ABSTRACT
National boundaries drawn to correspond with frontiers of language or supposed affinities of race bear little relation to the political facts, the economic and military necessities of European life. The distribution of the nations of Europe over the comparatively small region between the Ural mountains and the Atlantic and the Mediterranean has never coincided exactly with areas of geographical self-sufficiency. The truth is that Europe has few physical features which deserve the name of ‘natural frontiers.’ The most important political acts of the European Powers, great and small, were done on the assumption that Europe was not self-sufficing. The raw materials of industry were brought in ships to European ports; ever-increasing numbers of Europeans were kept alive on imported foodstuffs. The liberal idealists assumed, after the habit of thought common and almost peculiar to the early nineteenth century, that the next stage in the development of a European polity would be an age of peace and goodwill among nations.
