The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

sylvania, and may hope that it would be more easy to recover it from Roumania than the Slav provinces torn away from Hungary. But here the Southern Slavs may play a noble part as friends of both Roumania and Hungary, and bring about reconciliation and co-operation. South-Eastern Europe will not be completed until Roumania joins it. Thus constituted in a loose economic and defensive alliance, Bohemia, Hungary, Roumania and the Southern Slav State would possess in the talents of their populations and the natural wealth of their soil everything necessary for progress and independence. Mutually depending upon each other more than any other nations in Europe, they ought sooner than other nations to develop new international sociability. Their future life must be the embodiment of the truth expressed by Solov’ev that “no nation can live in itself, by itself and for itself.”” They are to be the school of tolerance and mutual aid among nations, and the forerunners of the United States of Europe.

Their material progress, freedom and independence would in this way be amply guaranteed. But it would be a rather poor ideal if they were not to be animated by some higher moral idea. Materially, economically, and politically, SouthEastern Europe will be complete if it includes Bohemia, Hungary, Roumania and the Southern Slav State, but its moral entity will not be perfected unless all the other smaller neighbours join

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