Europa

“ No one should flatter himself that he has grasped the elements of the history of western Europe unless he can trace in a clear, if general, way the various stages by which the states which appear now upon the map of Europe—the French republic, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the kingdoms of Italy, Great Britain, and Spain—have grown out of the disorganized Europe of the ninth century. ”

“ One of the most amazing spectacles in history is the expansion of Europe since the sixteenth century. Not resting content with discovering the rest of the world, the European nations with sublime confidence pressed on to divide the new continents among them, to conquer, Christianize, and civilize the natives, and to send out millions of new emigrants to establish beyond the seas a New England, a New France, a New Spain, and a New Netherland. ”

“ Europe and its wonders—society, with its endearing interchanges of affection—that vast panorama of the arts and of civilization, of the trivial and the sublime, of the beautiful and terrible, that is called the world—came vividly into their thoughts. They felt as a man would feel when dazzled all at once by a spectacle, the splendor of which the eyes and the mind can only withstand by degrees. ”

“ Wherever we have gone, we have carried Europe with us; wherever we have gone, we have never got beyond the power of the two influences which, mingling into one, have made Europe all that it has been. The whole of European history is embodied in the formula which couples together the ‘rule of Christ and Cæsar;’ and that joint rule still goes on, in the shape of moral influence, wherever the tongues and the culture of Europe win new realms for themselves in the continents of the western or in the islands of the southern Ocean. ”

“ In contrast with these giant empires, the nation-states of Europe felt themselves out of scale, just as the Italian cities in the sixteenth century must have felt themselves out of scale in comparison with the new nation-states of Spain and France. To achieve the standard of the world-state, to make their own nations the controlling factors in wide dominions which should include territories and populations of varied types, became the ambition of the most powerful European states. A new political ideal had captivated the mind of Europe. ”

“ Europe with its innumerable attractions, its Alps, Appennines and Vesuvius, its castles, palaces, walled towns, fine cities, great battle fields, ancient ruins and a thousand other milestones of civilization, lay before us; but a wide Ocean, and all the dangers and perils of a long sea voyage lay between us and that other--longed for shore. ”

“ It is an organism, if we may say so, resembling a huge body furnished with limbs. Strabo compared Europe to a dragon. The geographers of the period of the revival of letters compared it to a crowned virgin, Spain being the head, France the heart, and England and Italy the hands, holding the sceptre and the orb. Russia, at that time hardly known, is made to do duty for the ample folds of the robe.
The area of Europe is only half that of South America, and one-third of that of Africa, and yet the development of its coast-lines is superior to that of the two continents taken together. ”

“ We see Europe's greatest sin precisely where we found Africa's and Asia's,—in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference, however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than any preceding civilization ever faced. ”

“ Nor yet is it Europe only that feels the tread of their feet and the might of their presence and their influence. They have gone out in commerce, in trades, in corporations, and in missions;—streaming along the banks of both sides of the North American continent, and leaving, as their footprints, on those mighty shores, cities, and states, and commonwealths, and empires; filling the archipelagoes of both the eastern and western hemispheres with their offspring, their laws, their letters, and religion ”

“ You stretch out your gigantic hands a thousandfold every day over the waves; your relations with Europe are not only commercial as with Asia, they are also social, moral, spiritual, intellectual; you take Europe every day by the hand. How then could you believe, that if that hand of Europe, which you grasp every day, remains dirty, you can escape from soiling your own hands? ”

“ Europe, of course, was the only solution. Once in Europe, you need not worry about where to go, for you could go anywhere. Europe was everywhere, and you had your choice of the Swiss mountains, where every breath made another person of you, or the Italian lakes with their glorious scenery, or the English lakes with their literary associations, or Scheveningen and all Holland, or Étretât, or Ostend, or any of those thousands of German baths where you could get over whatever you had, and the children could pick up languages with tutors, and the life was so amusing. ”

“ Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the opportunities of Europe; we like the rest. There’s so much in that, you know. The world seems to me to be hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing in the least where it’s going. ”

“ So that we have been all round Europe and across it over and over again, and after a policy so distinguished, so pre-eminent, so long-continued, and so costly, I think we have a fair right—I have, at least—to ask those who are in favour of it to show us its visible result. Europe is not at this moment, so far as I know, speaking of it broadly, and making allowance for certain improvements in its general civilization, more free politically than it was before. ”

“ Contrast the complexity of Europe, its lack of symmetry, its variety, irregularity, disorder and caprice! The geography of the two continents already foreshadows the differences in their civilizations. On the one hand simplicity and size; on the other a hole-and-corner variety; there immense rivers, endless forests, interminable plains, indefinite repetition of a few broad ideas; here distracting transitions, novelties, surprises, shocks, distinctions in a word, already suggesting Distinction. Even in its physical features America is the land of quantity, while Europe is that of quality. ”

“ Europe as it Should Be Natural boundaries of nations in Europe.—Peoples outside of the nations with whom they belong.—The mixture of peoples in Austria-Hungary, and Russia.—The British Isles.—The Balkan states.—Recent changes in the map.—The wrongs done by mighty nations upon their weak neighbors bring no happiness.
We have several times shown you, in the course of this little history, maps drawn by kings and marked off by diplomacy and through bloodshed. Let us now examine a map of Europe divided according to the race and language of its various peoples. ”

“ You rightly say Europe, for that is a geographical expression. There is no State in Europe; I exclude your own country, which belongs to every division of the globe, and is fast becoming more commercial than political, and I exclude Russia, for she is essentially oriental, and her future will be entirely the East. ”

“ THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE From its political and historical importance Europe has always been regarded as one of the great divisions of the earth’s surface though it is not a separate and independent mass. It is, rather, a great peninsula of what is sometimes called Eurasia—i.e. the continent of Europe and Asia combined—that extends westward its many arms between the Arctic Ocean on the north, the Atlantic on the west, and the Mediterranean Sea on the south. ”

“ Europe, the most central of all continents, in relation to the great land-mass of the earth, and also the one most equally removed from the middle point of the great water-mass, touches the whole remaining world at the greatest number of points, and this, in conjunction with her remarkably broken coast-line, so favorable to the purposes of navigation, have given her her place of command, and have assigned to England her evident role of mistress of the seas. ”

“ We must bear in mind the one decisive contrast between Europe and America, that there society is cut adrift from the traditions and influence of an ancient civilisation. The nations of Western Europe are so bound to each other by their origin, by their close intercourse, and the similarity of social interests and character, that a comprehensive public opinion extends over their boundaries, and sustains in each the habits, ideas, and constitutions which are common to all. ”

“ The history of Europe, and indeed the experience of the entire human race, have taught them the immense value of a mighty continental organization, such as our Union has hitherto established. Solemnly impressed with this great lesson of human history, they will never consent to see their country broken up into discordant fragments. ”

“ Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future. ”

“ GROWTH OF THE NATIONS THE NEW NATIONALISM The map of western Europe, that is, of Europe west of the great Russian plain and the Balkan peninsula, shows this part of the continent at present divided into no less than thirteen separate and independent nations. ”

“ They are akin, fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements; it is Europe, the ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither? ”

“ The next generation will witness the division of the Continent of Europe into three or four great sections, distinguished by some name or other, perhaps by that of Empire which seems to tickle the ears of languid nations: Germany, with its vast unity, will be one: Russia, with its gigantic extent, another ”

“ All that makes Europe Europe, all that parts off Europe from Africa and Asia, has been carried into America and Australia and Africa itself. The growth of this new Europe, no less than the changes of the old, is an essential part of European geography. ♦Barbarian dominion.♦ It is otherwise with territories, great or small, which have been occupied by England and other European powers merely for military or commercial purposes. Forts, factories, or empires, on barbarian soil, where no new European nation is likely ever to grow up, are not cases of true colonization ”

“ They built, planted, cultivated Europe; all the while saving the treasures of learning, knowledge, human justice, politics, and art. We shall ever recognize in Europe the places where those radiant centres once were. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, when you are at home, you will sense that this is the situation for many people in Europe today. They are asking themselves, "What should Europe be?" "Why do we need Europe?" "What holds Europe together in its innermost being?" ”

“ The greatness of Europe has lain in the width of the stage on which she has played her part, the strength of the foundations on which she has builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than that of other days and races. ”

“ Europe lies between these extremes. Limited in area, diversified in surface, and deeply indented in its coast-line, it has experienced all the advantages which a continent needs for its development, and for that historical greatness which Europe has won for itself. ”

“ What we call Europe is the geographic territory of the Occident, enlightened by Greek culture, inspired by the powerful heritage of the Roman Empire, its territory enlarged by Germanic colonization. Whether it was the German emperors fighting back invasions from the East on the Unstrut River in 933 or on the Lechfeld in 955 or others pushing back Africa from Spain over a period of many years, it was always a struggle of a developing Europe against a profoundly alien outside world. ”

“ We have then traced the shiftings of the powers which lay wholly or partly beyond the bounds of either Empire, the great Slavonic mainland, the Scandinavian and the Iberian peninsulas, ending with that which is geographically the most isolated land of all, the other world of Britain. We have seen too how Europe may be said to have spread herself beyond her geographical limits in the foundation of new European states beyond the Ocean. ”

“ Throughout this long epoch western Europe is to be viewed as a peninsula, surrounded on all sides by the sea and stretching westward from the great land mass of eastern Europe and of Asia, which was the chief theatre of evolution both of animal and human life. ”

“ The manifold and neglected productions of this extraordinary continent require only to be developed, and when the useful arts of Europe are introduced here, ample recompense will attend the benevolent undertaking, natural history will be much enlarged, and mankind be greatly benefited. The claims of humanity, the distinguished part it has taken in an unnatural and much to be deplored commerce, loudly unite with a wise policy, in one impressive appeal to the feelings of the more refined inhabitants of Europe, and to none more than those of Englishmen. ”

“ It is obviously no part of our duty to review in detail the complicated history of Europe in the eighteenth century. We are concerned with the course of events on the Continent only in so far as they affected the tourist. But a clear understanding of a few fundamental facts is imperative. Most important is it to bear in mind that participation by the common people in the work of government was relatively slight in nearly every country of the Continent, and only to a moderate degree permitted in England. ”