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Not only was a well-articulated State-system suddenly consigned to the flames, but the ruin threatened to be so general that the balance of power throughout the Far East would be twisted out of shape.
For the Roman statesman, the cause of mistake lay in that character of secret assemblages which the meetings of the Christian community wore, under a State-system as jealous of unauthorized associations as is the State-system of modern France. A Roman of Marcus Aurelius's time and position could not well see the Christians except through the mist of these prejudices.
From the treaties of Westphalia emerged a real state-system in Europe, based on the theory of the essential equality of independent sovereign states, though admitting of the fact that there were Great Powers. Henceforth the public law of Europe was to be made by diplomats and by congresses of ambassadors. Westphalia pointed the new path.
Lastly, the most independent position among the intermediate states was held by the free Greek mercantile cities on the European shore of the Propontis as well as along the whole coast of Asia Minor, and on the islands of the Aegean Sea; they formed, at the same time, the brightest elements in the confused and multifarious picture which was presented by the Hellenic state-system.
Between the years 1100 and 1500 A.D. the state-system of Europe passed through changes amounting in their sum-total to a revolution. But the changes which endured, whether they affected political boundaries or constitutions, came about by slow instalments.
I have enumerated these several causes of weakness in the Florentine State-system, partly because they show how irregularly the Constitution had been formed by the patching and extension of a simple industrial machine to suit the needs of a great commonwealth; partly because it was through these defects that the democracy merged gradually into a despotism.
The first striking difference between the transatlantic idealists and the Old World politicians lies in their different ways of appreciating expeditiousness, on the one hand, and the bases of the European state-system, on the other hand. A statesman when dealing with urgent, especially revolutionary, emergencies should never take his eyes from the clock.
Most of us would probably find the importance of this epoch in its destructive contribution, rather than in that constructive and moral quality which lay under the movement of '89. The Empire was thoroughly shattered. France was left weak, impoverished, humiliated. Spain was finally thrust from among the efficient elements in the European State-system.
The hegemony which, in the sixteenth century, Spain had exercised in the newly established state-system of Europe was now supplanted by that of France. Intellectually, too, Italian leadership yielded to French, until France set the fashion alike in manners, morals, and art.
Her cause must be dissociated from that of the belligerents. To this Take Jonescu replied that it is precisely for the good of Roumania that her interest should not be separated from that of the Entente Powers in the conflict. For on the issue of this conflict depends the state-system of Europe and also the future of Roumania.
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