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In Moscow, Napoleon's position grew worse daily. The cold was already bitter and only the French-born soldiers maintained their morale, but they composed no more than half the force which Napoleon had led into Russia. The remainder was made up of Germans, Swiss, Croats, Lombards, Romanians, Piedmontais, Spaniards and Portuguese.
Hungary, apart from her other troubles, has been pillaged by the Romanians immediately after harvest. Austria will have consumed the whole of her own harvest for 1919 before the end of the calendar year. The figures are almost too overwhelming to carry conviction to our minds; if they were not quite so bad, our effective belief in them might be stronger.
Nor do the advanced members of the club fancy a common label. Slovenia abhors its Balkan pedigree. Croatia megalomaniacally considers itself German. The Czechs and the Slovaks regard their communist elopement a sad aberration as do the Hungarians. The Macedonians are not sure whether they are Serbs, Bulgarians, or Macedonians. The Moldovans wish they were Romanians.
The poor seek to better their position in the world by becoming middle-class. They invest in education, in small businesses, in consumer products, in future generations. The Germans sated and affluent are unlikely to experience a second economic miracle. The Serbs, Albanians, Ukrainians, Poles, or Romanians won't survive without one.
The Romanians secretly wish they were Hungarians. The Austrians are sometimes Germans and sometimes Balkanians. Many Ukrainians and all Belarusians would like to resurrect the evil empire, the USSR. This identity crisis affects the European Union. Never has Europe been more fractured. It is now a continent of four speeds.
Waiting only for some turn of events that would break the grip of the ramshackle systems that suppressed them, Balts, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgars, Romanians, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and a host of other nationalities looked forward eagerly to their day of liberation.
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