George Leonard Knapp

“ The little nations of Europe are the outposts of our own liberty. We must see that their own freedom is made secure. It will be the hardest task ever set for modern diplomacy, but it can be accomplished—because it must. Our own fate is bound up with the fate of the little nations whose very names were unfamiliar to us a few short years ago, and as we deal with them, so will the future deal with our own nation. ”

“ In a word, the zone of small nations was likewise the slave zone, the prison house of Europe; and the war has assumed the character of a crusade to knock off the fetters and let the oppressed go free. ”

“ Then came the great war, the attempt to strangle Serbia in the east, the brutal bludgeoning of Belgium in the west; and America gained a new understanding of the importance of the neglected lesser peoples. The Bohemian uprisings and mutinies gave us a new understanding of their extent. It became clear now that here was a little nation—little, yet three times as populous as America in 1776—no part of which was free, an entire people bound to a system and a dynasty which they loathed, and which repaid their loathing with wholesale massacre. ”