Unfortunately the realisation of Roumanian unity inevitably involves the inclusion in the new State of considerable Magyar and Saxon minorities, amounting in all to not less than 600,000 inhabitants.  There are no means of overcoming the hard facts of geography, but it is essential that Roumania, while incorporating Magyar and Saxon islets in the Roumanian racial sea, should guarantee the existing institutions of the two races, and the fullest possible linguistic freedom in church,[1] school, and press.  The Saxons in particular have preserved their identity for over seven centuries in this little corner of the Carpathians, and have contributed far more than their share to the cause of culture and progress in Hungary.  It would be a crying irony of fate if they were allowed to perish in the twentieth century at the hands of those who have pledged themselves to vindicate the rights of smaller nationalities.

[Footnote 1:  The Szekel (Magyar) districts of Transylvania are mainly Calvinist, the Saxons Lutheran to a man, while the Roumanians are divided between the Orthodox and the Roumanian Uniate Churches.  Transylvania is also the centre of an interesting sect of Unitarians, who are for the most part Magyar by race.]

It must not be forgotten that the dream of Roumanian Unity can only be fully realised if Russia restores at least a portion of Bessarabia, which contains not less than a million and a quarter Roumanians.  A victorious Russia might well afford such a concession; for it would involve no strategic dangers and would, especially if conveyed in the graceful form of a wedding dowry, triumphantly efface the last traces of Russophobe feeling that still linger in Roumania.  But it would be absurd to expect such magnanimity on the part of Russia unless Roumania’s action is prompt and vigorous.  The abstract theory of nationality must be reinforced by the more practical argument of sterling services rendered to a common cause.

Sec.8. Can the Dual Monarchy be replaced?—­The result of applying the principle of nationality to the Southern Slavs and Roumanians would thus be to create two powerful national States at the expense of the Habsburg Monarchy; and here it is well to repeat that such drastic territorial changes are only possible if the military power of Austria suffers an almost complete eclipse.  But even the loss of Galicia, Bukovina, Transylvania, the Trentino, and the Serbo-Croat provinces would still leave Austria-Hungary a State of very considerable area, with a population of 32 millions.  There is no reason why such a State should not continue to exist, provided that it retained the necessary access to the sea at Trieste and Pola, and this would involve the exclusion of the Slovenes from the new Jugo-Slav State.  Under such circumstances it would be possible to reconstruct the State on a federal basis, with five main racial units, the Germans, the Czechs and Slovaks, the Magyars, the Slovenes, and the Italians.  Certain unimportant racial