The shores and islands of the Aegean Sea should belong to Greece.  Greek people have inhabited them for thousands of years.  The Albanians are a separate people, while Montenegro and Bosnia should be joined to Serbia.

Turn back to previous maps of Europe in this volume and you will see that most of the changes that have been made of late years are bringing boundaries nearer where they should be.  You will also note that wherever there have been recent changes contrary to this plan, they have always resulted in more bloodshed.  The partition of Poland, the annexation of Schleswig, Alsace, and Lorraine to Germany, the division of Bulgarian Macedonia between Serbia and Greece, and the seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria are good examples.

Questions for Review

 1.  What countries of Europe have fairly well-marked natural
    boundaries?
 2.  Who are the Walloons?
 3.  Who are the Romansh people?
 4.  To what other people are the Esthonians related?

[Illustration:  The price of the war]

CHAPTER XXV

  The Cost of It All

What war debts mean—­The devastation of farms and villages—­Diseases which travel with war—­The men picked to die first—­The survivors and their children—­The effect on France of Napoleon’s wars—­What Hannibal did to Rome—­What happened to the Franks—­Sweden before and after the wars of Charles XII—­Europe at the close of the Great War

In the meanwhile, all the countries in the war were rapidly rushing toward bankruptcy.  England spent $30,000,000 a day; France, Germany, and Austria nearly as much apiece.  Thus in the course of a year, a debt of $300 was piled upon every man, woman, and child in the British kingdom.  The average family consists of five persons, so that this means a debt of $1500 per family for each year that the war lasted.  The income of the average family in Great Britain is less than $500 in a year, and the amount of money that they can save out of this sum is very small.  Yet the British people are obliged to add this tremendous debt to the already very large amount that they owe, and will have to go on paying interest on it for hundreds of years.

In the same fashion, debts piled up for the peoples of France, Germany, Austria, Russia and all the countries in the war.  In spite of what we have said above of the average income of English families, Great Britain is rich when compared with Austria and Russia.  What is more, Great Britain is practically unscarred, while on the continent great tracts of land which used to be well cultivated farms have been laid waste with reckless abandon.  East Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, part of Hungary, Alsace, Serbia, Bosnia, northern France, south-western Austria-Hungary, and all of Belgium and Roumania, a territory amounting to one-fifth of the whole of Europe, were scarred and burned and devastated.