loss of millions of lives in China from the wide-sweeping floods of the Hoangho is a passing episode, forgotten as soon as the mighty stream is re-embanked and the flooded plains reclaimed.  The Civil War in the United States involved a temporary diminution of population and check to progress, but no lasting national weakness because no loss of territory.  But the expulsion of the American Indians from their well-stocked hunting grounds in the Mississippi Valley and Atlantic plain to more restricted and barren lands in the far West, and the withdrawal of the Australian natives from the fertile coasts to the desert interior have meant racial renunciation of the sources of life.

Hence a people who are conquered and dislodged from their territory, as were the ancient Britons by the Saxons, the Slavs from the land between the Elbe and the Niemen by the mediaeval Germans, and the Kaffirs in South Africa by the Dutch and English, the Ainos from Hondo by the Japanese, and the whole original Alpine race by the later coming Teutons from the fertile valleys and plains into the more barren highlands of western Europe, have little or no chance of regaining their own.  When conquest results not in dislodgement, but only in the subjection of an undisturbed native population to a new ruling class, the vanquished retain their hold, only slightly impaired, perhaps, upon their strength-giving fields, recover themselves, and sooner or later conquer their conquerors either by absorption or revolution.  This was the history of ancient Egypt with its Shepherd Kings, of England with its Norman lords, of Mexico and Peru with their Spanish victors.

[Sidenote:  Weakness of small states.]

A large area throws around all the life forms which it supports the protection of its mere distances, which facilitate defense in competition with other forms, render attack difficult, and afford room for retreat under pursuit.  On the other hand, the small area is easily compassed by the invaders, and its inhabitants soon brought to bay.  Since there is a general correspondence between size of area and number of inhabitants, where physical conditions and economic development are similar, a small area involves a further handicap of numerical weakness of population.  Greece has always suffered from the small size of the peninsula and the further political dismemberment entailed by its geographic subdivisions.  Despite superior civilization and national heroism, it has fallen a victim to almost every invader.  Belgium, Holland, Switzerland exist as distinct nations only on sufferance.  Finland’s history since 1900 shows that the day for the national existence of small peoples is passing.[304] The fragmentary political geography of the Danube basin gives the geographer the impression of an artist’s crayon studies of details, destined later to be incorporated in a finished picture.  Their small areas promise short-lived autonomy.  The recent absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria indicates the destiny of these Danubian states as fixed by the law of increasing territorial aggregates.