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102 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
campaign against Peter the Great, by the Peace of Nystadt
in 1721. Later, in 1795, after the third Partition of Poland,
which, as already mentioned, held suzerainty over the Duke
of Courland, the Duke had to abdicate, and the Diet of the
Nobles petitioned the Empress Catherine to incorporate
the province into Russia. From these incessant wars
between the three Great Powers surrounding the ancient
State of the Livonian Order, it appears that each considered
its possession as a conditio sine qua non for further
development. Especially the Moscovian Tsars and Peter the Great,
who, finding it imperative to " open a window towards the
West of Europe," deemed it necessary to possess that
territory for the further development of the State, as the
geographical position of these provinces is such that their
position as an outlet to the sea, or as an essential
prolongation of the coast-line, was indispensable to the growth of
a first-class Power in the North.
These lessons in history teach that the Baltic Provinces
have changed hands each time when the Power which owned
them became too weak to defend them. Owing to their
geographical position they have in the past been an apple
of discord and have suffered terrible devastation through the
ravages of war. In the present war they were conquered
by Germany owing to the exceptional circumstances of the
Russian Revolution which involved the military collapse of
Russia. It remains to be seen, however, whether Germany
could keep these possessions secure from reconquest. A
glance at the map shows that they form a long stretch of
territory along the seashore open to invasion from Russia.
The German plan is evidently based on the presumption
that Bolshevik rule, with its code of international generosity
at the expense of Russian national aspirations, will last for
ever. When the present regime in Russia is superseded by
a Government which is not enfeebled by international
sentimentality, when chaos is replaced by order, impotence
by might, then Russia, to be sure, would again make a
great effort to reconquer the Baltic Provinces for precisely
the same reasons which induced Ivan the Terrible and
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