After 1871 the national movement moved farther east. In 1878 Roumania and Serbia, both national States, were declared sovereign powers independent of Turkey; Bulgaria achieved its recognition as a principality; and Montenegro, a small mountain community, which had never submitted to the Turks, increased its territory and became a recognised European State. In 1908 and 1910 Bulgaria and Montenegro became kingdoms like their neighbours; and in 1913, after the two Balkan Wars, all the five Balkan States--Roumania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro--obtained accession of territory, and the principality of Albania was constituted out of the Albanian portion of the old Turkish dominion. Finally, in quite another region of Europe, Norway, which had been joined in an anomalous union with Sweden since 1814, satisfied her national aspirations unopposed by becoming an independent Constitutional Monarchy in 1905.
All this represents a considerable clearing up of the Central European problem. Nevertheless, much still remains to be done. Poland is as she was in 1814, a dismembered nation. The Czechs of Bohemia, the Roumanians of Transylvania, and the Southern Slavs, not to mention other and smaller subject races, continue to demand their freedom from the joint tyranny of Vienna and Budapest. Russia has not yet solved the problem of Finland, nor England the problem of Ireland. The Turk still occupies Constantinople. And finally, the Prussianised nationalism of Germany has created new questions of nationality in Alsace-Lorraine and Schleswig. All these problems together were as so much tinder ready to take fire directly the spark fell. They were the cause of the "armed peace" of the past forty-three years; they are the cause of the war to-day. The conflagration of 1914 is a proof of a profound dissatisfaction among civilised nations with the existing political structure of the Continent. Alsatians, Poles, Czechs, Finns, Serbo-Croats, Roumanians, and the rest "still struggle for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all." The framework of society does not fit the facts of nationality, and so the framework has gone to pieces. "The map of Europe has to be re-made. That is the key to the present movement."