7
The Peoples on the Eastern Border of
Europe-of-the-Sea
We have now surveyed the linguistic groups of Romance, Celtic, and Teutonic speech, and may note that among those of Celtic speech we find the most marked survivals of antiquity in social features. Among the Romance- and Teutonic-speaking peoples we find that there has long been a tendency towards closer accord between linguistic and political groupings, and that now, with some exceptions it is true, the political units are also linguistic ones. The regions of Romance and Teutonic speech are the great regions of organization of the State; they have a stable scheme of administration and revenue, a settled legal order, an approach to representative government based upon a franchise; in short, they are the regions of the patriotic nation-state. The exceptions have been noted here and there in the above sketch. Alsace is Alemannic in speech but French in attachment in many respects. Switzerland is a unique combination of units belonging to three language groups. Flanders, or the area of Flemish speech, is partly in France and partly in Belgium. Flanders and Alsace are two of the most serious of European problems, and even if they be mitigated by political foresight, the dangers from them are not likely to diminish definitively unless the 'nation-state' can be made to occupy less of the political horizon.
When we turn our attention eastwards from the lands of Romance and Teutonic to those of Slavonic and Baltic languages, we find that, until recently at all events, there was no accord between the political and the linguistic units, and that, even now, the accord is fragmentary enough. We find also that in place of the principle of 'one region, one language', which applies broadly in the west, there is nearly always a minority language alongside the majority one. The 1914-18 crisis has shown how very unstable were the political units of the last fifty years, and the 'nation-state', that is a settled administration worthy of the name of 'state' combined with a social unit based upon tradition, has only just begun its career in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, in this eastern part of Europe we find languages of non-European character in Finland, Esthonia, Hungary, and Turkey, and to some extent in Bulgaria. This is then the zone of Euro-Asiatic contacts and interpenetrations, and these contacts have determined a great deal of the characteristics of the social order in this part of the Continent.
While the above statement is broadly true, it must, nevertheless, be stated that history records considerable and persistent, if partially unsuccessful, efforts to develop the nation-state in those western Slavonic lands which felt the influence of Rome either through the Empire or through the Church, while the contagion of nineteenth-century nationalism has spread far and wide.
During the period of close settlement and fixation of language and of growth of administration in the west there were periods of pressure Europewards from Asia, illustrated by the coming of Szeklers and Magyars, and the formation of the Magyar kingdom of Hungary, by the advance of the Bulgars, since practically Slavonized, by the pressure of the Mongols on Russia, and by the spread of the Turks. The spread of Finn or Finno-Ugrian peoples westward along the north is probably older, and has been more gradual and less organized.
Apart from this northern Finn-route and subordinate Finn-ways (Perm, Kazan, Samara) to the Volga, the westward roads have been along the loess, either that of the Polish platform or that of Wallachia and the Hungarian plain, and the defence of the west against pressure along these ways gathered chiefly around Vienna and around Poland (Cracow in earlier times and Warsaw later on). Austria, as we now know it, was once the Ostmark, the eastern march or frontier domain of the German-speaking peoples, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire which has just collapsed after a long process of decay was the fruition of the organization that defended Western Europe from Asiatic pressure on the south-east. It was obviously not a nation-state, for besides its German and Magyar elements it included under its control the many Slavonic and partially Slavonic people of the hill frame around the middle Danube. Its day of greatness coincided with the holding up and the beginning of retreat of the Turkish pressure; its subsequent history is one of clever diplomacy aiming at maintaining a power created for a purpose that was now no more. The improbability of any renewal of effective pressure from Asia on the now so highly armed west of Europe did away with the raison d'être of Vienna as a city of camp and court, and it will require a higher development of European unity to make Vienna take its definitive place as the nerve centre of the Continent's land-communications. For the present, therefore, the size and magnificence of Vienna seem to lack justification, and there is manifest distress. A far smaller city would do admirably for the capital of the small area henceforward to be called Austria, and the past traditions of Vienna expressed in palaces and luxuries are hardly what would naturally grow up around a modern railway centre. When, however, we realize the need for increased unity of Europe we cannot but feel how valuable the University Museums and Libraries of Vienna might be were they internationally developed so as to give Europe a natural culture-centre second only to Paris. The suggestion to make Vienna the capital of the League of Nations revealed an over-emphasis on the military and diplomatic tradition of Vienna, an aspect of that city's life which it might be perilous to redevelop.
But as we are concerned with the peoples of Europe rather than with the states, this slight mention of Vienna must suffice, and we may proceed to deal with the linguistic groups of Europe east of the Teutonic and Romance areas in the way in which we have touched upon those of the west.
The Baltic or Letto-Lithuanian languages have already been mentioned, and little more need be said save that they have long felt the double pressure of Teutonic and Slavonic influences and have absorbed words from both. Apart from them, the languages spoken are largely of the Slavonic family, and it is frequently said that the Slavonic languages are less distinct from one another than are the languages of the Romance and the Teutonic families. They have been less influenced by written forms than have the latter; oral tradition has counted for more, and differences have consequently not become so fixed as farther west. There is a certain amount of dispute as to the primary home of Slavonic speech, but it seems increasingly likely that it arose as an adaptation of older forms of Indo-European languages by the people of the Carpathian arc and the Polish platform on its north-eastern flank, and that it spread thence especially in the post-Roman centuries. Schlüter has found reason to believe in a considerable movement from the hills to the valleys and plains in those centuries, and with this we may connect progress of forest clearings and spread of Slav languages, especially towards Muscovy. Most of the regions of Slav speech came into touch with Christianity first of all through Constantinople, but in the case of the more westerly ones the influence of the Roman Church outweighed that of its eastern sister before many centuries had passed, and the Roman principles spread eastward as far as the bounds of what has been called above 'Europe-of-the-Sea'.