Excerpt from Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 2 Allotted Space of an afternoon hour, with some one Of the thousand problems which lie before us to-day. Accordingly I have put together a few modest notes on one Of the main topics with which the Peace Conference hasto deal - that Of the right and the wrong way Of drawing State boundaries. It has been my duty Of late to be very busy with maps and Old historical frontiers hence came the impulse - perhaps a presumptuous one - which leads me to read this short paper on a subject which is at present engaging all the keenest brains Of Europe and America. Let us at any rate see what were the methods of the past, and endeavour to learn from them something that may be of use in determining the methods Of the present. What were the leading principles of the statesmen Of elder times It is hardly necessary to say in I919 that Of all the principles on which partition treaties have been drawn up, that Of 'compensations - so dear to the diplo matists of the eighteenth century, - is at once the most iniquitous and the most fruitful Of future troubles. We may or we may not believe in the Balance Of Power as a practical ideal. But to hold that because one State has received an increase Of wealth or territory, all its neigh bours or rivals are entitled to similar augmentation, pre supposes that there are always available lands or sources Of wealth that can be pared or cut away like cheeses, with out any moral hindrance. 'compensations' always meant in practice the mangling or the extinction Of small (or weak and misgoverned) neighbours for the benefit Of the strong. It may sometimes be the case that small States have continued to exist for no very Obvious reason - they may not represent a national unit, or even a rational geo graphical unit; they may have been called into existence by a lawyerlike partition of heritages, or have been created to serve as an appanage or endowment for some forgotten personage or dynasty. Such is Luxemburg to day, such were Parma or Lucca the day before yesterday. Nevertheless the principle that States without a raz'son. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.