the Alpine Slavs from the southwest. The Finns, having been massed against the extremely broadheaded Lapps in the north and intermarried with them, have acquired a tendency towards broadheadedness which was quite unknown in the original stock and is practically absent among the Finns of the Baltic provinces of Esthonia and Livonia who have not been brought into proximity with the Lapps. In recent times there have been three languages used in Finland, the Swedish in commercial and international relations and to a considerable degree in culture and religion, the Russian as the official speech, and the Finnish as the national language. The Finns number some three and a half millions of people, of whom about two and a half millions live in Finland. In 1910 an authoritative estimate put the proportion of Finnish-speaking peoples at 88 per cent and at least that proportion are of a definite Finnish stock. In religion the Finns are overwhelmingly Lutheran. The strength of the national bond between the Finns of Finland and their kinsmen in the Baltic provinces can only be determined when the confusion and conflicting claims growing out of the present war have subsided. Living next to the Finns of Esthonia are the Letts and the Lithuanians who inhabit the Baltic provinces of southern Livonia and Courland and their hinterland. The Letts dwell in the Baltic coast region and the Lithuanians in the adjacent inland districts. While the Letts and Lithuanians are physically identical and linguistically and culturally closed allied, their history has been at least slightly different. That this variation began only after they had been pushed up towards the Baltic by the oncoming Slavs cannot be doubted. The conquest and colonization of the Letts by the Teutonic Knights was begun in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Letts followed the Order into an acceptance of Lutheranism, but after the Order was dissolved in 1526 the Letts were later partitioned between Poland and Sweden. It was not long, however, |