Reconstruction Among the Small Nations of Middle Europe

Abstract

THE French Revolution gave birth to two political principlesthe principle of nationality and the principle of democracy. As long as the French revolutionary armies remained true to those two political principles, wherever they went throughout Europe they were received with acclaim and enthusiasm, but when they repudiated those two political principles they were rejected by the peoples of Europe. They did repudiate them when the Revolution fell under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte, and from a democratic revolution it was transformed into an autocratic imperialism. Bonaparte was destroyed because the peoples of Europe insisted upon the validity of the very principle to which the French Revolution had given birth, namely, the principle of nationality. It was the aroused national spirit of Spain, Germany, Russia and England that overthrew the greatest military autocrat of his day.