emerge some Pan-American Entente united, not under the ægis of a paramount Power, but by a free and equal relationship. Continental Europe, again, which has so often warded off the threatened dominion or hegemony of a single Power at the price of fear, armaments, and recurrent war, may, sooner than we realise, establish some kind of permanent European Union by making 'private war' a European (if not yet an international) offence. At least, the common desire of the continental European peoples-victors, vanquished, and neutrals alike-for security and disarmament has been made so intense by their recent experiences of invasion and blockade that it seems unlikely that it will fail to embody itself in some permanent political form.

Finally there is the case of Soviet Russia, which in certain respects is the most curious and significant of all. It was the present masters of Russia who gave the term 'Self-Determination' its new currency when they came to power in 1917. Their readiness to grant SelfDetermination to the subject-peoples of the former Russian Empire was evinced in the negotiation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and as a matter of fact all the subject-peoples along the European border of Russia have subsequently obtained Self-Determination in the extreme form of complete political independence-partly by force but also with the Soviet Government's consent. At the same time, the doctrine of Self-Determination has been put into practice in a still more striking way throughout the immense territories over which the Moscow Government has maintained or recovered control. The present Union of Socialist Soviet Republics is a hierarchy of constitutionally autonomous units, more elaborately organised than any federation previously known to history. On paper, at any rate, even the smallest and most rudimentary of the various peoples which inhabit the Soviet territory have been constituted into autonomous districts-territorial units so minute and bounded by such sinuous Frontiers (drawn in the closest possible conformity with the actual distribution of nationalities and languages) that they could not exist for a day as sovereign independent states. Here there seems to be another illustration of the truth that qualified forms of Self-Determination are attainable, within some wider

political framework, by peoples which could never hope to exercise Self-Determination on the terms of complete independence, so that-paradoxical though it may sound -the same tendency appears to be at work, in this matter, in the British Commonwealth and in the U.S.S.R. Of course it will be pointed out that the official constitution of the Soviet Union does not correspond to the realities of political life under Soviet rule, and that the repression of the Georgian movement for Self-Determination shows what is the real policy of Bolshevik Russia in this matter. That may be true, yet it must be remembered that the Georgian demand which the Bolsheviks are resisting by force is a claim to achieve Self-Determination in the form of complete independence. Even in Soviet Georgia, and in the other states members of the Transcaucasian Federal Republic, the administrative boundaries have been elaborately redrawn so as to correspond as closely as possible with national boundaries; the individuality of smaller peoples has been given expression through local autonomies; and the employment of the national languages has been introduced into the local administrations. Even if the whole of this elaborate system of devolution is really being 'run,' through violence or chicane, by the agents of a committee of dictators seated at Moscow in the centre of the spider's web, the administrative reorganisation of Russia is none the less a revolutionary event of great, and probably of permanent, political importance. The standing policy of the Czardom was to take the offensive against the Self-Determination of Peoples by deliberately making the administrative boundaries of the Empire cut across the boundaries of language and nationality, and by imposing the use of the Russian language upon the non-Russian subjects of the Empire in the administrative services and in education. That policy of the old autocracy of Petersburg has been reversed from top to bottom by the new autocracy of Moscow, and this is a change which is unlikely to be undone, because it is in accordance with a spirit of the times which is manifesting itself throughout the world. No doubt the Bolsheviks have set up this hierarchy of autonomies for their own purposes, and not because the solution of the problem of Self-Determination is the object which they have most at heart. Never

theless, it is almost safe to prophesy that federalism, not communism, will be the enduring feature of their handiwork in Russia; and that, whatever régime eventually takes the place of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, it will handle the problem of Self-Determination on the basis of devolution which the Bolsheviks have laid down.

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Having now indicated the lines on which we may look forward to seeing this formidable problem solved progressively, not only in the British Commonwealth, but also, perhaps, in Latin America, in Continental Europe, and even in Soviet Russia, we may conclude with a concrete illustration of the way in which a particular case has been settled on these lines, peacefully and to the mutual benefit and satisfaction of all parties concerned, since the conclusion of the War.

The Åland Islands are a little archipelago in the Baltic Sea, inhabited by a Swedish population and situated between Sweden and Finland, but rather nearer to the coast of the latter country. Before the year 1809, when Finland had been under the sovereignty of the Swedish Crown, the Åland Islands had formed part of that Crown's Finnish Dominions, and when in 1809 Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia, the Åland Islands were transferred together with the Finnish mainland. From 1809 to 1917, the islands were included in the Grand Duchy of Finland under the sovereignty of the Czar; but in the latter year, when the Finns took advantage of the Russian Revolution in order to exercise Self-Determination by setting up a sovereign and independent Finnish state, the Åland Islanders claimed to exercise the same right by seceding from Finland and merging themselves politically in Sweden, to which they desired to belong on account of their nationality, which was Swedish and not Finnish. Thereafter it was established by more than one unofficial but apparently trustworthy plebiscite that separation from Finland and union with Sweden was desired by an overwhelming majority of the Islanders, and the Swedish Government supported their claim to exercise Self-Determination, whereas the Finnish Government, as was to be expected, denied their right to transfer

their allegiance without its own consent, which it refused to give. In consequence, relations between Finland and Sweden became so strained that eventually the British Government exercised its friendly right under Article XI of the Covenant of the League of Nations by formally bringing the question of the Åland Islands to the notice of the Council; and, after certain negotiations, the Council, with the consent of both the Finnish and the Swedish Government, took cognizance of the case and referred the question to a Commission of three members. The Commissioners were chosen, no doubt by design, from nations which, in the past, had had special experience of the main problems which the controversy over the Åland Islands involved. One of them was an American citizen, and might therefore be expected to understand the implications of a claim to exercise a right of secession, while the other two were a Belgian and a Swiss, who would both be familiar with the problems of carrying on a free and democratic government in a small country containing more than one nationality. Eventually the Commission reported against the claim of the Åland Islanders to exercise Self-Determination in the extreme form of transferring their allegiance from Finland to another state, but only on condition that Finland granted them autonomy on terms which were specified in considerable detail in the report and which were so far-reaching that they included almost everything which Self-Determination could imply short of sovereign independence. In the unlikely event of Finland rejecting these conditions, and in that event only, the Commission recommended that the Islanders should be authorised to secure Self-Determination by other (i.e. more drastic) means. This report, which was presented on Sept. 20, 1920, and was adopted by the Council, provided the basis for a satisfactory settlement of the dispute. Finland accepted all the conditions, embodied them in a fundamental law, and consented that this law should be placed under the guarantee of the League; Sweden felt that her honour was satisfied now that she had secured for her kinsmen the substance of what they desired; and the Islanders reconciled themselves to the solution when they saw that the

Finnish and Swedish Governments were in agreement over it. Thus the principles of Sovereignty and SelfDetermination were reconciled without a breach of the peace and without the sacrifice of any of the substantial interests involved; and although the incident attracted little attention at the time-partly just because it was settled without a catastrophe and therefore did not disturb the general life of the world—it established a precedent of great interest and value in respect of the problem under review, so that this article could not close more aptly than with the following quotation from the League of Nations Commission's Report:

To concede to minorities, either of language or religion, or to any fractions of a population the right of withdrawing from the community to which they belong, because it is their wish or their good pleasure, would be to destroy order and stability within states and to inaugurate anarchy in international life; it would be to uphold a theory incompatible with the very idea of the state as a territorial and political unity. . . . The separation of a minority from the state of which it forms a part, and its incorporation in another state, can only be considered as an altogether exceptional solution, a last resort when the state lacks either the will or the power to enact and apply just and effective guarantees.'

ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE.