Nationality in modern history

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NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

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NATIONALITY IN MODERN
HISTORY

BY
J. HOLLAND ROSE, Lrrr.D.

FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

READER IN MODERN HISTORY TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

" Avoir fait de grandes choses ensemble, vouloir en
faire encore, voila la condition essentielle pour fitre un
peuple." — RENAN.

fnrk

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1916

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1916

PREFACE

LECTURES I-VTII of this series were delivered at Cambridge
in the Michaelmas Term of 1915; and Lectures LX and X are
based on those which I delivered hi December last to the
Historical Associations at Birmingham and Bristol. My ami
throughout has been historical, namely, to study the varied
manifestations of Nationality among the chief European
peoples, before attempting to analyze or define it. That I
have sought to do hi Lecture VIII. It is noteworthy that
only in recent tunes has Nationality become a conscious and
definite movement. Apart from the writings of Machiavelli,
where that instinct figures dimly, it was not (I believe)
treated by any writer before the year 1758. Then an anony-
mous Swiss brought out a book entitled "Von dem Na-
tionalstolze " (Of National Pride), hi which he discussed its
good and bad characteristics. I have no space hi which to
summarize his work; but at some points it breathes the spirit
of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, the inner meaning of which I have
sought to portray hi Lecture ILL

I began these studies several years ago, and early in 1916
was about to complete them. Most of my conclusions have
not been modified by the present war; but the questions dis-
cussed in the later lectures arise out of that conflict. There,
as elsewhere, I hope, my treatment has been as objective and
impartial as present conditions admit. Lack of space has
precluded a study of the lesser national movements hi Europe
and of all similar movements outside of Europe. I regret this
latter omission because the growth of Nationality hi the
United States and the British Commonwealths is developing a
wider and cosmopolitan sentiment which makes for peace.

vi PREFACE

At present, however, we are confronted by Nationality of
the old type; and to pass it by with sneers as to its being
antiquated does not further the international cause. A
careful study of past and present conditions is the first req-
uisite for success in the construction of the healthier Euro-
pean polity which ought to emerge from the present conflict;
and criticisms of German Socialists such as will be found in
Lectures LX and X, are, I believe, necessary if mankind is to
avoid a repetition of the disastrous blunders of July, 1914.

The sense which I attach to the words "race," "people,"
"nation," "nationality," "nationalism," is, briefly, as fol-
lows: For the reasons stated in Lecture VIII, I have rarely
used the word "race," and then only as a quasi-scientific
term. The word "people" I have generally used as implying
a close sense of kinship; "nation" as a political term, desig-
nating a people which has attained to state organization;
"nationality" (in the concrete sense) as a people which has
not yet attained to it; but I have nearly always referred to
"Nationality," in the ideal sense, namely, as an aspiration
towards united national existence. In Lecture IX I have
used "Nationalism" to denote the intolerant and aggressive
instinct which has of late developed in Germany and the
Balkan States.

My thanks are due to Professor Bury, Litt. D. Regius
Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge;
to Professor Deschamps of the Institut superieur de Com-
merce of Antwerp (now resident in Cambridge) ; to Mr. G. P.
Gooch, M. A., formerly Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge;
and to Mr. A. B. Hinds, M. A., formerly Student of Christ
Church, Oxford, for their valued advice and criticism.

J. H. R.

February, 1916.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LECTURE I

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA

PAGE

A survey of Europe through the centuries suggests the ques-
tion: What has made States? — No national State in the
Ancient World — The barbarian invasions split up Europe
into tribal areas — Discords arising from struggles of
Pope and Emperor — Was Dante's ideal in De Monarchid
national? — Why national feeling emerged in England
and France — Unifying forces at work in reign of Edward
III — Chaucer and the English spirit — The Hundred
Years' War developed a national spirit in France — The
influence of Jeanne d'Arc ...... i

LECTURE II

VTVE LA NATION

The work of the monarchy in helping on the union of France
— New spirit in 1791 — "If the King has escaped, the na-
tion remains" — Influence of Rousseau on the develop-
ment of French Nationality — Its manifestations in
1780-91 — "Sovereignty resides in the nation" — The
"federations" a consolidating force, e. g. in Alsace-
Lorraine — The uprising against the invaders in 1792-3;
finally it erred by excess; hence Bonapartism . . 18

LECTURE HI

SCHILLER AND FICHTE

German ideals in eighteenth century were rather international
than national — Kant — Germany weak and attracted by

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

French Revolution — Schiller at first decried patriotism;
so, too, Fichte, figured Europe as a Christian Common-
wealth— Schiller's Wilhelm Tell (1804) struck the na-
tional note — Significance of its message to Germans and
Swiss — After Prussia's overthrow by Napoleon, Fichte
delivered his Addresses to the German Nation (1807-8) —
Selfishness had ruined Germany; a renovated nation
must restore her — National education and its influence
on the events of 1813 . . . . . -34

LECTURE IV

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING

Differences between the German and Spanish national move-
ments— Aloofness of Spain and pride of her people —
Excessive confidence of Napoleon in dealing with her —
The rising of May- June, 1808, and alliance with Great
Britain — Fury against him — Weakness and strength of
provincial procedure — Efforts at reform partial and im-
itative— The constitution of 1812 short-lived — Influence
of the Spanish resistance on European developments and
the fall of Napoleon 56

LECTURE V

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY

Thought determines the course of action — The Italian move-
ment a struggle against the policy of division and subju-
gation imposed in 1815 — Italian parties: (i) Neo-Guelf,
(2) Monarchist, (3) Mazzini and Young Italy — His pro-
gramme of national unity (1831) — Charm of his person-
ality— His faith in Italy's mission, after the failure of
French individualism in 1789-93 — True patriotism need-
ful in order to attain cosmopolitan ideals, which other-
wise are unattainable — Mazzini failed for his day — Will
his ideals now be realized? ..... 74

TABLE OF CONTENTS ix
LECTURE VI

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS

PAGE

The Slav character moulded by the life of the steppes —
Russia profoundly stirred by Napoleon's invasion of 1812
— Patriotism soon diverted into reactionary channels —
Friction with the Poles — Centrifugal tendencies of the
Slavs — The South Slavs of Austria-Hungary awakened
by Napoleon — The Kingdom of Illyria influenced the
Serbs, who in 1815 gained large rights from the Turks —
Development of Serbia — The Russian Slavophiles and
Panslavists — All Slavs excited by Balkan events of
1875-6 — The Bulgars and their efforts — Beaconsfield's
pro-Turkish policy — Russia's liberating campaign of
1876-7 and the settlement of 1878 — Union of the two
Bulgarias in 1885 ....... 93

LECTURE VII

THE GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE

Varied conceptions of the State — Ancient democracies re-
quired very much from their citizens — So, too, the ab-
solute monarchies of Europe — Frederick the Great was
the Prussian State — His activities and stem resolve —
Kant's gospel of duty — Fichte in 1804 exalted the State
as furthering Kultur — His Spartan aims — In 1807-8, he
assigned supremacy to the nation — His successor, Hegel,
glorified the State as an absolute and all-pervading entity
(1820, 1830) — Did he confuse it with the nation? — Ro-
chau in Realpolitik (1853) affirmed: "The State is
Power" — This theme developed by Treitschke, who de-
manded the absorption of Saxony and of Alsace-Lorraine
— His State morality; subordination of the people to the
State in

x TABLE OF CONTENTS

LECTURE VIII

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM

PAGE

Necessary omissions from our studies; but clearly National-
ity has made Europe what it is — Reasons for thinking
that Nationality does not depend on race or language —
Examination of Hegel's "World-Spirit" theory — Na-
tionality became a moulding force in 1789 — The family
instinct of the French provinces made France a nation —
Reaction against her aggressions in 1808-15 — Failures of
sporadic Nationalism in 1848-9 — Successes of organized
Nationalism in 1859-70 — Militarism an outcome of the
national and democratic instinct in 1792-3 — Armed de-
mocracy (developed by Napoleon) routed the monarchs
— Militarism began again with the national policy of Wil-
helm I of Prussia in 1860, and triumphed over Austria
(1866), and France (1870) — Like Napoleon I, Kaiser
Wilhelm II has misused national forces raised origi-
nally for defensive purposes ..... 136

LECTURE IX

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885

Nationality a great constructive force up to September, 1885,
has since altered its character, witness the fratricidal
attack of Serbia on Bulgaria, the failure of Greek aims
in 1897, and racial strifes in Macedonia — Russia's de-
feats in the Far East emboldened the Central Empires,
and in 1908 Austria annexed Bosnia — Support of Ger-
many, Bismarck's defensive alliance of 1879 with Austria
thus became aggressive — Austro-German ambitions —
The Pangerman and Navy Leagues pushed the Kaiser
on — Germany's charge that the Entente Powers "en-
circled" her — Chauvinism in Austria-Hungary, which
probably prompted Bulgaria's attack on her Allies in
June, 1913 — Significance of the alliance of the Central
Empires with Turkey and Bulgaria . , . . 155

TABLE OF CONTENTS xi

LECTURE X

INTERNATIONALISM

PAGE

Great wars have often produced efforts to mitigate or avert
them, e. g. those of Grotius (1625) and of eighteenth-
century thinkers — Kant in Perpetual Peace (1795) pro-
posed, though doubtfully, a federation of free Republics
— Reasons for deprecating the supremacy of any one
State and requiring proportionate equality — Unwise or
unreal efforts after 1815 — "Young Europe" (1834) — Or-
ganized Nationalism overshadowed the Internationale,
which started in 1864 — Folly of the Paris Communists in
1871 — Divergence of French and Slav "Internationals"
from German, many of whom have been attracted by
the Kaiser's commercialism — Proposals of the Interna-
tionalein 1901, 1007, 1910 — Deadlock on Alsace-Lorraine
Question (1912) — Inaction of German Socialists at the
crisis of July- August, 1914 — Temporary collapse of In-
ternationalism— Reasons for hope in its revival . . 177

NATIONALITY IN MODERN
HISTORY

LECTURE I
THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA

IT is well sometimes to do with the map of Europe at
critical periods what a painter does with his canvas, stand
away from it and view it with half -closed eyes so as to behold
only the salient features. What is the impression produced
by the Europe of the Roman Empire of 1800 years ago?
Solidity and universality are its characteristics. Eight hun-
dred years later the scene is changed to one of chaos. The
attempt of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire to achieve
unity has failed and civilization is lost in a medley of little
domains. By slow degrees these sort themselves out, like
to like for the most part; and by the year 1600 the outlines
of large States are clearly defined, especially hi the West of
Europe. Italy and Germany are minutely divided; and the
inroads of the Turks have worked havoc in the South-East.
Still, Europe is settling down on a new basis; and not even
the Wars of Religion long delay the assorting process except
hi Germany. The political bioscope continues to shift until
there emerge large blocks of territory which tend to absorb
the smaller areas. The Napoleonic Wars and the series of
modern wars beginning in 1859 complete this solidifying work;
and only in the South-East of Europe do we find a great
Empire splitting up into smaller parts. Elsewhere, the con-

2 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

trary is the case; and in 1878-1914 Europe consists of solid
blocks, which stoutly resist every attempt to break them up.

To resume; in the old Roman times Europe forms a solid
whole. In the fifth century it splits up into small areas; and
the period of small areas and fleeting States continues far
into the Middle Ages; but by slow degrees these minute sub-
divisions lessen in number and increase in size; until, in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the map of Europe
acquires a clearness and consistency never known since the
time of the old Roman Empire. First, there is unity; then
chaos; then an approach to simplicity and solidity.

If we inquire into the causes of these very striking changes
we come to these general conclusions: The unity of the Roman
world was due to its conquest by a single State, which pos-
sessed a far greater military and political efficiency than that
developed by other peoples. Therefore they were absorbed
by it, until, on the break up of that wonderful organism, there
ensued utter confusion, the natural result of unchecked racial
strifes. The chaos became semi-organic during the Middle
Ages, and at their close another influence began to operate,
which grouped together the units and brought them into
ever larger masses. These masses are the modern States.
Now, what has been the influence most conducive to State-
building? That, I hope, we shall discover in this course of
lectures.

This brief survey will have shown that some mighty in-
fluence has been at work in the modern world far different
from anything that was known to the ancients. In Europe
and on its confines there was no State that was conterminous
with a great people. Assyria, Persia, and Egypt held sway
over several peoples alien to the ruling race; and the Mogul
Empire was a mere conglomerate. But there was one ex-
ception, small in extent but infinitely interesting. The Jews
during some generations formed a single compact national

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 3

State. With the possible exceptions of China and Babylon
they are the first example of a nation in the modern sense.
Their records show the rise of the family into the tribe, of
the tribe into the nation; and for a time the nation was held
together by a strong instinct of kinship. The union was
sanctified and strengthened by religious rites and by a pro-
found sense of consecration to the Deity. Thus there came
about a sense of unity which held together a singularly stiff-
necked, clannish people; and there grew up that spiritual and
moral fellowship which has survived eighteen centuries of
dispersion. True, the Jews did not long hold together polit-
ically. But, despite the disruptive tendencies of their de-
generate days, they remained and still remain one at heart.
The consciousness of being "the chosen people" still unites
them, whether they dwell in the mansions of Paris and
New York, or vegetate in the slums of Warsaw and Lisbon,
or practise their ancient rites in the valleys of Abyssinia.
Israel is still a moral and religious unit, inspired by the most
tenacious sense of kinship known to history.

Elsewhere in the Ancient World there was no State that
can be called national, at least not hi Europe. The Greeks
never achieved political union. Thrilled though they were
by their legendary epic, and inspired at tunes by the worship
of Zeu? 6 7rave\\ijvio<i , they very rarely joined in defence of
their peninsula. Only when the Persians covered the plains of
Thessaly did the Greeks make common cause; and then the
union was brief and doubtful. For all their scorn of other
peoples as barbarians, for all their care in excluding non-
Greeks from the Olympian and other great festivals, they
often sided with aliens against their own kith and kin. The
patriotic appeals of Demosthenes failed to unite them against
Philip of Macedon; and they fell, because at bottom their
political system was not national, only municipal. City
fought with city; and never at the supreme crisis did the

4 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

City-States effectively unite. The Greek polity stopped
short at the city or the clan. Except in regard to religion,
art and athletics it never attained to nationality.1

Very different is the history of Rome. Her people, though
far less imaginative than those of Athens, possessed the
political gifts needful for the upbuilding of a Commonwealth.
Rome early absorbed other cities; she then absorbed the
Samnites, the Greeks of South Italy and the Gauls of the
North. After unifying Italy, she went far towards unifying
the then known world. From the Clyde to the Euphrates,
from the Tagus to the Rhine, she moulded diverse tribes and
formed an almost universal State. As Professor Reid 2 has
shown, she accomplished this wonderful feat largely by the
grant of wide municipal liberties, thereby welding into her
imperial system the City-States which Greek separatism had
failed to unite. Besides tactful toleration in local affairs,
Imperial Rome displayed a peculiar attractive power which
drew aliens into her polity; and in this faculty of assimilation
lay her chief strength. Vergil proclaimed that it was her
mission to crush the proud and spare those who submitted.
The latter process is more important than mere conquest.
Indeed, the only real conquest is that which assimilates the
conquered. All other triumphs are vain and evanescent.
Now, Rome had this absorbing power to a unique degree.
The Jews and Greeks were exclusive and intolerant towards
Gentiles and barbarians. Not so the Roman. He brought
the conquered within the pale; he adopted their deities,3

1The Amphictyonic Council was the only Pan-Hellenic institu-
tion; but it rarely acted with vigor. Isocrates desired to unite all Greece
with Philip of Macedon for the invasion of Asia; but Demosthenes and
nearly all Athenians scouted the scheme.

2 J. S. Reid, Municipalities in the Roman Empire.

1 See the complaint of Juvenal [III, 60] :

'Jam pridem Syrus in Tiberim deflurit Orontes."

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 5

he enrolled their warriors and made them proud of fighting
under the eagles, until it seemed possible that tribalism
would vanish from Europe and that the world would become
Roman.

It was not to be. Other barbarian tribes, obeying some
unknown but potent impulse, burst into the imperial domain;
and civilization reeled back into the tribal stage from which
Rome had raised it. The political unity of Europe vanished;
and the human race has never again been able to realize the
homogeneity attained by Imperial Rome. During the Dark
Ages the annals of mankind became pettily local. Neverthe-
less, amidst those bewildering shiftings to and fro, racial
settlements of the utmost importance were taking place.
Indeed, since the year 1000, few ethnical changes of any
moment have occurred, if we except the Norman settlements,
the incursion of the Turks and the expulsion of the Moors.
With those exceptions the groupings of the European peoples
of to-day are discernible at that date; and the course of
events, especially during the last fifty years has tended to
identify more or less closely the political frontiers with the
bounds of the habitations marked out by the great European
peoples during the long and obscure struggles of the Dark
Ages. As will appear in the sequel, some peoples, possessing
greater attractive or organizing power, have gained at the
expense of others less gifted or energetic; but in their
broad outlines the great States of to-day recall those of the
chief settlements consequent on the Wanderings of the
Peoples.

How came it that the binding influences of Christianity
and the haunting memories of the old Roman Empire did
not group together in a solid polity the barbarous tribes that
then overran Europe? The triumph of Christianity over
paganism was swift and complete; and even the proudest and
fiercest of the barbarians venerated Rome and her laws. But

6 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

during the Middle Ages the city which had united the Ancient
World became the source of disunion. The successors of
St. Peter contended for supremacy with the heirs of the
Caesars, with results fatal both to the Papacy and to
the Holy Roman Empire. Institutions which claimed a
dominion as wide as Christendom were rent by schism
and faction; and both lost in vitality owing to the intolera-
ble strain.

During the struggle the first glimmerings of national con-
sciousness become visible. In their struggle for Temporal
Power Hildebrand and his successors at the Vatican could
rarely rely on armed support outside Italy. The wavering
fortunes of the Empire were sustained in the main by Ger-
mans. Yet the struggle never became national in the modern
sense. The Popes could always range many a German duchy
against its Emperor; and he embattled not a few Italian cities
against the Vatican, even when the Lombard League formed
its sure bulwark in the North. Thus, clashing claims of
world-supremacy were sustained by forces that were not even
national; and to this cross division of forces, as well as of
ideals, the wretched welter of Germany and Italy in the
Middle Ages may largely be ascribed. Weltpolitik cannot
succeed unless its foundations are both extensive and solid.
Both Pope and Emperor sought to found their polities on a
basis no less shifting than narrow.

Against this perversion of a divine mission and of a na-
tional duty the first great political thinker of the Middle
Ages uttered a solemn protest. Dante, no less a statesman
and patriot than a poet and seer, protested against the
schism to which Italy and Germany were a prey; and in the
course of his protests he uttered words which foretold the
future glory of the Roman people. The challenge to action
rings through the verses in which he bewails the degradation
of his land: —

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA ^

"Ah, slavish Italy! Thou inn of griefs!
Vessel without a pilot in loud storm!
No mistress of fair provinces,
But brothel-house impure!

Ah people! Thou obedient still shouldst live

And in thy saddle let thy Caesar sit

If well thou markedst that which God commands."

And then he appeals to the Emperor, Albert I, to come and
claim his due: —

"Come and behold thy Rome, who calls on thee,
Desolate widow, day and night, with moans —
'My Cassar, why dost thou desert my side?
Come and behold what love among thy people.'" *

For these and the like utterances Dante has been dubbed
a Ghibelline. He was more Ghibelline than Guelf; but
in truth he was a farseeing patriot who sought to reconcile
the Empire and the Papacy, thereby assuring peace to Italy
and order to the world.

Such is the theme of his chief political work, De Mo-
narchid. It rests on the fundamental conception that the
world, being a thought of God, is designed for unity, the
attainment of which is the chief aim of man. The human
race never achieved political unity and peace except during
the reign of the Emperor Augustus, at the time of the birth
and life on earth of Jesus Christ. Various episodes of that
life (even the trial by Pontius Pilate) are cited as proofs
of His recognition of the Roman Empire. Further, the whole
history of that Empire showed it to be the organism divinely
ordained for promoting unity and peace: "The Roman
people was ordained by nature to command." There must

1 Dante, Purgatorio, Canto VI, 11. 76 et seq.

8 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

be one such people; and Rome by her spirit, no less than
by her exploits, proclaimed herself to be the executant of
the divine will: "Who is so dull of mind as not by this time
to see that by right of ordeal the glorious people gained
for itself the crown of the whole world? " l What, then, has
of late lost them the crown? Mainly, the conflict between
Pope and Emperor. The striving of the Pope for temporal
power has brought endless strife on the people which ought
to be one at heart: "O blessed people! (Dante exclaims 2)
O glorious Ausonia, if only he who enfeebled thy Empire
had either ne'er been born, or ne'er been misled by his own
pious purpose." This vigorous outburst is directed against
Constantine, whose alleged donation of the Roman domains
to the Papacy was claimed as the basis of the Temporal
Power of that institution.

Thus Dante, good son of the Church though he was,
recognized her Temporal Power to be an evil, because it
introduced strife where there ought to be harmony. Let
the Pope be solely the vicar of Christ; let the Emperor wield
the sword hi the name of Christ. In no sense does the Em-
peror derive his authority from the Pope.3 Each derives
his authority from Christ: the Pope, in order to lead men
to eternal life; the Emperor, to lead them to temporal felicity.

By this teaching Dante hoped to heal the strifes which
desolated Italy and Germany. The conflicting authorities
of Pope and Emperor were to merge; then the Roman people
would once more direct human affairs. The conception
is no less imaginative than statesmanlike. Pope and Em-
peror (i. e. in the main, Italy and Germany) were to work
together for the welfare of mankind; but the guiding impulse
must come from Rome, the divinely created source of religion,
statesmanship, and armed might.

1 Dante, De Monarchid, Bk. II, chs. 7, n.

2 Bk. II ad fin. 3 Bk. Ill, passim.

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 9

In pursuance of this theme Dante sought to revive the
Holy Roman Empire, Christianizing its spirit, but keeping
the initiative always with "the holy Roman people." In
this sense, and this alone, is Dante an Italian nationalist.
To me it seems that Mazzini in his essay "On the minor
Works of Dante" read into the De Monarchic much of his
own perfervid nationalism. But it is true that Dante's
world-empire was to be Roman. Other peoples were to
yield up their wills and act in conformity with the fiat of
the Eternal City. This doctrine is not Italian nationalism,
very far from it. It is a flash of the old Roman Imperialism
focussed in a Christian lens. But here we find the source
of the inextinguishable faith in Rome which nerved many
Italian patriots, even when, like Mazzini, they rejected
Roman clericalism.

Dante, by ascribing a divine mission to the Roman people,
exerted on the fourteenth century an influence not unlike
that of the patriotic priest, Gioberti, on the mid-nineteenth
century. Each declared the Romans and their descendants
to be a chosen people, marked out by special gifts and con-
secrated by divine decree. When people believe that, they
can never be wholly enslaved. They have taken the first
difficult step which leads, it may be through ages of torture
and despair, towards political independence. In this sense
Dante was the father of Italian nationalism.

In one other respect Dante uplifted his people to an in-
calculable extent. He taught them to wing their thoughts
to the highest ecstasies in their mother-tongue. He delib-
erately chose to body forth the holiest and most thrilling
thoughts in the vernacular. Leaving other scholars to stalk
on Latin stilts, he strode forth easily but majestically, using
the language of the streets of Florence. He defended his
choice in the work De Vtdgari EloquenlicL, which is the first
conscious effort at nationalizing literature.

io NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Other poets, notably Fazio degli Uberti (circa 1370),
wrote canzoni more directly inspired by the national idea.
But the instinct of the Italian people singles out Dante as
the source of the Italian spirit. In the year 1844 Mazzini
thus wrote of the mediaeval seer: —

"The splendor of no other genius has been able to eclipse or
dim the grandeur of Dante; never has there been a darkness so
profound that it could conceal this star of promise from Italian
eyes. ... As if there had been a compact, an interchange of
secret life between the nation and its poet, even the common people,
who cannot read, know and revere his sacred name. The moun-
taineers of Tolmino, near Udine, tell the travellers that there is the
grotto where Dante wrote — there the stone upon which he used to
sit; yet a little while, and the country will inscribe on the base of his
statue — 'The Italian nation to the memory of its Prophet.'"

Yes: Italy has become a nation, and she owes her nation-
hood no less to the thrilling words of her seers than to the
bravery of her soldiers. As will appear in the sequel, her
union is due very largely to the thrilling thoughts of her
gifted sons. Indeed, the unique interest attaching to the
Italian movement is due to the inspiration which it drew
from the noblest natures and thence spread through the
masses. Italian nationality is no mechanical product, the
result of warlike pressure from without, as was elsewhere
often the case. It is rather a soul-politic than a body-politic.

But if the genius of Dante inspired the leaders of thought
in Italy, he did not and could not inaugurate a truly national
feeling. The times were not ripe for that. Lawgivers, states-
men, warriors, even inventors and mechanics, had to play
then* several parts before the common people in remote
provinces could come into touch and feel the consciousness of
a common life. As a rule, such an awakening is due to forces
that compel a people to fall back on its reserves of strength;

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA II

and these forces act most potently in time of war. It is
probable that Italy and Germany would have arrayed them-
selves in conscious hostility but for the cross currents that
swept across them, diverting their fortunes into side channels
and many confusing eddies.

As it was, the national issue was first definitely posed
between the Western peoples. Of these the Spaniards were
almost wholly immersed in the internecine struggle with
the Moors, from the long agony of which there emerged
the fierce ballads of the Cid as a promise of many a deed
of fanatical heroism in the more prosperous future. But
France and England learnt to know themselves during the
earliest of the great national struggles, the Hundred Years'
War. The combatants were well matched. What England
lacked in bulk she made up in the excellent organization of
the monarchy bequeathed by William I and Henry II to the
three Edwards. The French, superior in numbers, were
weakened by feudal divisions and the strifes of the great
nobles. Neither State, however, was much distracted by
papal or other external claims; and thus a dispute arising
out of Plantagenet ambition developed into a trial of strength
between two warlike peoples.

To trace in detail the growth of English and French na-
tional feeling during the course of this long struggle is an
impossible task. Limiting ourselves for the present to the
islanders, we may note that the loss of Normandy, unity of
law and administration, and the influence of firm government
under Henry II and Edward I, had prepared the way for a
union of hearts between Norman and Saxon; but that union
was cemented on the fields of Crecy and Poitiers. Fighting
side by side against great odds, Norman knight and Saxon
archer forgot their old feuds and merged their racial differ-
ences in the pride of Englishry. Thenceforth signs abound of
the victorious sweep of the new insular sentiment. In 1362

12 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

proceedings in the Law Courts were ordered to be conducted
in English; and in the following year our mother-tongue
gained its Poitiers, when Edward III opened Parliament in a
speech delivered in the vernacular.

The union of Norman energy and Anglo-Saxon stubborn-
ness in a single type is an event of unique importance. For
when two or more hostile or jealous races coalesce, the result
is a notable increase of mental vigor as well as of physical
force. In England the reigns of Edward III, Elizabeth,
James I and Anne are remarkable for the broadening of
national life and also for literary triumphs which express the
fuller vitality of the time. A similar access of martial and
literary energy marks the complete union of Spain under
Ferdinand and Isabella, and that of France under Louis XIV.
These and other cases reveal the connection that exists
between politics and culture. Enlarge the outlook of peoples
previously cramped and you quicken all their faculties. The
result is frequently seen in an outburst of song, as happens
with birds at mating time. It was so in England. The age
of the Black Prince was also the age of Chaucer, Langland,
and Wycliffe. The dawn of English nationality coincided
with the dawn of a truly English literature.

There was something in the air as well as in Chaucer's
genius which prompted him to write hi English. French
in ancestry, courtier by choice, and thereby condemned
to speak mainly hi French, he chose to write hi the tongue
of the street and mart. Moreover, not only the language,
but the spirit of his chief work is thoroughly English. In
their origin most of the "Canterbury Tales" are Italian,
or, in a few cases, French; but Chaucer's presentment is
thoroughly insular. The plot and the setting of the Tales
are aggressively Cockney or Kentish. Through Mine Host
the poet chaffs those of the company who prefer to mangle
the French language rather than speak their own. As for

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 13

the characters, they are such as might be found to-day at
a village penny-reading. Perhaps it was Chaucer's cap-
tivity in France which sharpened his insular patriotism;
for no experience can be more nationalizing than a time
spent as prisoner of war. Whatever the cause, Chaucer
was a thorough Englishman. I think that we know him
as well as, and perhaps love him better than, most men of
our acquaintance.

The writing of charming poems in what had before been
a despised vernacular is a landmark in the national life.
A people cannot attain to its full powers until its thoughts
and aspirations are wedded to the mother-tongue, until that
mother-tongue ceases to growl or stammer, or learns to sing.
The difference in the life of the folk resembles that which
comes during the growth of a youth, say, between fifteen
and eighteen. The boy of fifteen is tongue-tied, awkward,
perhaps a mere hobbledehoy. The youth of eighteen is a
different being; he has felt the first thoughts of love; he has,
perhaps, spoken them forth; he has become vocal. Possibly,
too, those feelings are accompanied by others much the re-
verse towards an individual of his own sex. If so, he knows
what jealousy or hatred is. In short, he has begun to know
himself. That delicious time of life has its counterpart in
the experience of a people. A crisis comes which sets the
blood tingling and calls forth energies and aspirations
hitherto latent. That is what happened to us at the be-
ginning of the Hundred Years' War. The Black Prince,
Chaucer, Wycliffe are the first complete manifestations of
the native spirit. An indefinable energy, vigor, and splen-
dor radiates forth from our people at that time, as it does
from all peoples in the heyday of ripening manhood. So
brilliant are the exploits of the Black Prince that Froissart
regards England as the chosen abode of chivalry. Chaucer
awakens her brain and her sense of beauty. Wycliffe speaks

14 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

to her soul. On all sides of her being the nation is awake.
It was a keen historic sense which led Shakespeare to place
in the mouth of men of that age the loftiest of patriotic
paeans. Old John of Gaunt sings his swan-song in praise of
England: —

"This royal throne of Kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea."

And Bolingbroke, on departing for banishment: —

"Then England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;
My mother and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banish'd, yet a true-born Englishman." 1

The clash of war, which first made England know herself,
also summoned to conscious life the French nation. There
again forces were at work, some promoting, others retarding,
national unity. The centripetal influences were pride in the
old Roman heritage, and the community of language and
culture which it bequeathed; also the work of the clergy,
the effects of the Crusades, and the efforts of the stronger
monarchs to promote uniformity in law and the adminis-
tration. Of the centrifugal influences the chief were of
Prankish origin, the instinct to follow the chief rather than
the King, which divided the realm amongst rival and greedy
feudatories, each a law to himself and the source of law to
his vassals. The Kings, allied with the Gallic populace, were

1 Richard II, Act I, Sc. 3; Act II, Sc. i.

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 15

waging a doubtful conquest with the Teutonic and feudal
elements, when there burst upon this divided realm the
Hundred Years' War. The natural result was the triumph
of the invaders, under whose blows all that was left of the
French dominions began to solidify. The one possible rally-
ing point, the monarchy, gradually gained ground over re-
bellious feudatories; but, owing to the contemptible weakness
of Charles VII, the struggle was still going against France,
when the most remarkable figure of the late Middle Ages
arose to vivify her people and confound their enemies.
Jeanne d'Arc left her sheep at Domremy and came to drive
forth the invaders. Her resolve to do battle against the
English until Charles be crowned at Rheims was the more
remarkable because legally she was not a Frenchwoman.
She was born and lived in the Burgundian part of that border
village. But in her meditations in the woods the high-
souled maiden heard angelic voices that bade her "go into
France"; and we may question whether with the religious
impulse were not mingled the promptings of that national
sentiment which has often spoken forth in the moving tones
of a woman. The Baraks of a great crisis have rarely lacked
their Deborahs; and a cause that deeply stirs woman's nature
is on the road to triumph. Certain it is that the advent of
Jeanne d'Arc meant infinitely much to the French; for it
heartened them and bewildered their enemies; and this, not
only for superstitious reasons, but also because Jeanne was
France personified. No figure in history has more fully
typified a nation; and when a nation sees itself thus incarnate
its powers are doubled.

From our present point of view it matters little that she
was captured, was deserted by the French and barbarously
burnt by the English. Those actions belong to the super-
stition and cruelty of the tune. What belongs to all time is
the saintly heroic influence that radiated from her and

16 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

passed into the heart of her people. While Charles VII was
trimming his sails to every breeze she uttered words instinct
with patriotic wisdom: "As to the peace with the English,
the only one possible is that they should go back to their
country hi England." That is the national ideal, for the
first time clearly defined. The French are one people and
must possess the whole of France. There will be no peace
while the islanders hold down part of France. The thought
is very simple. It is the inspired common sense of a peasant
girl gifted with vision. How much misery would mankind
have been spared from that time to this if rulers and warriors
had realized the truth, that every civilized nation, when
thoroughly awakened to conscious life, must control its own
destinies and will not long submit to be held down by another
people. — "Let each nation be content with its natural bound-
aries, and not seize the lands of its equally civilized neigh-
bors." How simple! And yet the nation which claims to
be at the summit of civilization has, even now, not learnt
that rudimentary lesson in the doctrine of nationality.

Notice, too, these words of Jeanne after her capture: "I
know well that these English will kill me, because they
hope, after my death, to gain the Kingdom of France.
But, were there 100,000 more of them, they shall conquer
it never, never." There spoke forth clearly for the first
time the soul of France, unconquerable in the fifteenth cen-
tury as in the twentieth century.

The head typifying France on the corns of the first Re-
public was that of a beautiful actress who became transiently
famous during the Terror. Certainly, the French genius is
best personified by a beautiful, high-spirited woman. But
when I think of France I always see the Maid of Or-
leans.

Italy — not merely the Italy of to-day, but of seven cen-
turies— seems to resolve herself into the figure of Beatrice;

THE DAWN OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 17

or, in her many tragic phases, to be transformed into the sad
yet serene features of Dante.

The English people, surely, are not well represented by
the conventional Britannia. Their character, ruggedly in-
sular yet widely adaptable, and marked by a maturity that
does not age, is perhaps best typified by the genial humanism
of the countenance of Chaucer or of Shakespeare.

The time is not yet ripe for limning the features of our
enemies; and Russia is still somewhat of a sphinx. But
that every nation has a distinct personality, who can doubt?

LECTURE H
VIVE LA NATION

"La nation, c'est vous; la loi, c'est encore vous, c'est votre
volonte; le roi, c'est le gardien de la loi." — Adresse de I'Assemblfa
nationale au Peuplefran$ais, Feb. n, 1790.

IN the last lecture we found reasons for regarding Dante,
Chaucer, and Jeanne d'Arc as the first exponents of the
national ideal for their several peoples. But it is very doubt-
ful whether that ideal was visible to the people at large,
except hi the chief crises of war. At such a time every man
and woman who could think felt deep hatred of the foreign
invader; and hi this sense of repulsion for the foreigner
nationalism of the cruder sort doubtless had its rise. Idealized
though it might be by the loftier minds, yet in its lower
forms it was little more than dislike of the aggressive stranger.
This feeling it was which ranged French and English against
one another in almost solid phalanxes.

But the cross currents, which we have noticed as confusing
the issues in mediaeval Germany and Italy, soon began to
sweep across England and France. Both lands fell a prey to
civil strifes which nearly effaced the nascent sense of unity.
England, whose polity had far excelled that of other peoples,
was soon distracted by religious and constitutional disputes
lasting through most of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. In that period the Elizabethan Era stands out as
a smiling oasis; for then, during a brief space, England was
almost one at heart; and the Spanish menace united English-
men of all creeds in defence of their homes and liberties.
That danger past, the island realm was again rent by schisms

18

VIVE LA NATION 19

which the follies and perversity of the Stuarts prolonged until
the Settlement of 1688. Consequently, English patriotism
did not fully emerge until the times of Marlborough and the
two Pitts.

The fortunes of the French were not very dissimilar.
After monarchy brought them within sight of political union
there fell on them the Wars of Religion. The exhaustion of
the people and the statecraft of Richelieu and Mazarin
finally brought about internal peace, but at the expense of
popular liberties; and the reigns of Louis XIII and XIV,
which consummated the external union of the French prov-
inces, left the people themselves unfree and exhausted. This
state of things (not unlike that of the English under Henry
VIII) is unfavorable to the growth of patriotism, a virtue
whose highest manifestation needs a large measure of civic
freedom and an abounding vitality. The French prov-
inces, brought together by Louis XIV, resembled a new
plantation of shrubs in time of drought. They were sapless;
their leaves drooped; they were starved by the royal oak
hard by. "L'Etat, c'est moi," exclaimed the monarch; and
it was true during his reign, when patriotism centred in the
person of the King. A political catechism, drawn up for the
training of his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, stated that
the King represented the entire nation, which had no cor-
porate existence apart from him.1 That was correct. During
the long interregnum of the States General (1614-1789)
the only bond of union was the royal administration; and the
edicts of the Royal Council of Ministers formed at best only a
partial protection against feudal injustice and provincial
inequalities. The people cried out for efficient government,
which could come only with a close and effective union of all
classes and provinces. Their cry finds expression in many of

1 "La nation ne fait pas corps en France; elle reside tout entifcre dans
la personne du roi."

20 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

the cahiers, or writs of grievances, drawn up in the spring of
1789. The Commons of Beauvais demand — "an invariable
rule in all parts of the public administration and public order,
that is to say, a constitution. ... It is because France has
never had one that her administration has been subject to
ceaseless changes and she herself has been in danger." So
again a village near Metz writes: "May all your subjects,
Sire, be made truly French by the Government, as they
already are by the love which they feel for their King."
Again: "Your peoples seek refuge at the foot of your throne
and come to seek in you their tutelary deity." l

These and many other similar assertions prove that France
had no constitution (though Burke denied it) and that she
fervently desired to achieve in the sphere of law and adminis-
tration the national unity of which she was by this time con-
scious. That Louis XVI should make her effectively a nation
was at first the desire of all; and even when he egregiously
failed, and the National Assembly seized the reins from his
nerveless hands, the old instinct of regarding the King as the
keystone of the national arch for a long time survived. At
the news of his flight towards the eastern frontier at mid-
summer, 1791, the dismay of very many Frenchmen almost
resembled that which fell on the Peruvians when Pizarro and
his handful of desperadoes seized the sacred person of the
Inca. Such were the feelings of an official in a French village,
who, on learning that Louis XVI had fled, exclaimed to a
better educated acquaintance: "Alas! What shall we do?
The King has escaped." The nascent consciousness of the
new age flashed forth hi the reply: "Well! If the King has
escaped, the nation remains. Let us consider what to do."
France did consider; and, after a time of compromise and
hesitation, she decided that the only thing to do with a King

1 Archives parlementaires, III, 299; VI, 24, 318. See too Sorel, L' Europe
et la Revolution fran^aise, I, p. 187.

VIVE LA NATION 21

who desired to run away was to dethrone him. Thereafter
the idea of the nation was paramount; and, despite the
triumph of reaction in and after 1815, it has been paramount
ever since.

The delay of the French in abolishing the old monarchy
is somewhat surprising, if we remember the ardor with
which their leading thinkers had adopted the political theories
of Rousseau. The reader who peruses his chief work, Le
Contrat Social (1762), may not at first perceive the importance
of the national idea. But that idea is fundamental to his
whole treatise. The dominant notion of the work is of a
contract or compact by which men, when emerging from
savagery, form themselves into a civil society. Rousseau,
with the eye of faith, beholds them frame an agreement as
free men and equals; and by this mystic contract, which may
or may not have actually happened, they become citizens and
form a State. It matters not (says Rousseau) that the exist-
ence of the social contract cannot be proved. He takes it for
granted, and so do all his followers.

Now, this explanation of the rise of civil society, though
it is altogether fanciful, has exercised a potent influence.
It lies at the root of the early Socialism; and it also helped
on the national idea. Take this statement of Rousseau:
"Before examining the act by which a nation elects a King,
it would be fitting to examine the act by which a nation be-
comes a nation." l That act is the social contract, which he
then examines. When the union takes place, the result is a
body politic, a respublica. Men who before were separate
units are now citizens. He terms their association in its
passive aspect a State (a use of the term which is open to
grave objections). But he applies the term "sovereign" to
the body politic when it is active. Thus, according to
him, the whole body of citizens, when at rest, forms the
1 Contrat social, Bk. I, ch. 5.

22 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

State; * when it makes laws it is "the sovereign." For pur-
poses of convenience or efficiency it may choose a man from
one family to become ruler; but his powers always remain
subordinate to the real sovereign, the people.2

Again, when they have decided on a law or any course of
action, their will is final. The "general will," as he calls it, is
the ultimate court of appeal. He declares it to be inalienable,
indivisible, impeccable. Before this quintessence of negations
all other authority, especially that of the Church and of
privileged Orders, must bow down, so that there may be no
divisions in the body politic. It must be compact in order to
be supreme; and that supremacy must have no limits. The
newly formed nation may make use of a legislator to draw
up laws; but even then its authority is dominant.

Now, in this sweeping claim we have the foundation, not
only of modern democracy, but also of nationality in a com-
plete and conscious sense. The influence exerted by Rousseau
on the development of the national idea has not, I think, been
sufficiently emphasized. Every student knows that Le
Contrat Social is the source of French democratic notions;
but that work is equally the fountainhead of modern na-
tionalism. Before Rousseau, writers on government and law
had been comparatively little influenced by the idea of the
nation. Montesquieu, writing only some fourteen years be-
fore Rousseau, scarcely mentions the nation. He sometimes
seems to feel his way towards that idea as influencing the
character of laws ; but only in that particular. It was reserved
for Rousseau to set forth the national idea with a force and
cogency which opened up a new era both in thought and
deed.

1 Again, Bk. II, ch. 10: "It is the men that constitute the State."

2 Dante, in the De Monarchid, proclaimed this truth: "For citizens
do not exist for the Consuls, nor the nation for the King; but, on the
contrary, the Consuls for the citizens, the King for the nation."

VIVE LA NATION 23

The Swiss thinker not only gave birth to the idea of the
nation, but he endowed it with the strength of an infant
Hercules. The French people could scarcely have achieved
the miracles of the new age had they not been doubly in-
spired. The notion of liberty, doubtless, was the chief im-
pulse urging them forward; but with it there then worked the
powerful feeling of nationality. For the first time in their
history all Frenchmen realized their essential oneness. That
is a unique occasion in the life of a people. We know what
it meant from our experience in August, 1914. Then, for
the first time hi our history, the peoples of the whole of the
British Empire were enthusiastically of one mind; and the
mighty unison was not marred, only emphasized, by a few
thin discordant pipings. Much the same was it in the France
of 1789. Resolute in her quest for liberty, she was nerved by
the consciousness that practically all her children were one at
heart. From the cramped sphere of provincialism they rose
by one bound to the far loftier plateau of nationality. There
they breathed the pure air of freedom and were exhilarated by
contact with others whom they had deemed half foreigners
and now found to be Frenchmen. The results of this double
inspiration were portentous. Relatively to the still torpid
peoples of the Continent, the Frenchman of the Revolution
was a superman.

After that brief time of exhilaration, which inspired Words-
worth and Coleridge with some of their best work, the then
allied ideas of liberty and nationality were destined soon to
come into collision, with results disastrous to the cause of
progress. We who are living amidst a cataclysm such as the
world has never known can realize the extent of the disaster;
and we find it difficult to understand the buoyancy of heart,
the vigor in action, of the year 1789, when the two powerful
principles, Liberty and Nationality, pulled together. Then
the human race experienced the spring tide of achievement.

24 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

May it be the lot of us, who now toil through the dead time
of the neap tides, to be borne ahead once again on that
bounding flood!

The dominance of the national idea in the early part of
the French Revolution is obvious at many points. Very
significant is the title assumed by the Tiers Etat (Commons)
of the States General. That body, hitherto divided into three
distinct Orders, had not met during 175 years: and the Com-
mons desired to break with the past. After long deliberations
as to various cumbrous titles that had been proposed, an
obscure member called out: "Assemblee nationale." "Yes,
yes," they all cried; and the motion was carried, despite the
grave fears of Mirabeau and others, who foresaw its destruc-
tive effect on the monarchy. The name, indeed, recalled the
ambitious claim of Sieyes in his pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le
Tiers fctat, that the Commons formed the nation; the Com-
mons (said he) furnish all the productive classes, from profes-
sors to lacqueys; therefore they are the nation. This term he
denned thus: "a body of associates living under a common
law and represented by a single legislature." The definition
is utterly defective because mechanical; it would include
such cases as the peoples of the old Holy Roman Empire,
or of the Indian Empire of to-day where there is no real
unity of sentiment. But this cold, mechanical definition
inspirited the deputies of France to seek for a single legisla-
ture; and so what had been merely the unprivileged Order
of the ancient States General became the National Assembly,
the organ of the general will (June 17, 1789). In vain did
Louis XVI seek to force the deputies back into the three
distinct Orders. In vain did he declare that if they could
not agree, he alone would effect the welfare of his peoples. He
spoke the language of the past. No longer were they diverse
peoples sheltered by his care. The thinking part of France
now realized that the nation existed apart from him. Such,

VIVE LA NATION 25

too, was the significance of the famous Tennis Court Oath of
June 20, when the deputies, without a single reference to
the King, swore never to part until they had made a constitu-
tion.

The consequences of this change of outlook were momen-
tous. Even in the first and very moderate draft of the Rights
of Man, which Mounier presented to the National Assembly
on July 27, there is this significant clause: "The principle of
complete sovereignty resides essentially hi the nation. No
corporation, no individual, can exercise authority which does
not emanate expressly from it."

The essence of the Revolution lies in those words. They en-
throne the nation and dethrone the King of France. Thence-
forth he becomes "the hereditary representative," as he is
often termed; while all public bodies are subjected to the
nation. The Roman Catholic Church is forced to acknowl-
edge the supremacy of the State; and the abolition of all
bodies, like the old Parlements, which contest that suprem-
acy, is a foregone conclusion. With the Parlements vanish
the Provinces and all their local exemptions and rights. From
Brittany to Provence, from French Flanders to Spanish
Roussillon, there is a clean sweep of all the local privileges
which had fettered the action of the old monarchy; and in
the spring of 1790 France stood forth united, unshackled, as
she never had been. Against myriads of local or social abuses
which had defied the absolute monarchy, the nation forthwith
prevailed. Some of its early champions sought to moderate
its zeal. Among them, Mounier endeavored to arouse the
local feeling of Dauphine, where he and the provincial Estates
had exercised a paramount influence. But now throughout
France there was but one cry: "We are not provincials; we
are Frenchmen"; and before the cry "Vive la Nation" down
went all the walls of privilege and local custom.

The resistance which Mounier offered in Dauphine served

26 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

to inaugurate those federations of towns and villages which
helped on the levelling process. The first of these unions of
citizens with those of neighboring towns took place at
Etoile on the Rhone, in Dauphine, in November, 1789. There
the townsfolk and peasants assembled, some 12,000 strong,
fully armed as National Guards, and took the following oath:
"We, soldier-citizens of both banks of the Rhone, fraternally
assembled for the public welfare, swear before high heaven,
on our hearts and on our weapons devoted to the defence of
the State, that we will remain for ever united. Abjuring every
distinction of our provinces [Languedoc and Dauphin6],
offering our arms and our wealth to the fatherland, for the
support of the laws which come from the National Assembly,
we swear to give all possible succor to each other to fulfil
these sacred duties, and to fly to the help of our brothers of
Paris, or of any town of France which may be in danger, in
the cause of liberty." l This episode is of high significance.
It sounded forth the call to national unity on behalf of the
peasants and small traders; and, throughout the next eight
months, similar federations of districts or Departments
helped to abolish provincialism. The climax was reached in
the national Festival of Federation, held in the Champ de
Mars on July 14, 1790. A spectator, the denationalized
German baron, "Anacharsis" Clootz, pointed the moral of
the episode by a reference to the mass meetings of Celtic and
Frankish warriors yearly held on that spot: "It carries you
back two thousand years by an indefinable tone of antiquity:
it carries you forward two thousand years by the rapid
progress of reason, of which this federation is the precocious
and delectable foretaste." Certainly these federations helped
to brand on the French the feeling of indissoluble oneness. It
is easy to pass a law for political union; it is a far more difficult
thing to secure a union of hearts. Our Union with Ireland in
1 Hist, parkmentaire, IV, p. 3.

VIVE LA NATION 27

1801 is an example of the former; the French Departmental
System of 1790 achieved the latter, because the people them-
selves at once registered the edict of their legislators. Thence-
forth Celtic Brittany, the half-Flemish north, the half-
Spanish Roussillon, and almost wholly German Alsace threw
in their lot for ever with France.

Yes, for ever. This present war is in part the outcome of
this resolve of Alsace and North-east Lorraine to be French,
not German. Whether Germany might not have won over
the Alsacians if her treatment had been less brutal is an
open question. But the outcome is that Alsace has never
been Germanized, and that a province, which is almost
entirely Teutonic by race, is still almost entirely French
at heart. It was the magical influence of the great idea
incarnate in the France of the Revolution which won that
heart for the French nation.

One of the distinctive features of those federations of
1790 was the exaltation of law. It is rather difficult in Eng-
land to imagine rustics and small shopkeepers assembling
in tens of thousands for the glorification of law. Generally,
when they assemble in large numbers it is for the opposite
purpose. But, when one remembers that in France the old
feudal and royal edicts had been the detested decrees of a
class or of a domain, one can see why the populace hailed the
dawn of a regime of truly national law. For by 1790 law
was the same for all classes. It had swept away the dis-
tinctive Orders. It had abolished the old game laws, corvees,
gabelles, and other means of oppression; and recently it had
mapped out France in Departments and smaller self-govern-
ing areas, with nearly 4,300,000 "active" citizens, to whom
fell the duty of electing all the officials. Thus, law had be-
come what Rousseau had declared it ought to be, the expres-
sion of the general will. Therefore it occupied a place hi the
new political trinity. "The Nation, the King, the Law,"

28 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

such were the sacred entities in the new Order. — The Nation,
the source of all political energy; the King, merely its first
officer; the Law, its channel.

Every feeling that makes the heart of man beat high
conspired to make those federations scenes of inspiration
and strength. They were the social contracts of the young
democracy. Imagine in the square of the town or village
an altar of green sods erected to la patrie; the patriarch of
the village, or else the cure, administers the patriotic oath;
children dressed in white are taught what it means; and the
day ends in dances and merry-making. At one village in
the Cevennes, where religious passions previously ran high,
the cure and the Protestant pastor meet and embrace at
the national altar; then the Roman Catholics conduct the
Protestants to church and listen to the pastor's address;
next the Protestants conduct the others to their church and
hear the words of the cure.

On other federative groups there descended the genius of
patriotic doggerel. We read of one occasion when the cure
composed verses on the spot and also chanted a Hymn to
Liberty; whereupon the mayor felt moved to reply in stanzas,
the purport of which was undiscoverable. Worthy folk!
You typify French patriotism at its loftiest pitch. Did fate
permit you to see the ghastly sequel?

In view of all the scenes that followed, it is not surprising
that Thomas Carlyle poured a douche of his cold northern
sarcasm on all that southern demonstrativeness. But, after
all, were those federation festivals merely "mighty fireworks"
or a "grand theatricality"? Surely they were something far
deeper than that. The sensitive, impressionable Gauls
need to visualize their political creed; and they hold it all the
more strongly for having exulted about it.

The strength of the national instinct appeared in grim
guise when war broke out between France and the German

VIVE LA NATION 29

Powers. The causes of that war do not concern us here.
What concerns us is that it was a measuring of strength
between an armed nation on the one side and two artificial
though well-disciplined States on the other. The French
Revolutionists had no doubt as to the issue. Hi-armed and
drilled though they were, they believed in their power to
overcome the professional armies drilled in the school of
Eugene and Frederick. Brissot, the bellicose wire-puller of
the Girondin group, desired to disguise some French soldiers
near the frontier as Austrians to sack and burn French vil-
lages in order to hurry on the rupture; and on a far higher
plane, Vergniaud, the great Girondin orator, appealed to
the National Assembly to commence a crusade which would
liberate other peoples still unfree. Even so moderate a
thinker as the Swiss publicist, Mallet du Pan, prophesied
in the Mercure de France, in January, 1792, that Austria
and Prussia would be defeated unless they could emblazon
on their banners the device, "the Charter of the Nations";
for that alone could fitly oppose the watchword on the lips
of the hosts of France, "The Rights of Man." x Of course,
the German Powers did not adopt Mallet's advice. Bruns-
wick's manifesto, issued at Coblentz in deference to the
Emigres, laid stress on the restoration of royalty in France and
the punishment of all rebels.

This was the first of the many blunders of the German
Allies in 1792-3. From the outset they exasperated French
national feeling, when their aim should have been to separate
the moderates from the extreme Jacobins then in power at
Paris. They ruined the French monarchy which they came
to rescue; for they identified the cause of royalty with that
of the invaders who were coming to partition France.

After the fall of the French monarchy, in August, 1792,
the national idea acquired a force never known before. Pre-
1 Mallet du Pan, Mems., I, 249.

30 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

viously it had been confused by the lingering sense of devo-
tion to the King and Queen. But, after the overthrow of
the monarchy the issue was clear. French democracy and
nationality were ranged against the German invaders and
royalism; and the French were compelled to put forth all
their strength and energy. In August and September,
1792, they had practically no Government; the exchequer
was empty; credit had vanished; and the armies were for a
time leaderless. But it is in such straits that patriotism
becomes a burning force that shrivels up quibbling factions
and kindles boundless energy. Only when a nation is stripped
of all external aids and is faced with absolute ruin does it
discover its reserves of strength. If they are utilized in time
it may encounter defeats, but it will not perish. The spirit
which then nerved France is finely expressed hi the appeal
of the young poet, Andre Chenier: "All ye who have a father-
land and know what it means; ye for whom the words 'to
live free or die' mean something; ye who have wives, children,
parents, friends for whom ye would conquer or die — how long
shall we speak of our liberty? . . . Come forth. Let the
nation appear."

It did appear — an armed nation. Service in the National
Guards had, from the beginning of the Revolution, been
one of the recognized duties of citizenship. No definite
decree declared it to be either universal or compulsory;
but the Constitution of 1791 laid it down that all "active
citizens" were National Guards. The National Guards
were merely citizens called to uphold the force of the State.
For the present they did not form an organized force.1 They
therefore held a rather indefinite position. In principle
every citizen was a soldier; only he was not drilled. Prob-
ably this vague state of things resulted from the conflict of
opinion which had broken out in the National Assembly
1 Constitution of 1791, ch. V, § 4.

VIVE LA NATION 31

during the debates of December, 1789, on military service.
Dubois Crance, a strong democrat, insisted on universal
service: "I tell you that in a nation which desires to be free,
which is surrounded by powerful neighbors and harassed
by factions, every citizen ought to be a soldier, and every
soldier a citizen, if France is not to be utterly annihilated. . . .
How is it possible to make a man march forth to battle whose
indolence has driven him into the ranks . . . who in fact
has sold his liberty for a price, side by side with the man who
has taken up arms to defend liberty? ... It is necessary
to establish a truly national conscription, which should in-
clude every one from the second man in the Kingdom down
to the last active citizen." The Due de Liancourt, Mira-
beau, and others resisted this proposal as contrary to the
principles of liberty and of the Rights of Man, besides being
prejudicial to a complex industrial society; and the Assembly
decided in favor of voluntary enlistment for the regular
army; but it did not impose any rule respecting the National
Guards.1

When war seemed imminent in the early part of 1792
many thousands of National Guards volunteered for service
at the front to fill up the gaps in the regular army caused
by desertion. Consequently the armed forces of France were
in a chaotic state at the beginning of the war with the Ger-
man Powers. Great efforts were made in July, 1792, to
attract more volunteers. The alarm gun on the Pont Neuf
was fired once an hour. Bands paraded the streets. Speeches
were delivered at the recruiting tents; and thousands of
patriotic youths at once enlisted. If we may credit the very
critical estimate of von Sybel, these efforts produced little
result. He says that only 60,000 recruits were forthcoming

1 Jung, Dubois-Crancg, I, pp. 16-28, quoted by Morse Stephens,
French Rev., I, 383; Procts Verbaux de I'Assemblee Nationale, IX, X, Dec.
12 and 16.

32 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

between July n and September 20. It is also well known
that the French success at Vahny was decided by the steadi-
ness of the troops of the old royal army, and still more by the
timidity of the Duke of Brunswick, who never pressed home
his attack.

All this may be granted; and the admissions somewhat
dun the glamor of those days. Yet it is undeniable that
the enthusiasm which the volunteers brought to the front
was a weighty factor in determining the issue on the hill
of Vahny. All the life and energy were on the side of the
French. Experience and mechanical discipline were ranged
under the banners of Prussia; and in the few moments when
the issue seemed doubtful the mighty shout of "Vive la
Nation" rooted the French to the earth and carried doubt
and dismay to the hearts of the invaders. Well might Goethe,
who was present at the German headquarters, declare that
that day inaugurated a new epoch in the history of the
world. That was true. It inaugurated the era of militant
democracy.

Subsequent events served to dull democracy and quicken
militancy. The contrast between the political chaos at
Paris and the conquering march of the French into Holland,
Germany, and Italy was so sharp as to become a grave
danger to an impressionable people. Unable to achieve
political liberty at home, they overpowered all opposition
abroad; and thus the very men who had hailed the war of
1792 as a crusade on behalf of the liberty of enslaved peoples
were soon drawn into methods inconsistent with their polit-
ical principles. In the constitution of 1791 they declared
solemnly that the French nation would never undertake a
war for the sake of making conquests. Yet the constitution
of 1795 declared that all lands up to the Rhine and the
Alps were thenceforth an integral part of France. This
solemn declaration, that France intended to fight on until

VIVE LA NATION 33

she gained her "natural limits," was an event of sinister im-
port, preluding two decades of war; for Waterloo was the
final retort to the French claim for the Rhine and Alps.

How are we to explain that extravagant claim? In part,
of course, by that luckless statement of Caesar that those
were the boundaries of Gaul. But the new Gospel of Nature
here reinforced the old Caesarism. Rousseau in his essay,
"A Treaty of Perpetual Peace," urged that natural features,
such as mountains and rivers, seemed to mark out the bounds
of the nations of Europe; and (he added) "one may say that
the political order of this part of the world is in certain re-
spects the work of nature." This incautious utterance of
the master, which subordinated men's feelings to the lie of
the land, was exceedingly useful to his followers. In Novem-
ber, 1792, when the French desired to annex Savoy, Bishop
Gregoire, in his report on that topic, made use of similar
arguments. As a certain number of Savoyards petitioned
for union with France, he insisted that this was their universal
desire; and he then stated that "the order of Nature would
be contravened if their Government was not identical [with
ours]." The turn of the Belgians came next, early in 1793.
As for the Germans of the Rhineland, they were not consulted
at all. And thus it came about that the national impulse
in France, which up to 1791 promised to link all free peoples
in a friendly federation, soon degenerated into a warlike and
aggressive impulse, the parent of rapine abroad and of
Caesarism in France herself.

LECTURE III
SCHILLER AND FICHTE

"The first original and truly natural frontiers of States are un-
questionably their spiritual frontiers." — FICHTE, Addresses to the
German Nation, No. XII.

IT is difficult now to realize the divisions and helplessness
of Germany in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Split up into some three hundred different domains, for
which the Holy Roman Empire provided no effective bond
of union; distracted, too, by the endless rivalry of the chief
States, Austria and Prussia, the Germans seemed doomed
to subservience to their better organized neighbors. The
energizing and new grouping of these torpid fragments was
the greatest political event of the nineteenth century.

Before its commencement, there was no desire for close
union on a national basis. The ideals of the leaders of Ger-
man thought were international. Very characteristic are
the words penned by the philosopher Kant, at Konigsberg,
in his tractate, Perpetual Peace, 1795. "If Fortune ordains
that a powerful and enlightened people should form a Re-
public— which by its very nature is inclined to perpetual
peace — this would serve as a centre of federal union for
other States wishing to join, and thus secure conditions of
freedom among the States in accordance with the idea of the
law of nations."

In that passage Kant expressed the aspirations of his age
for a federative and pacific union of nations. The idea had
been cherished hi France among the more reasonable of the
Girondins, and found expression in the hope that neighbor-

34

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 35

ing States would form Republics which would link on to
France and gradually extend the bounds of liberty. The
German thinker warmly adopted this programme and in-
cluded it among the conditions conducive to the abolition of
war. If it had come about, the world would have taken a
long stride forward towards the international ideal. In that
case France would have passed quickly through the national
phase, impelled onwards towards a far loftier ideal, that of
ministering to the needs of humanity at large. The years
1791-2 formed, perhaps, the most favorable opportunity
in that direction that the world has ever known. For at that
time Europe was in a transition stage. With the exception
of England and France, the peoples had not yet awakened
to full political consciousness. True, they had thrilled at the
news of the French Revolution; but the first message that
it sent forth from Paris was international. The motto —
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" — was for all peoples on
equal terms; and all seemed likely to press forward to the
goal, without the jostling which Nationalism soon engen-
dered. In 1792-4 there was a chance that the Germans of
the Rhineland would accept the French connection, if it
were really fraternal and not too paternal. At first the
German reformers fraternized with the French troops. That
eminent savant, Forster of Mainz, went up to some French
National Guards then in garrison in his city, and exclaimed —
"Long live the Republic!" to which there came the dis-
couraging reply, "She will live very well without you."

The incident is characteristic of the superiority then
affected by the French over the divided and benighted
Germans. That feeling had long permeated the Parisian
factions that desired a war of propaganda. So far back as
October, 1791, the first leader of the Girondins, that rest-
less wire-puller, Brissot, had attacked the German Powers
in the most provocative terms, and his colleague, Isnard,

36 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

fired off the following salvos on November 29: "A people
in a state of revolution is invincible. . . . Let us tell Europe
that, if the Cabinets engage the Kings in a war against the
peoples, we will engage the peoples in a war against the
Kings" — this, too, at a time when the Austrian and Prus-
sian monarchs had withdrawn their former veiled threats
of intervention, to which, indeed, they had scant means
of giving effect. Central and Southern Europe were so
wretchedly weak that the foremost publicist of the time,
Mallet du Pan, wrote thus of the chances of a successful
attack by France: "Divided into a multitude of separate
governments, Europe offers few bases for a common resist-
ance, and the first great nation which changes the face of
society has to fear only dissociated units." l

The words are a remarkable forecast of the collapse of the
old order before the new; and the sequel was to show the
peril that besets wars of propaganda. Lofty though the
motives of the crusaders may be at the outset, they are
apt speedily to degenerate under the lure of conquest. A
strong nation which overruns weak States will in the process
reveal the truth of the farseeing remark of Montesquieu,
that, if a Republic subdues other peoples, its own liberty is
endangered by the authority which it entrusts to its generals
and proconsuls. In the campaigns of 1793-9 France tri-
umphed too easily. Her profoundly national system too
speedily upset the European equilibrium; and in the process
the liberator merged into the mere conqueror. The results
were soon felt by the "liberated" Germans of the Rhine-
land. The fraternal embracings of the first few days soon
gave place to exactions, confiscations, forced loans, even to
plunder. The irreligious customs of the French troops com-
pleted the work of disillusionment; and when those harpies,
the military contractors, flew on the spoil, the Germans
1 Mallet du Pan, Mtms., I, 251.

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 37

experienced all the miseries of the conquered. All the salaried
posts in the new administration were given to French offi-
cials, often of a very corrupt type. The soldiery bettered
their example, until, in 1799, a Rhinelander complained
that everybody concealed money and valuables in order to
save something from the orgies of plunder. In the five
years after the French occupation of 1794-5 exactions
amounting to £6,000,000 were wrung from the Rhineland;
and there was a general regret for the earlier time of undis-
turbed slumber under equally somnolent translucencies
and abbesses.

The change of tone in German literature between 1789
and 1799 is remarkable. In August, 1789, the Swabian poet,
Schubart, had extolled the felicity of the Germans in Alsace,
who shared hi the blessings of the French Revolution, while
behind them (i. e. in Germany) cracked the whip of the
despot. But, after the French conquest of the Rhineland,
references to France and to her Revolution become cold and
critical. In the writings of Goethe there are comparatively
few references to the public sentiment of the time; for, as
he explained in Wahrheit und Dichtung (anno 1775), "Our
object was to get to know man; we were content to let people
in general go their own way." This aloofness from the aims
and strivings of the masses is a noteworthy feature of Goethe's
character. It probably explains his indifference to the strug-
gles of his countrymen against Napoleon, which sometimes
has been ascribed to want of patriotism. That charge is
unjust; for there are persons so constituted as to be unable
to take interest in the collective activities of mankind. In
their eyes the soul of man is the only study of any worth.
The strivings of the many weary or disgust them. They
are interested in the problems of the individual life; but
popular movements, whether present or past, leave them cold.
Such was the cast of Browning's mind. Though he lived in

38 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

the midst of the most romantic of national movements, that
of Italy, he has left no poem inspired by it; whereas Mrs.
Browning, who possessed the collective sense, has left many
such poems. Goethe, like Browning, lacked that sympathy
with the masses, which every ardent reformer and patriot
must possess. Such minds do not vibrate responsive to the
appeal of the many in the present, or to that appeal from the
past, which is the very soul of history.

In Goethe's writings, as in those of Browning, there are
only scattered references to public affairs. But in Hermann
und Dorothea (1797) there is this passage: "The man who,
in a tottering age, is unsteady in character only increases the
evil and spreads it further and further. ... It is not for
the Germans to carry on the terrible Revolution, and to
waver hither and thither." The words show that Goethe,
for all his cosmopolitan leanings, cherished little hope for
liberation by France. In his opinion the revolutionary
movement had gone astray; and mankind could hope for
improvement only by the steady development of all that
was best in the leading nations.

The disillusionment comes out most clearly in the works
of Schiller. His sensitive spirit thrilled responsive to the
collective impulses of his time. Indeed, his works form a
mirror of the age. His first play, The Robbers (1779), pro-
duced in his twentieth year, belongs to the poetry of revolt.
Animated by his defiance of law and custom, all spirited
German students then dreamt of overthrowing the petty
tyrannies around them — a topic portrayed in The Robbers
with school-boy extravagance. Later on, when for a tune
he quitted the drama for the domain of history, his thoughts
still turned towards topics of rebellion. His Revolt of the
Netherlands and Thirty Years' War deal with upheavals that
affected many peoples. It is the downfall of tyranny, the
progress of mankind in its sterner experiences, that interested

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 39

Schiller. Like Lessing and many other German thinkers of
that age, he was not a national patriot; he was a cosmopolitan.
Those leaders in thought and literature did not belong to
Jena, Wolfenbiittel, Weimar; they belonged to the world at
large; and their thoughts touched the imagination in spheres
far removed from the ducal or electoral States in which they
were conceived. Those writers, cramped though their sur-
roundings were, gave to the world a literature no less universal
than that of Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclopaedists. How
strange, that those giants of the eighteenth century should
have prided themselves on the effacement of national bound-
aries at the time when the political convulsion partly brought
about by their teaching was destined to parcel out the peoples
in distinct and hostile groups!

As an example of Schiller's contempt for a merely na-
tional patriotism, take this fine passage from one of his
letters, dealing with the aim which the historian ought to set
before him. It was written in 1789, shortly after he became
Professor of History at Jena: —

"This is the problem; to choose and arrange your materials,
so that, in order to interest, they shall not have the need of decora-
tion. We moderns have a source of interest at our disposal which
no Greek or Roman was acquainted with, and which the patriotic
interest does not nearly equal. This last, in general, is chiefly of
importance for unripe nations, for the youth of the world. But
we may excite a very different sort of interest if we represent each
remarkable occurrence that happened to men as being of impor-
tance to man. It is a poor and little aim to write for one nation;
a philosophic spirit cannot tolerate such limits, cannot bound its
views to a form of human nature so arbitrary, fluctuating, acciden-
tal. The most powerful nation is but a fragment; and thinking
minds will not grow warm on its account, except in so far as this
nation or its fortunes have exercised influence on the progress of
the species."

40 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

"Arbitrary, fluctuating, accidental"; these terms well de-
scribe the life of the average German State — a mere atom in
a kaleidoscope. How could one feel much enthusiasm about
Wiirtemberg, Anhalt, or the little county of Limburg-Styrum,
with its standing army of six officers and two privates! Yet
it was in some of those pigmy societies that the human mind
took its loftiest flights; and it is open to question whether
small States, the life of which is homely and the burdens light,
do not favor the growth of the intellect far better than the
enormous aggregations of the present, with their vast and
diffuse aims, their complex problems, and the crushing load
of taxation and military service. Contrast the cast-iron
philosophy and brassy literature of modern Germany with
that of the quaint and kindly age which witnessed the birth
every year of some masterpiece ennobling the life of the little
town. Which is the greater Germany? That of Goethe or
that of Wilhelm II?

A figure equally typical of the serene cosmopolitanism of
old Germany is the philosopher Fichte (1762-1814). We are
concerned now only with his ideas on national development;
but in a later lecture I shall return to his theory of the State,
which contains much that is questionable, even dangerous.
Here I wish to point out the contrast between his earlier
and later teachings in reference to the German polity. The
most important work of his earlier period is the series of
lectures entitled "Characteristics of the Present Age," which
he delivered to a general audience at Berlin in 1804-5. The
lectures are remarkable for their complete neglect of the
principle of nationality, though revolutionary France was
largely the product of that potent force. Fichte discourses
at large on the human race as a whole. He asks: What is
the plan of the world? What is the fundamental idea of
human We viewed collectively? In Lecture I he defines it
thus: "The End of the life of mankind on earth is this — that

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 41

in this life they may order all their relations with freedom
according to reason." l Stated with Anglo-Saxon bluntness,
this means that Reason is to rule in human affairs, and that
men ought to be free to choose the methods by which they
act reasonably. Everywhere in his lectures he considers
Europe as a whole. There is no need to follow him in his
tedious mapping-out of the different ages of human history,
except to notice his conviction, that the world was then in
the third age — that of liberation from external authority.
He declares the age to be one of unrestrained licence and
selfishness; but he hopes that the race will ultimately win
its way back to justification and sanctification. In all his
tedious disquisition there is no sign that he perceives the
force of national differences and of the diverse parts which
different nations may have to play. With serene indifference
to such distinctions, he assumes that somehow mankind will
move, or be moved, onward through the five cycles. In
Lecture XIV he says: "The Christian Europeans are essen-
tially but one people; they recognize this common Europe
as their one true Fatherland; and, from one end of it to the
other, pursue nearly the same purposes and are ever actuated
by similar motives." The statement proves how blind cos-
mopolitan philosophers can be to disagreeable facts. En-
closing themselves in their own theories, and confusing what
is with what ought to be, minds of that order often construct
a world of their own, and rail at persons who remind them
of the existence of the world of actualities. Fichte, in his
earlier phase, was one of these philosophizing spiders, living
in a web which he had evolved from his inner consciousness,
and calling it the world. Consider the facts. Napoleon
had overrun Hanover and the Kingdom of Naples in the
endeavor to beat down the British Power. He had turned
Germany upside down with his Secularizations, and the war
1 Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age (Eng. Transl., p. 5).

42 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

was clearly about to become world- wide; for Russia and
Austria were arming against the great Emperor, who reck-
lessly defied them. Yet Fichte says that all Christian peo-
ples recognize Europe as their common Fatherland, are pur-
suing nearly the same purposes, and are actuated by similar
motives.

Elsewhere, however, he admits that these Christian States
are striving perpetually for supremacy. Sometimes one
prevails: then another; and (says Fichte) the truly enlight-
ened man will always owe allegiance to the one which pre-
vails— a startling touch of worldly prudence. Only the
earth-born souls will remain citizens of the fallen State,
recognizing their Fatherland in its soil, and rivers and moun-
tains, which is all they desire. But "the sun-like Spirit,
irresistibly attracted, will whig its way wherever there is
Light and Liberty. And in this cosmopolitan frame of
mind we may look with perfect serenity on the actions and
the fate of Nations, for ourselves and our successors, even to
the end of Tune."

This theory, if translated into practice, works out thus:
If Prussia prevails over Austria, all enlightened Germans
will transfer their allegiance to her. If France prevails
over Prussia, these neo-Prussians will become Frenchmen
at heart. If France falls, and there ensues a complete
Balance of Power these political chameleons will run about
distracted, seeking in vain for a predominant color. Was
Fichte's fluid cosmopolitanism the outcome of despair at
Germany's helplessness and of Napoleon's omnipotence? Or
did he share Goethe's conviction as to the need of renovation
by "the new Charlemagne"? It is difficult to say. One
thing alone is clear, his utter indifference to the claims of
country. Whether France, Prussia, or Austria gained the
supremacy was nothing to him.

No! The national idea in Germany was first set forth

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 43

by a man who dealt, not with abstractions but realities, not
with States but peoples. While Fichte was groping his way
through these hazy abstractions, a poet and historian found
his way to firm ground. Schiller gave to the world Wilhelm
Tett (1804).

He designed it as "a national drama, in sympathy with
all the liberal tendencies of the age." I believe that he
hoped to stir up a truly German feeling, and thus stay the
dry-rot that was creeping into the life of his people. With
the insight of a poet he had long noted the strength of pa-
triotism. The national revival of France, effected by the
Maid of Orleans, had inspired his drama on that subject;
and in 1803-4 he turned his thoughts towards the German
Swiss of the Forest Cantons. The inner meaning of the
play lies in the conflict between the free mountaineers of the
Ur-Cantonen and the greed and usurpation of the House
of Hapsburg. True, the human interest of the story centres
in the character and action of the legendary hero, Tell.
The drama must have heroes, not heroic abstractions; and
Tell is a fine specimen of the Swiss mountaineer, frank,
generous, unsuspicious, no meddler in politics, and slow to
act against recognized authority. He is the central figure of
the drama; but he is not the moving spirit of its action. That
spirit is the instinct of the people. Outraged by the bar-
barities of the Hapsburg soldiery, that instinct asserts itself
at first in saving this or that defender of his home; further
than this Tell will not go. He represents the average good-
natured mountaineer, who will save an individual, but
does not understand political action, so that he is reproached
for his want of fervor in the common cause. In fact, the
instinct of the people wells forth most fully in the person
of a woman. Gertrud is the moving influence of the piece.
While her husband, Werner Stauffacher, seems likely to
endure tamely all the threats and insolence of the Hapsburg

44 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

officers, she counsels resistance; and when he speaks of
the horrors of war she replies: —

"Look forward, Werner, not behind you, now."

When again he reminds her of the nameless fate that may
befall her, she utters these lofty words: —

"None are so weak, but one last choice is left.
A leap from yonder bridge, and I am free."

Spurred to action by his wife's heroism, Stauffacher takes
counsel with other men of Unterwalden; and they resolve
to assemble on the Rutli rock above the Lake of Lucerne,
meeting there the men of Schywtz and Uri. In that primeval
solitude, and under cover of night, they assemble to renew
the ancient bond of union between the three cantons. Acts
of brutal tyranny by the minions of Austria now bring to-
gether men long sundered in times of peace. They listen as
Stauffacher unfolds to them the story of their Germanic
parentage; how, driven forth by famine from the northern
plain, their forefathers forced a way into the Swiss mountains
and made them homes in diverse valleys; yet ever were they
mindful of their Switzer origin. Now, against Hapsburg
usurpation they must make common cause, not only as free
Switzers, but also as loyal sons of the old Germanic Empire.
Before they swear to resist Austria's novel claims, a priest,
Rosselmann, steps into the ring and urges them, for the sake
of peace and quietness, to give way before Austria. One
and all, they scout the proposal as that of a traitor; and
they pass this decree: —

"Whoe'er

Shall talk of tamely bearing Austria's yoke,
Let him be stripped of all his rights and honors;
And no man hence receive him at his hearth."

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 45

After this drastic treatment of the pacifist case, they pro-
ceed to renew their bond of union: —

"We swear to be a nation of true brothers,
Never to part in danger or in death."

(They swear, with three fingers raised.)
"We swear we will be free as were our sires,
And sooner die than live in slavery."

(They swear, as before.)

What is this but a Social Contract in a poetical setting?
Schiller had been an enthusiastic student of Rousseau; and
he believed firmly in the formation of political societies by
the action of the people, which would necessarily lead to
liberty and harmony. The States thus formed would be
strong and stable, far different from the artificial areas ruled
over by German princelings. The new Germanic State or
States would guarantee the welfare of Germans and keep
at arm's length the aggressor. The tone of the drama is
throughout intensely German. The last scenes reveal the
peasants free, united, and happy, while the House of Haps-
burg is rent asunder by revolt and by the murder of its
chief.

The moral of it all is clear. Schiller appeals to his country-
men to forget their miserable divisions which have left them
a prey to the aggressions of Napoleon. He seems to say to
the Germans of his day: "Will you not forget your absurd
differences? Will you not join hands across the political
barriers, and unite for the defence of your honor and your
dearest interests? Only so can you save the Fatherland from
subjection to an insolent usurper. Your princes cannot, or
will not, save you. Your own right hands, your own good
sense, must save you from servitude to the foreigner."

This, surely, is the inner meaning of the drama. It de-
scribes the birth of a nation, and as such it is regarded by

46 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

all Switzers. They look back to the scene on the Riitli rock
as the beginning of their political life. Whether that event
is historical, or semi-historical, or legendary is of small ac-
count. Even if it be legendary, it has exerted upon the
fortunes of Switzerland an influence more important than
that of cartloads of documents of unimpeachable authen-
ticity. It is one of those episodes which make the heart of a
people beat fast with pride and hope. In the Swiss House
of Parliament at Berne the Riitli scene has been painted
large on the wall behind the President's chair. In that Parlia-
ment there are men who speak French, German, and Italian;
but the feeling of unity aroused by the contemplation of that
scene transcends mere diversities of tongue, and merges the
fragments of those now warring peoples in a fervidly Swiss
nationality, which bids fair to outlast even the divulsive
influences of this war.1 It is true that the strain just now on
Swiss nationality is very severe; and the sharp tension which
prevails between the German and the Latin portions reveals
the strength of the tie of language. But here lies the interest
of the case of Switzerland. The Swiss cherish a collective
sentiment which far transcends race and language, a senti-
ment springing from pride in a glorious past and love of the
mountains around which they cluster. The Swiss will, I
believe, remain a nation, and will not merge into the three
great peoples that surround them. Their keen historic sense,
their romantic attachment to their mountains and rivers,
will keep them united. In this respect they are the "earth-
born souls" at whom Fichte scoffed; and this clinging to the
soil, this pride in their achievements, will, I venture to say,
help to keep Switzerland a united whole. In this sense the

1 Count Mamiani, Rights of Nations [Eng. edit., 1860], p. 44, says that
the Swiss are not "in the ordinary sense properly a nation." This I
deny. For, as I shall show, in Lecture VIII, it is sentiment and will,
not language, that make a nation.

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 47

legend of Wilhelm Tell, and the presentment of it by Schiller,
form a national asset of priceless worth.

For Germany, too, Wilhelm Tell soon became preeminently
the national drama. The instinct of the people caught at
the truth which was there enshrined. Thenceforth Na-
poleon was regarded as the national enemy, and union against
him as the paramount duty of all. The patriotic songs in
this and others of Schiller's dramas inspired thousands of
youths who went gladly into the almost hopeless struggle
against the great Emperor. As was finely said at a meeting
in memory of Schiller: "Thousands who trembled not when
the earth groaned with the weight of the despot's mailed
cavalry; men who with fearless hearts confronted the thunder
of his artillery ... all carried with them into the struggle
the enthusiasm kindled by Schiller's poetry; his songs were
on their lips, and his spirit fought with them."

During the years 1805-11 that struggle brought nothing
but disaster to the opponents of Napoleon. The organized
might of the French Empire seemed likely to overbear the
rest of Europe; and if one investigates the causes of this
superiority, they appear to be these: France was the only
great nation completely permeated with the new national
spirit, and also thoroughly organized for war. The British
and Spanish peoples were patriotic, but were ill-organized,
while in Napoleon France found the most ruthlessly efficient
organizer of all time. The other European States were in a
chaotic condition. Austria was a house of cards; Prussia
was little better; Russia was honeycombed by corruption.
In fact, after the death of Pitt and the dismissal of Stein,
Napoleon was confronted by mere mediocrities both in the
Cabinet and in the field. Or, to sum up, the new national
spirit, born in and after 1804, was a mere infant of days by
comparison with the splendid adolescence of France. The
experiences of those terrible years prove that the justice of

48 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

a cause is of little avail unless that cause .adapts itself to the
needs of the time. If the work of adaptation be slowly and
inefficiently carried out, the peoples that are at fault will
suffer for their sins of omission. One of the sternest lessons
of history is that inefficient and slipshod work, even if it
be in the best of causes, must bring disaster. Peoples are
punished for slackness and inertia as much as they are for
positive crimes. So it was with England, Spam, and Prussia
in the years 1804-12. Until they found out Wellington,
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Bliicher, all the lofty aspira-
tions and enthusiasms were of little avail.

Out of the darkness of despair that brooded over Prussia
after the disaster of Jena, one voice sounded forth in words
of inspiration and hope. When she lay under the heel of
Napoleon; when Berlin and all Prussian cities were garrisoned
by French troops, Fichte's easy cosmopolitanism fell from
him. Like all noble natures, his was not convinced by con-
quest. In those dark days he found that he could not trans-
fer his allegiance from Berlin to Paris, though Paris was
incontestably supreme, and Berlin seemed to have gone
under for ever. Even before the campaign of Jena he ad-
dressed the Prussian army in glowing terms; and when it
streamed away eastwards towards the Vistula and Niemen
in utter rout, his patriotic feelings deepened, as will those of
all true men and women in time of anxiety or disaster. Then
it was that he discovered cosmopolitanism to be only a fair-
weather creed. After the Peace of Tilsit, when Prussia lost
half her lands and all her prestige, Fichte stood forth at
Berlin, and, within sound of the drums of the French garri-
son, deh'vered his "Addresses to the German Nation." They
purported to be a continuation of the lectures given in 1804-5 ;
but they breathe an utterly different spirit. For in the in-
terval the idea of nationality laid hold of the popular imagina-
tion; and now, too, when the fabric of the Prussian State

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 49

had fallen in ruin, Fichte saw the German nation. Pre-
viously he had discoursed about States: now his theme was
far more definite, more human. In face of the Napoleonic
ascendancy, what were Prussia and Austria, Saxony and
Bavaria? As those miserable divisions had invited disaster,
so, too, a close union might bring salvation. The topic was
dangerous, as Fichte was well aware: "I know the risk (so
he wrote to Beyme in January, 1808). I know that a bullet
may strike me down as well as Palm.1 But that is not what
I fear; and, for the aim which I have in view, I too would
gladly die."

His aim was to convince Germans everywhere that their
present ruin was due to selfishness. Egotism had divided
them up into myriads of petty States and kept them divided;
so that, what with political barriers and class divisions, they
never caught a glimpse of wide and generous aims. He called
his age the age of giant selfishness, which had developed to
the utmost on all sides and was about to destroy itself. The
description is apt if applied to Germany; for, if the Germany
of that tune was the result of petty selfishness, Napoleon was
also the incarnation of colossal acquisitiveness. In the game
of grab, into which European politics had degenerated since
the accession of Frederick the Great, all trust and confidence
had vanished, and thus the great robber-baron beyond the
Rhine was able to prey on the thieving knights and footpads of
Germany. As yet there was no sign of effective union; for
how can there be a firm union among thieves? Fichte was
correct in his diagnosis of the disease which paralyzed Europe
in 1804-7. Egotism and greed had made of it mere political
rubble, and the cement of public confidence was nowhere to
be found. Distrust must give way to trust (said Fichte);
the old jealousy between German States must vanish in

1 Palm, a Niirnberg bookseller, was shot by Napoleon's order for the
crime of selling a patriotic pamphlet.

SO NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

view of the urgency of their universal interests; in place of
the class feeling, which had weakened Prussia, there must
arise a national feeling, based on the perception of kindred
aims and duties. Selfishness (said he) is self -destructive; for,
when it has run its full course, no firm foundation is left.
That vice had ruined Germany. How must she be recon-
structed?

Fichte's answer is not altogether clear. It does not sound
forth with the trumpet tones of conviction by which Mazzini
thrilled Italy hi the thirties. The German philosopher had not
the abounding faith and enthusiasm of the Italian prophet.
Further, he was hampered by the endeavor to express every-
thing in abstract terms, while Mazzini spoke straight to the
heart of the people. The cloudiness of Fichte's views also re-
sulted from his being a pioneer of thought in this direction —
witness his definition of a nation (Lecture VI) — "A nation is
the whole community of persons living in social intercourse,
ever propagating itself in a natural manner, and existing
collectively under a certain special law of the development of
the divine out of it."

This nebulous circumlocution in no sense advances our
knowledge of the subject; and it must be confessed that the
Addresses are often both dull and confused. Especially tire-
some are Lectures IV- VII, which demonstrate the Germanic
nature of the Germans with an iteration that seems wholly
needless to-day, however much it was needful then to awaken
their dormant national sentiment. After these digressions
Fichte's narrative straightens and broadens. Very effective
is the reference to the ancient Germans, who refused to face
the possibility of being Romanized and were resolved at all
costs to order their lives hi their own way. Coming to the
present he lifts the idea of the nation to an eminence whence
it may radiate hope to the myriads of Germans who had
vegetated in little States, one and all now subject to Napoleon.

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 51

The following passage in Lecture VIII must have been a
revelation to all who could grasp its meaning: —

"Nation and Fatherland in this sense, as bearer of and securer
for immortality in this world, and as that which alone here below
can be eternal, far transcend the State in the usual sense of that
term. . . . This [the State] aims only at security of rights, internal
peace, a livelihood to everyone, and preservation of material exist-
ence during Heaven's pleasure by means of toil. All this is only
the means, condition, preparation for that which patriotism essen-
tially aims at, the blossoming of the eternal and divine in the world.
For that very reason, as being the supreme, final, and independent
authority, must govern the State itself, while limiting it in the
choice of means for its next object, internal peace. With this object
in view, the natural freedom of the individual must be restricted
in many ways; and, if one has no other intention and ami than this,
it would be well to restrict it within the narrowest limits possible."

Idealism here tails off into realism. Fichte's celestial arc
ends in a Prussian drill-yard. In later passages he insists on
the need of conscription and the drastic restriction of in-
dividual liberty. Of course, there were powerful motives
why he should urge the claims of Fatherland. It had been
ruined by individual selfishness, both of princes and classes.
Now, says Fichte, all Germans must think first of the nation
and of the duties which they owe to it. No longer must they
shift their responsibilities on to someone else. Every man
must realize his duty and perform it manfully. For this
purpose he will nerve himself by catching a glimpse of what
the future may bring to the German nation. He will resolve
that the Fatherland shall be absolutely independent of alien
rule. Just as the eye can be trained to feel disgust at dirt
and disorder, so, too, the political vision of Germans can be
quickened until they will reject all thought of subjection to
the foreigner. In order to fire them with the heroism neces-

52 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

sary for driving out the French, Fichte faces the problem of
the motive power dormant in the will of man. How shall
the ordinary citizen be nerved to the self-abandonment that
can accomplish wonders of bravery? That is the problem.
Evidently, no ordinary motive will suffice. Or, to quote his
words: "Not the spirit of quiet civic obedience to the con-
stitution and the laws. No; but the burning flame of the
higher patriotism which conceives the nation as the embodi-
ment of the eternal, to which the high-minded man joyfully
devotes himself; while the base-minded man, who only exists
for the other, must be compelled to devote himself."

Developing this thought, Fichte seeks to fortify the hero-
ism, even of the high-minded man, by the following inspiring
thought. Such an one will prize his nation above all else;
for it is only the nation which can assure the continuity of his
work. He will value his lif e, not for the sake of mere existence,
but for the amount of work which he can accomplish; and,
as the nation is the guardian of that work and its guarantor
for the future, he will value its safety far above his own. For
the nation, then, he will gladly lay down his life, so that,
as far as in him lies, he may assure the survival of the larger
life which alone lends significance to his own.1 The thought
is like that which Kipling, by a flash of genius, has enshrined
in one glorious line: —

"Who dies if England lives?"

It is obvious that Fichte's doctrine as to the absolute
sovereignty of the nation over the lives of all its members
was and is liable to great abuse. Fichte's glowing words
must not blind us to the risk of entrusting the nation for ever
with unlimited powers of life and death.2 Noble though his

1 Fichte, Lecture VIII.

2 See Lord Acton's remarks [Essays on Liberty, p. 228] on the Machi-
avellian traits in Fichte's teaching.

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 53

theory may be when the question is of expelling the foreigner,
it becomes pestilential when that task is achieved, and the
nation of death-defying heroes look forth upon less redoubt-
able neighbors. This, as we have seen, was the temptation
that lured Revolutionary France into wars of conquest. A
similar temptation has lured the Germany of William I
into the mad ways of William II.

In the tune of Fichte the only question was that of regain-
ing the independence of Germany. But how was it to be
regained? Not by force; that was impossible when the French
held all the fortresses. By moral means, then, — says Fichte
(Lectures IX-XI) — by education; for that is the only domain
in which Napoleon leaves the Germans free. The philosopher
points out that in many respects German education has been
utterly defective. It has been narrow and uninspiring; it
has left its pupils cold and selfish; so that, despite all the
teaching, they have not followed its higher precepts and
warnings, but have gone on following the impulses of their
own natural selfishness. Hitherto education has neither
instructed nor inspired. But its true function is to inspire.
The true educator will not be satisfied with instructing. He
will seek to uplift the moral nature of his students. He will
set forth so glowing a picture of the ideal life that, before it,
cold selfishness will melt away. The moral order of the uni-
verse will appear in so radiant a vision that the petty egotism
of the individual will vanish. And not only the wealthy
and middle classes are to be thus inspired. All classes will
be influenced by the wider and nobler education of the future.
"We desire to inspire Germans by a feeling of unity which
may throb through all their limbs." At this point, as he
catches a vision of what a better training may effect, he doffs
his academic stiffness and exclaims in the inspired words of
Ezekiel: "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied, as He

54 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

commanded me; and the breath came into them, and they
lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army."

As to the educational methods to be adopted, Fichte
strongly recommended those of the Swiss reformer, Pestalozzi.
They were adopted, and, after the infusion of German
method, they were found to be of great service. Elementary
education, therefore, received an impetus of great value in
Prussia; and this development, together with the reforms of
Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg, laid the basis for the
healthier polity of the future. In the academic sphere equal
progress was made by the establishment of the thoroughly
national Universities of Berlin and Breslau (1809-11). An
enlightened patriotism watched over them from the start.
The King gave a royal palace so that Berlin might have
suitable University buildings; and from the nearly bankrupt
Treasury 150,000 dollars a year were awarded for the main-
tenance of the new institution. Hitherto, for the most part,
German Universities had existed in small towns remote from
political life; and in them there was evolved the type of pro-
fessor depicted by Carlyle in the person of Diogenes Teu-
felsdrockh, Professor of Things in General in the University
of Weissnichtwo. Readers of Sartor Resartus will remember
that Teuf elsdrockh in the early part of his career was mainly
occupied with the cognate employments, — "to think and
smoke tobacco." These led him only to the Everlasting
No. But in lucid intervals he gradually fought his way
towards the Everlasting Yes — "The chief end of life is not
thought but action. . . . Up! Up! Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might."

This surprising change mirrors that which came over the
life of Germany in the decade 1804 to 1813. The time of
divisions, of sloth, of pleasurable self-seeking passed away;
and in its place there came a time marked by terrible suffering
and poverty, but irradiated by the noblest deeds of self-

SCHILLER AND FICHTE 55

sacrifice and heroism. For the most inspired poet and
philosopher had spoken to that people in words that burned.
Schiller showed what the heroism of unlettered mountaineers
could effect in a great and inspiring cause. Fichte, too, after
emerging from dreamland, came out into the world of reality
and helped to lead his countrymen thither. Emerging from
their holes and corners, they discovered their essential one-
ness; and, as happened to Frenchmen twenty years earlier,
the uplif t from a narrow provincialism to a sense of national-
ity endowed them with a buoyancy and vigor never known
before. Arndt, Korner, and others composed national songs
that stirred the blood; and from the Universities there came
professors and students, resolved to win the freedom and
independence which Fichte's glowing words had made an
essential of life. He, too, formerly so unpractical, sealed the
new doctrine with his life-blood; for he died of a fever caught
while his wife and he tended the wounded in hospital — an
episode as significant as any in the drama of the War of
Liberation.

LECTURE IV
THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING

" C'est de PEspagne que 1'Europe apprit que Napoleon pouvait
etre vaincu, et comme il pouvait 1'etre." — TALLEYKAND, Mtmoires,
I, 389-

THE rising of the German people against Napoleon in 1813
is for ever memorable, not only for a heroism finally crowned
with well-merited triumph, but also for the work of intellec-
tual and moral preparation, which endowed their national
movement with solid backing and permanent results. On
turning our thoughts towards the Spanish Peninsula we are
conscious of an entire change of conditions, both external and
internal. The Spaniards are sometimes reproached with
having drawn from that same time of testing, the years 1808-
13, none of the beneficent influences that renewed and en-
riched the life of the German nation. To explain the causes of
this divergence is one of my aims in this lecture.

Firstly, Germany held an honored place in the intel-
lectual movement of the eighteenth century. Her leading
men, even some of her rulers, were in full sympathy with
"Illuminism," which promised peacefully to banish ignorance
and to make of mankind one happy family. They welcomed
the French Revolution; and only after the perversion of its
aims did Teuton and Gaul come into serious conflict. Even
when racial animosities were embittered by the Napoleonic
occupation, the leaders of thought in Germany continued
their efforts, albeit with aims that were distinctly national,
not international as of yore. Consequently, eighteenth-

56

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 57

century culture did much to invigorate the new life of Central
Europe.

Far different was the condition of Spain. She had stood
apart from the intellectual movement, which found exponents
among a mere handful of her sons. Consequently there were
no influential groups of savants, no inspiring traditions, on
which the Spanish revival could be based; and, as we shall
see, the strange shifts to which their patriots were reduced
prevented any well-considered plan of action.

Of all these difficulties the fundamental cause was the
aloofness of Spain from Europe. Her aloofness explains
not only her intellectual separation, but also her exclusive
nationalism. The divergence of her interests from those
of her neighbors is due to her insularity. Though seas
connect, mountains divide; and the Pyrenees form the most
rigid barrier in Europe. No land-power has much influenced
the life of Spain, because no land-power has ever been able
to control it for long. In the Dark Ages conquerors from the
North, Vandals and Visigoths, swept over and even tried to
hold the Peninsula. But the effort of the latter people to
rule it from Toulouse broke down, just as a similar attempt of
Charlemagne broke down. The rugged and impervious
barrier of the Pyrenees accounts for the failure. Spam either
defied her would-be conquerors from the North, or else she
absorbed them.

On the other hand, her Mediterranean coasts almost
invite the invader; and she was in succession all but subdued
by Carthaginians, Romans, and Moors. But there again, as
Livy remarked, the extremes of climate, the barren plateau
in the interior, and the wonderful tenacity of the Spaniards in
defending their towns rendered complete conquest almost
impossible. The Moors, even at the height of their power,
never crushed the defenders of the northern fastnesses, who
little by little pushed back the invaders, and in the process

58 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

fashioned the national character to its extremes of valor,
bigotry, and pride. Later on, the French monarchs were to
experience the toughness of the Spanish nature, and Henri IV
summed up their enterprises in the phrase: "In Spain small
armies will be beaten, large armies will starve." The mem-
ories of conquest of the New World and of invincibility in
their own peninsula stiffened the neck of the Spaniards even
in the days of their decline. Robert Southey, during his
travels in Spain in 1794-5, relates that a Spanish manufac-
turer who had sought to introduce wheelbarrows into his
works could not persuade his men to use them. All kinds of
vehicles were meant for beasts of burden, not for Spaniards!
The experience of the Italian poet, Alfieri, was the same. He
declared the Spaniards to be the only people of Europe
"possessed of sufficient energy to struggle against foreign
usurpation."

Such was the people whom Napoleon sought to harness
to his conqueror's car. In the encyclopaedic studies of his
youth there is a serious gap. Nowhere does he seem to have
studied national character. It was one of the defects of
eighteenth-century thought to ignore differences of race.
Man was considered as man; and, though Rousseau echoed
some of the cautions which Montesquieu had given forth as
to those differences, the French Revolutionists paid little
heed; and Napoleon certainly erred in assuming that men
would in general respond to the same appeals. In his official
correspondence is included one letter (dated March 28, 1808)
which cautions Murat against ignoring the national energy of
the Spaniards; but that letter is a later invention. In the
genuine letters there appear no signs even of ordinary cau-
tion, as to the risk of provoking the Spaniards. So far as we
can judge, Napoleon shared the belief, common in France
since the days of Choiseul, that they were a decadent people,
negligible as a political force.

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 59

This extreme confidence was, perhaps, natural after his
conquest of Austria, Prussia, and Russia in the campaigns
of 1805-7. England had blundered badly on land; and
the Emperor hoped, by means of the new Russian alliance,
and thanks to the enforced assistance of the Spanish navy,
to reverse the victory of Trafalgar and overthrow even her
naval power. Spain, then, he regarded as a tool in the world-
wide strife. Early hi March, 1808, when Barcelona was
scarcely held down by the troops of General Duhesme, the
Emperor wrote to Murat: "There is no discontent whatever
at Barcelona. General Duhesme is a gossip. ... On the
whole, the people are well disposed, and when we have the
citadel, we have everything." Napoleon was then at Paris.
He had never been hi Spain; yet he claimed to know about the
Spaniards better than the French generals then in that coun-
try. On April 26, while at Bayonne, he wrote to Murat, at
Madrid: "It is tune for you to show fitting energy. I expect
you will not spare the Madrid mob, if it stirs, and that you
will have it disarmed immediately." On April 29 he wrote to
the Tsar Alexander I: "These family quarrels [those of
Charles IV of Spain with the Heir Apparent, Ferdinand]
cause me some trouble; but I will soon be free to arrange the
great affair with Your Majesty." [The "great affair" was
the partition of Turkey, in which the Spanish fleet was to be
serviceable.] After Murat's troops had shot down hundreds
of the men of Madrid hi the patriotic rising of May 2, the
Emperor complimented him on his energy, and announced
to him the signature of a treaty with the senile Charles IV
at Bayonne, whereby the latter resigned to him (Napoleon)
all rights to the throne of Spam. The Estates of Spain
would assemble at Bayonne to take suitable measures! All
the genuine letters of the time show no sign of apprehension of
a national rising in Spain. They are those of a general who
believes that he has that people by the throat. Because

60 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

French troops occupy Madrid, Barcelona, all the chief
northern fortresses, and those of Portugal; because also very
many of the Spanish troops are absent either in Portugal or
in Holstein, he deems the Spanish problem at an end. For
him Spain is the royal family, the Court, the grandees who
form the Estates. If he can bully the rightful successor,
Ferdinand, into a renunciation of his rights; if he can intern
in France both Charles IV and Ferdinand; if he can cajole the
Spanish grandees into a recognition of his own claims — then
he is master of Spain.

He left out of count one all-important factor — the nation.
So soon as the astounding news from Bayonne became known,
every town, every province of Spain rejected his sover-
eignty with scorn and loathing. In vain did Charles and
Ferdinand advise submission to the usurper; * in vain did
the Junta, composed of the leading men of Madrid, inculcate
the duty of obeying the new ruler; in vain did the Holy
Inquisition preach the same degrading course; in vain did
responsible persons and thinkers point out the madness of
opposing the master of the Continent. The people rejected
the counsels of authority, religion, experience, and reform.
With an impulse which was both furious and sustained, both
local and universal, they rushed at the French forces and
reduced them suddenly to the defensive. District by dis-
trict, province by province, they rose separately, yet with
astounding unanimity. The rising did not begin in Madrid;
for the turbulent in that city had been cowed by the cannon
and cavalry of Murat. How the same thought or instinct
laid hold of the whole of Spain within a few days is a mystery.
The episode reminds us of the incalculable forces which now
and again have aroused the tribes of Arabia or of the Soudan
to united action. Indeed, the Spanish Rising is a recurrence
to the ways of primitive man, or at least of the mediaeval
1 Ann. Register [1808], p. 214.

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 61

levies when the faithful mustered to fight the Moors. Then,
as in 1808, the impulse was general, yet the action was
provincial. Above all, it was action by the populace. In
many places those who had advised submission to the French
were butchered without mercy, and patriotic Juntas were
chosen by acclamation to arrange for the defence of each
province.

Especially noteworthy was the action of that of Asturias.
That little province of the North-West was the first to or-
ganize a Junta which took decisive action. With splendid
audacity that single Junta declared war against Napoleon;
and those who notice the connection of the instinct of na-
tionality with the historic sense will remember that in the
long warfare against the Moors, Asturias had been the last
hope of Spanish freedom. Now it was to be the first hope of
the coming national independence. That Junta took an-
other important step. It despatched two deputies to London
to beg help from the British people. Legally, Spam was at
war with us, as she had been since 1804. But Asturias
recked little of legality at such a time. Neither did our great
statesman, Canning. The warm welcome accorded by our
people to the Asturian deputies revealed to him as by a flash
the change that had just come over the spirit of the age.
Hitherto (as Sheridan finely said) "Bonaparte had run a
victorious race because he had contended against princes
without dignity, ministers without wisdom, and countries
where the people were indifferent as to his success." Clearly
a new age had dawned when a provincial Council dared to
throw down the gauntlet to the great Emperor.

I have failed to find in the British archives an account
either of Canning's interview with the two delegates or
of the Cabinet meeting where the decision was formed to
help the Spanish people. It must have been formed very
quickly; for on June 15 Canning spoke as follows in the

62 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

House of Commons: "We shall proceed upon the prin-
ciple that any nation of Europe that starts up to oppose a
Power, . . . the common enemy of all nations, whatever be
the existing political relations of that nation, it becomes in-
stantly our essential Ally." In pursuance of this definitely
national policy, Great Britain on July 4 ordered the cessation
of hostilities with Spain; and there ensued an informal but
binding alliance with the Spanish people. There was an
inner fitness in this compact; for it bound together the only
States which then were conterminous with nations. Na-
poleonic France had far outleaped her natural bounds.
The British and Spanish peoples now undertook to restrain
her within just limits; and the potency of the national im-
pulse is seen in the rally of every people in Europe to their
side in the years 1812-14.

The Anglo-Spanish Alliance is, therefore, a turning point
in the long struggle against Napoleon. Up to the year 1807
he had embodied the genius and strength of Revolutionary
France; and her strength (at once democratic and national)
far exceeded that of the torpid and artificial States around
her. But now, from motives of ambition, he went out of
his way to interfere with a people that only asked to be
left alone; and his conduct aroused in it a hatred that noth-
ing could quench. Consequently, the national impulse,
which had helped France to overthrow the moribund States
of Italy and Germany, now began to operate against her;
and even the military genius of Napoleon could not make
up for the downward drag which this fatal incubus entailed.
No campaigns were so much detested by the French sol-
diery as those in Spam; and that, not so much because they
had to face Wellington and the Spanish climate, as on ac-
count of the savage hatred which they encountered from
the Spaniards themselves. The outcome of that hatred
will appear in the following passages, taken from the first

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 63

Proclamation of the Supreme Junta. After recounting
some successes of the Spaniards and advising a war of par-
tisans, the appeal thus refers to the memory of the glorious
past.

"France has never domineered over us, nor set her foot in our
territory. We have many times mastered her, not by deceit, but
by force of arms; we have made her Kings prisoners, and we have
made that nation tremble; we are the same Spaniards; and France
and Europe and the world shall see that we are not less gallant
than the most glorious of our ancestors."

The proclamation then states that when their lawful King,
Ferdinand, is restored

"the Cortes will be assembled, abuses reformed, and such laws be
enacted as the circumstances of the time and experience may
dictate for the public good and happiness — things which we
Spaniards know how to do, which we have done as well as other
nations, without any necessity that the vile French should come
to instruct us; and, according to their custom, under the mask of
friendship and wishes for our happiness, should contrive to plunder
us, to violate our women, to assassinate us, to deprive us of our
liberty, our laws, and our King, to scoff at and destroy our holy
religion. . . ." 1

That is an official document. As for the pamphlets of
the time, let this suffice. It is a retort to Napoleon's offer
of reforms, beginning with the usual formula: "Napoleon,
Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the
Confederation of the Rhine," etc. The counterblast be-
gins:—

"Yes! Napoleon, that is Napo-dragon, Apollyon, Ruler of the
Abyss, King of the monsters of Hell, heretics, and heretic princes, —
Abominable Beast, Protector, Head and Soul of the Confederation
1 Ibid., pp. 218, 219.

64 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

of the Rhine, that is of the seven heads and ten horns of the beast,
which bear blasphemies against God and the Saints. . . ."

Thus religion was now invoked against the French. For
this the Emperor had himself to thank. As if his Spanish
business were not enough, he in that same springtime de-
spoiled the Pope of four provinces. In consequence, Pius
VII anathematized his despoiler, and urged the Spaniards
to arise like David and slay Goliath. The Spanish Rising
therefore partook of the nature of a crusade. Their armies
were placed under the protection of saints, and in some
cases relics of saints went with them to battle, thereby in-
flaming the Spanish nature to its utmost.

All these aids were needed; for in a military sense Spam
was almost defenceless. Her regular troops were, in the
main, absent; her capital and chief fortresses were held
by the French; there was no one centre of union for the
various provinces, which soon fell to quarrelling about
the allocation of the money and stores sent from England.
Indeed, Spain was in a worse plight than France was be-
fore the Battle of Valmy; but the same potent impulse
nerved the defenders; and, fortunately for the Spanish
patriots, Napoleon's eagerness to seize the fleet at Cadiz
(including the French ships that escaped from Trafalgar)
led him prematurely to press on a large French force to-
wards that port. It was surrounded, overborne, and com-
pelled to surrender at Baylen (July, 1808). What Valmy
had been to France, Baylen was to Spain, a proof that she
could overcome troops hitherto deemed invincible.

In one respect the Spanish victory at Baylen was a mis-
fortune. It filled the Spaniards with intolerable conceit.
When Joseph Bonaparte and the French troops fell back
behind the line of the Ebro, the perfervid imagination of
the South saw hi fancy the standards of Spain soaring over

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 65

the Pyrenees and entering the plains of Guienne. Napier
relates that the Spanish officers remarked to those of Sir
John Moore's army: " We are much obliged to our friends,
the English; we thank them for their good will; we shall
escort them through France to Calais; . . . they shall not
have the trouble of fighting the French; and we shall be
pleased to have them as spectators of our victories."1 This
lofty spirit went before a terrible fall. In the autumn and
winter of 1808 Napoleon burst in on these cackling fowl
and scattered them to the winds. Yet, even so, Spain was
not conquered. After every defeat she rose, still defiant.
The defence of her walled towns, especially Saragossa, was
sublime; and that defence was conducted by the people
themselves, no less than by the military. Fifty French
cannon during forty days played upon its walls and massive
monasteries before the eagles of Napoleon floated over the
ruins of the capital of Aragon.

It was both the weakness and the strength of the Spaniards
that their national sense was largely provincial. It was
their weakness because the provinces rarely worked well
together. The different Juntas were absurdly jealous as
well as greedy. Besides, owing to the occupation of Madrid
by the enemy, there was no possibility of direction from a
central point. Further, the haughty and suspicious nature
of the Spaniards rendered cordial co-operation with Wel-
lington extremely difficult. Hence the Duke, after Talavera,
left them alone and operated from Portugal as a base. Not
until Napoleon's Grand Army perished in Russia was there
a chance of beating the French in Spain. But then, in 1813,
after numerous defeats had rendered the natives more rea-
sonable, all the forces of the Peninsula pulled well together.
The results were phenomenal, and French domination van-
ished in the brief campaign of Vittoria.
1 Napier, I, 84.

66 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Nevertheless, the provincial sentiment also strengthened
the Spanish cause; for when one province was lost, the others
resisted none the less stoutly; and the task of the French
in holding down a population that scorned surrender in-
creased with every success. As Marshal Jourdan wrote:
"The more soundly the Spanish armies were beaten, the
more eagerly did that people rush to arms; the more the
French gained ground, the more dangerous did their po-
sition become." The broken and inhospitable nature of
the country singularly favored the partisan warfare of
the defenders, so that, provided Wellington held a large
French force to the West, and all the other provinces per-
severed, the ultimate failure of the French was inevitable.
Even the genius of Napoleon could not break down the
alliance of the Spanish national spirit with the great Sea
Power. Moreover, the display of this tenacious vitality
in a land hitherto deemed moribund created a profound
impression amidst every nation of the world.

Spain derived little permanent benefit from all this ex-
penditure of energy; and the reason for this disappointing
finale seems to be that the Spanish movement differed in
toto from that of France nineteen years before. In its es-
sence the French Revolution was a revolt of the brain of
France against a cramping system which she had long out-
grown. In 1808 it was not the brain, but the heart of Spain
which led to action; and the action was directed solely against
foreign invaders or usurpers. The Spanish Rising offers
an example of nationalism in its most passionate form.
It is, on a large scale, the action of a family, which seeks
to expel intruders who have violated its hospitality. In
such a case we do not expect the family immediately to
set about the reform of its internal economy. Long before
the events of 1789 France (if we may pursue our simile)
had been outgrowing its ancestral abode, and the call for

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 67

reconstruction and refitting was imperative. The case of
Spain was utterly different. Therefore, to reproach the
Spaniards for not making so good a use as the French of
the opportunity offered by an outburst of national zeal
is manifestly unfair.

Nevertheless, the Spaniards did attempt to make some
changes, though hi a somewhat hurried and one-sided way.
The defects of their procedure resulted from two dominant
facts. They had to legislate at Cadiz; and at that city,
within sound of the roar of Marshal Soult's guns, deputies
of the unconquered provinces could assemble freely; but
refugees from the large portions of territory held by the
French were accepted as representatives of those unfor-
tunate towns and districts. Naturally, such a haphazard
assemblage did not evince qualities of prudence and good
sense, but rather of passion and prejudice. Naturally, too,
it was violently anti-French; and yet this very body, almost
of necessity, borrowed from France the groundwork for
the new constitution. As the English constitution was too
vague to appeal to Continental reformers, those of Cadiz
fell back upon the example set by the French Constituent
Assembly in 1791. They restricted the functions of their
future King within narrow limits; and, copying the phrase-
ology of the Rights of Man, they declared that "sovereignty
resided essentially in the nation." In this view of things,
Ferdinand VII, when restored, would be merely the first
magistrate of the land. Further, the men of Cadiz swept
away Feudalism root and branch, dissolved the monastic Or-
ders, and abolished the Inquisition. This servile imitation of
the French legislators of 1789-91 at once produced sharp
friction; and Ferdinand, after his restoration hi 1814, found
it easy to abrogate this imported constitution. Thus the
misuse of the national idea by a few extremists at Cadiz,
was destined to work infinite harm both to Spain herself

68 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

and to the cause of democracy and nationality so unwisely
championed. But it is only fair to remember that that
cause had not a fair chance amidst the storms and excite-
ments of so wholly exceptional an epoch.

Despite its obvious faults, the Spanish constitution of
1812 aroused much enthusiasm among neighboring peoples.
During the period of reaction and despair which followed the
downfall of Napoleon, the "Carbonari" of France and Italy
and the " Liberates " of Spain continued to strive for the
strange compromise of 1812; and it took tangible form during
a few months in Spain, Portugal, and Italy at the time of the
democratic risings of 1820-2. Those risings failed; for the
Austrian and other autocratic rulers (Louis XVIII among
them) intervened to crush them; but the memories of popular
liberty in Spain during the years 1812-3 lived on; and, amidst
the gloom of the time of reaction, the Spanish constitution of
those years aroused fond recollections and hopes for the
future. Especially was this so in Naples and Sicily, where the
Spanish movement of the Napoleonic time helped on that
which is associated with the names of Mazzmi and Gari-
baldi.

If the Spanish movement of 1808-13 bears only a super-
ficial resemblance to that of revolutionary France, still more
did it diverge from that of Germany. We have already
noticed one cause of that divergence, but others will now oc-
cur to us. Napoleon imposed his supremacy on the Germans
piecemeal and with some measure of caution. On the neck of
the proudest people of Europe he forced his yoke with sudden
and almost contemptuous insolence. Consequently, while
the uprising of the Germans was not unlike the mounting of a
tide over sandbanks, that of the Spaniards resembled an
explosion. The difference was also due to diversities of
national character and environment. The Spaniard was
proud and resentful; the German of the eighteenth century

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 69

was torpid and diffident. During four centuries the Spaniards
had formed a nation. The average Teuton could neither
remember nor imagine a time when all his people were united.
The political helplessness of Germany led her sons to a
humorous depreciation — witness these lines of Goethe's
Faust, when the boon companions hi Auerbach's cellar troll
the catch: —

"The Holy Roman Empire now
How holds it together?"

And again: —

"Thank God, every morn,

To rule the Roman Empire, that you were not born.
I bless my stars at least that mine is not
Either a Kaiser's or a Chancellor's lot."

No Spaniard would ever have sung those lines about the
compact and glorious kingdom which had conquered, and
still ruled over, the greater part of the New World. Nature,
which had made the Spaniards a nation, seemed, until the
year 1812, to doom the Germans to division and helpless-
ness. During the winter of 1807-8 Prussia's boldest son,
Fichte, did not counsel revolt, only a system of national
education with a view to some eventual revolt. The German
movement therefore was no flash of passion, but rather the
growth of an intellectual and moral conviction that Germany
must some day form a nation. In the spread of that belief,
which became contagious when Napoleon's Grand Army
reeled back frostbitten from Russia, lie the unique interest
and the exceptional fruitfulness of the German movement.
Heralded by a poet and a philosopher, it uplifted the people
and bore them to a higher plane of existence. The national
policy of the years 1808-13 began by improving and inspiring
the individual; it ended by making an intelligent and valiant
nation.

70 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

The blaze of wrath which flashed forth in Spain in 1808
could not mature her national life. That life was scorched,
not ripened. No literary work of any note was forthcoming;
and, apart from the abolition of Feudalism, no lasting re-
forms resulted from the sudden and premature efforts of that
tune. For lack of preparation or wise guidance the national
movement at Cadiz and Madrid went astray, and ended in
political reaction. The case of Spain, therefore, proves that
an appeal to the past, and to a pride rooted in that past, may
incite a people to great exertions; but, whatever their military
results, they will have no effect on its development, and may
drag it backwards. In short, nationality in its crudest form is
merely an appeal to the emotions or passions and may arrest
the progress of a people that indulges them. Under wise and
strict control, as in the Germany of those years, it may further
the cause of progress. In the case of revolutionary France,
and still more of Spain, nationality was a narrowing influence,
begetting intolerance towards neighbors and promoting the
interests of despotism at home.

These, I think, are the conclusions to be drawn from a
survey of the Spanish movement in its wider issues. But
now let us consider it, finally, in its bearing on the Napoleonic
Wars. In that respect its importance can scarcely be over-
rated. The spectacle of a nation challenging to mortal con-
flict a powerful enemy that occupied her chief cities and had
niched away her King stirred the blood of all nations, as does
the sight of gallant little Serbia holding up against two
military Empires on the North and her perfidious neighbor
on the East.1 Moreover, the success of the Spanish efforts in
the summer of 1808 at Baylen and Saragossa roused an excite-
ment unequalled in that generation. The spell of invincibility
that had long protected the French and bewildered their foes
was broken, and forlorn peoples caught a gleam of hope.
1 These words were spoken early in November, 1915.

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 71

Germany, then writhing under the heel of Napoleon, ceased
to despair. In October, 1808, the writer, Varnhagen von
Ense, visiting his confrere, Jean Paul Richter, heard him say
that he never doubted that the Germans would one day rise
against the French as the Spaniards had done. "The Span-
iards were the refrain to everything, and we always returned
to them." The statesman, Stein, actually prepared for a
popular rising in Prussia like that of Spain, and when found
out was driven from office and from Prussia by the order of
Napoleon. Austria, whose subjects had fought against the
French hopelessly and nervelessly, early in 1809 made a really
national effort. In April the Archduke Charles issued this
stirring appeal: "The liberty of Europe has taken refuge
under your banners. Your victories will loose its fetters, and
your brothers in Germany, yet in the ranks of the enemy,
long for their deliverance."

These hopes and aspirations were directly the outcome
of the Spanish Rising. It is true that neither Spain nor
Austria succeeded in those years. The Spaniards displayed
no skill in organization and proved to be very exasperating
allies. The Austrian Government and its generals behaved
with their usual want of energy and enterprise. In both
lands the spirit of the people far excelled the conduct of
Governments and generals. But such a symptom bodes
ill for the enemy. For ultimately the energy and deter-
mination of the people will find leaders to give full effect
to its resolves; and that happened in 1813-5. By that
time the new national f eelings of Spain and Germany were
incarnated in formidable armies led by the ablest of their
generals.

During the four intervening years, generally marked by
defeat, the fortitude of all patriots was tried to the utter-
most. It may be well to recall the feelings of those dark
days when the Napoleonic supremacy seemed irresistible.

72 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

In May, 1809, the Quarterly Review thus described the situa-
tion:—

"A more tremendous system never appeared for the desolation
and subjection of the world. Every country was to be compelled
in succession to furnish men for the plunder and conquest of others.
If any one nation presumed to be dissatisfied, the population of
another was to be driven to arms to oppress it. ... Napoleon's
vast designs have been executed with the most lavish profusion of
human blood. He cares neither for distance, famine, nor dis-
ease. ... It is indifferent to him how many thousands of his
troops drop from mere fatigue and want. It is sufficient that
enough reach the point of action to accomplish his purposes. If
he disperses the enemy, he gains a new extent of population to
drive into his ranks, and to make the instruments, however un-
willing, of new depredations. Being consumed so fast, there is no
time for mutiny and b'ttle demand for pay. For a certain time,
therefore, this terrible engine of war acts in his favor with dread-
ful energy, though it is one which may ultimately recoil upon
himself."

Five weary years were to elapse before the spirit of na-
tionality was completely embattled. Then it overthrew
the great Emperor. In that tune of awakening the people
of Spain hold a foremost place; for they dared to beard the
conqueror in his prime. Before they knew that England
would help them they challenged the master of the Continent,
Thus, once again, Europe showed the diversity of racial
impulses that go to make up its life. The balance of that life
has been in succession restored by races as far removed, as
widely dissimilar, as the Franks, Dutch, English, Swedes,
Poles, Spaniards, and Russians. The motives prompting
these efforts were very different. Byron thus outlined the
Spanish Rising: "Pride points the way to Liberty." That is
true. The proud and passionate resentment of the Spaniards
led the more phlegmatic peoples of the North into the crusade

THE SPANISH NATIONAL RISING 73

that finally overthrew the might of Napoleon. So long as the
British and Spaniards held firmly together, he could not con-
quer Europe; for it is of the very nature of World-Policy that,
sooner or later, it provokes world-wide resistance. All honor
to the two nations that first dared to offer an unbending
resistance.

LECTURE V
MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY

"Every people has its special mission, which will co-operate
towards the fulfilment of the general mission of Humanity. That
mission constitutes its nationality. Nationality is sacred." —
Mazzini, 1834.

OTIR previous studies have, I think, pointed to the con-
clusion, that no popular movement has led to results of
lasting importance, unless it proceeded from some forma-
tive thought. If it be true, as Carlyle says, that the end
of man is action, not thought, it is equally true that the
beginning of all action is a thought; and the usefulness of
the action corresponds to the correctness of the thought.
Only where the thinkers have led the masses, and led them
aright, has the resulting movement been well sustained
and healthful hi its effects. Where, as in the case of the
Spanish Rising of 1808, the impulse has been that of out-
raged pride and dignity, unconnected with the deeper con-
victions of the mind, little has come of it. An explosion
of terrific force took place, but thereafter everything tended
to settle down in nearly the same condition as before. That
is nationality in its elemental form, an almost blind im-
pulse, which cannot lead to continued progress, and may
even retard progress.

But now we turn to a land where the popular impulse
found wise and inspiring leaders. A cynic once called the
Italian national movement "the poetry of politics." The
taunt veiled a truth; for that movement initiated not only
the poetry but the philosophy of modern politics.

74

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 75

Nearly all movements start as a protest against a wrong;
and the Italian movement is no exception to the rule. The
people of the Peninsula struggled against the barriers im-
posed on them by the Treaties of Vienna of 1814-5, which
divided and enslaved them. A consciousness of their one-
ness had grown among them during the Napoleonic regime,
when unity of administration and comradeship in arms
evoked a sense of manliness and citizenship. As Mrs. Brown-
ing phrased it: —

"Children use the fist, until they are of age
To use the brain, . . .
And so we needed Caesars to assist
Man's justice, and Napoleons to explain
God's counsel."

In 1815 came the cruel awakening. On a neck straighten-
ing with national pride there now fell the yoke of two kings,
a Pope, four dukes, and, worst of all, the military despotism
of Austria in the North and North-East. It was in vain
that Italians resisted. Austria, encamped in her Quad-
rilateral, and strengthened by her Italian satraps, defied
all the puny efforts of the subject race. In vain did the
Carbonari strike down a general here, a police officer there,
they could not drive out the white coats of Austria. All
the tyrants made common cause; and, if one of them were
in danger, the Hapsburgs sent down their legions to restore
"order." As the mandatory of the Holy Alliance, Austria
repressed not only every movement of the people but every
proposal of an Italian ruler to admit them to the least share
in the Government. She would neither reform herself nor
let any Italian State reform itself, for fear that her rule
might seem the more odious by the contrast.1 In fact,
the House of Hapsburg now became the chief barrier to
1 Farini, The Raman State, I, ch. I.

76 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

national aspirations in Europe; and its Chancellor, Met-
ternich, occupied the position formerly occupied by Napoleon
as the deadliest enemy of nationality. The Hapsburgs held
down their Magyar and Slavonic subjects; they barred the
way to an effective union of the German States; above all,
they played the watch-dog to the sheepfolds in which the
Italians were penned up. Austria strove to stifle thought
in her dominions, as appeared in the injunction of the Em-
peror Francis to the professors of the University of Pavia:
"Your duty is less to make learned men than faithful sub-
jects." Consequently, every Italian patriot longed to drive
the Austrians beyond the Alps. On this topic there was
practical unanimity. On all else there were grave differ-
ences.

Putting aside smaller groups, we may single out from
the patriots three parties: (i) Those who desired the su-
premacy of the Pope; (2) those who championed the cause
of the House of Savoy; (3) Republicans who desired the
end both of monarchy and of the Temporal Power of the
Popes, in order to frame an Italian Republic.

The first party pointed to the services which the Popes
had often rendered to the Italian cause, e. g. to the Holy
League which Julius II formed in 1510 for the expulsion
of the foreigners from Italy. Naturally enough, they left
out of count the occasions when the Papacy had sided with
foreigners against the Italian cause; and the armed support
which was consistently claimed from Austria by Gregory
XVI during his pontificate (1831-46), alienated the respect
of all patriots. Nevertheless, the mystical devotion of a
priest, Gioberti, pointed to the Papacy as the rallying point
for Italians. This was the theme of his book, The Moral
and Civil Supremacy of the Italians (1843), a work which
made a deep impression and contributed largely towards
the election of a reforming Pope, Pius IX, in 1846.

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 77

The second party had its headquarters at Turin, and
refused to admit a Papal hegemony. Even after the advent
of a popular and reforming pontiff, they held to the belief
that the House of Savoy alone could bring union or complete
unity to the Peninsula. They pointed to the deep-seated
abuses of clerical government in the Papal States, where
only ten per cent of the people could read; also to the fact
that those States, stretching from the Adriatic to the Tyr-
rhene Sea, cut off the North from the South of Italy, and
barred the way to political union. Finally, they claimed
that their royal house, traditionally brave and patriotic,
was the natural champion of Italy against Austria, and
therefore the only hope of freedom and independence. The
monarchists of Piedmont did not at first openly aim at
national unity; for such an avowal would have exposed the
House of Savoy to the charge of mere ambition. Ostensibly,
then, their aim was to federalize Italy under the aegis of that
dynasty; but the bolder spirits, headed by Cavour, always
kept unity before them as the goal. Such a consummation
was anathema to Gioberti and the neo-Guelfs. Looking
to the Pope as head of a future Italian federation, they
perforce rejected the idea of Italian unity. Nationalism,
however, was the very breath of life to a third party, the
Mazzinians, or Young Italy.

Joseph Mazzini, born at Genoa hi 1805, matured his
precocious intelligence in the decades following Waterloo,
when Italy underwent the torture of division and servitude.
Endowed with a highly sensitive nature, he hated the kings
and dukes who divided and held down his people. As he
wrote in 1831: "There is not one of these princes who has
not signed a compact with Austria in the blood of his sub-
jects; not one whose past life is not a violent and insurmount-
able barrier between him and the future of his people." As
for Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, his timidity and vacil-

78

lation finally brought him into the position of a renegade
to the patriotic cause; and the young enthusiast even con-
nived at an attempt at his assassination. A theist by con-
viction, Mazzini detested the Papacy on religious no less than
political grounds. Further, the failure of the "moderates"
in 1831, and their cowardly abandonment by Louis Philippe,
filled him with contempt for constitutional monarchy and
all political compromises. Accordingly, during his tune of
exile at Marseilles in the autumn of that year, he matured
the republican organization known as Young Italy.

The name indicates its character. Despairing of the men
of advanced years, who were nearly all "moderates"; de-
spairing, too, of all help from France and England, where
dull moderation sat enthroned, Mazzini appealed in burning
words to the youth of Italy to raise the red, white, and green
flag for the Republic and for national unity. In the first
document of the Association he explained what he meant
by a nation and also the Italian nation: "By the nation
we understand the totality of Italians bound together by a
common pact and governed by the same laws." This defini-
tion marks a great advance on that of Fichte and all pre-
vious thinkers. The only objection to it is the emphasis
which it lays on Rousseau's idea of a common pact, which
is certainly not essential to the forming of a nation.

Equally significant are the boundaries of the future Italian
State. They will be from the River Var, in Nice, to Trieste
on the North-East, and will comprise the Trentino; also
"the islands proved Italian by the language of the inhabi-
tants." This description would include Corsica and several
islands of the Adriatic; but it is worthy of note that Mazzini
did not claim for Italy the Dalmatian coast-line, which he
knew to be Slavonic, not Italian. Though there is a veneer
of Italian culture in some of the towns on the coast, yet
the great body of the population is Slavonic, closely akin

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 79

to the Serbs, or, in the North, to the Croats. It is, therefore,
certain that Mazzini, if he were now alive, would heartily
approve of Italy attacking Austria in order to recover the
Trentino and Trieste; but he would disapprove of those
eager patriots who hanker after the Dalmatian coast because
it once belonged to Venice. In his eyes the historic argu-
ment weighs light as against the instincts of the people
concerned. We can imagine his scorn at the argument
that Italy must have Dalmatia because she has no good
harbor in the Adriatic. He decides the question on the
ground of nationality, not on the naval considerations which
have so often worked mischief. He claims for Italy only
those islands where the inhabitants are Italian. Thus his
nationalism is thoroughly fair as between Italians and Slavs.
He leaves the Slavonic islands and all the lands East of
the Adriatic to the Slavs; and, if the Italians are wise enough
to recognize that those islands and all the Dalmatian coast
are properly Slavonic, not Italian, Europe will avoid com-
plications that may in the future lead to war.

Mazzini then explained that Italy ought to be a Repub-
lic, because there were no truly monarchical elements in the
Peninsula, and her best epochs were those of republican rule.
Further, an Italian monarchy would be reduced to bargain
with and imitate other Courts; whereas Mazzini detested
compromise with and imitation of foreigners, as certain
to weaken and degrade Italy's mission to mankind. His
soaring idealism also rejected both the federal schemes and
insisted on unity as the aim of Italian strivings. The Pope
in the centre, the two kings at the extremities, the Aus-
trians in the North-East and their four ducal satraps — all
must go, because they hindered that absolutely free inter-
course of the people which was essential to the full develop-
ment of the Italian Family. To divide it up under eight
different governments would be equivalent to tying the

8o NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

body-politic with so many ligaments fatal to the free circu-
lation of the blood.

Mazzini had boundless faith in human nature and its
lofty destinies. In his view the life of the human race was
essentially one. True, there were great differences between
this and that race. He never held Fichte's early opinion,
that all the nations were alike, and followed the same aims.
He regarded them as members of the great human family,
not rivals engaged in ceaseless competition and strife. He
also hoped that, if the members were allowed free play, they
would come to see their true interests towards each other
and to the family of which they formed a part. But, said
he, they could not see this truth if they led a cramped and
artificial existence. Therefore, Italy must attain to her
free life, not for any selfish purpose; certainly not in or-
der to invade and despoil her neighbors, but rather that
she may minister to their welfare. She will gam unity
for the purpose of carrying out her mission to other
nations.

As to the nature of that mission Mazzini nowhere gave
a definite answer. In the programme of Young Italy he
pointed out that Europe was undergoing a series of changes
destined to transform European Society into large and
compact masses. The large States, or federations of States,
were absorbing small States; large towns were growing at
the expense of small towns or villages: the big factory was
superseding the small workshop and cottage industries.
What would be the upshot of it all? Would the new ag-
glomerations be peaceful or aggressive, healthy or noxious?
That was an urgent question, and it still is. How Italy
could help to solve these political and social problems Maz-
zini does not explain. Later on, he felt his way towards
a partial answer. Meanwhile he insisted on Italy gaining
an unfettered existence. This he defined as follows: "With-

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 81

out unity of religious belief and unity of social pact; without
unity of civil, political, and penal legislation, there is no true
nation."

The ideal is lofty. Unity of religious belief is hard to
attain and keep in the modern world; and it is strange that
one who had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church
should postulate it as essential. Again, legal unity is desir-
able, but scarcely attainable without doing violence to local
customs. Mazzini's requirements would also rule out Swit-
zerland from the list of nations. Yet, as we have seen, the
Swiss form a nation. His aim, doubtless, was to hold up a
lofty ideal which should inspire Piedmontese, Venetians,
Tuscans, Romans, and Neapolitans with a passion for self-
sacrifice. Nothing short of utter self-sacrifice could nerve
them to the colossal task of breaking their eight prison-
houses and forming a national home. What a task! To
expel Austria, to destroy the Temporal Power of the Papacy,
and to dethrone six Italian sovereigns. What wonder that
he pitched his aims high! The fault of all his predecessors
lay in their proneness to bargain and compromise — tactics
which gained some outside help but stifled the enthusiasm
of Italia's sons. Mazzini sought to arouse that enthusiasm.
It throbs in every sentence of the oath which Young Italy
imposed at initiation: —

"In the name of God and of Italy. In the name of all the
martyrs of the holy Italian cause who have fallen beneath foreign
and domestic tyranny. ... By the love I bear to the country
that gave my mother birth, and will be the home of my chil-
dren. ... By the blush that rises to my brow when I stand before
the citizens of other lands, to know that I have no rights of citizen-
ship, no country, and no national flag. By the memory of our
former greatness, and the sense of our present degradation. By
the tears of Italian mothers for their sons dead on the scaffold, in
prison, or in exile. By the sufferings of the millions — I swear to

82 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

dedicate myself wholly and for ever to strive to constitute Italy one
free, independent, republican nation."

Such was the enterprise undertaken by a group of penni-
less Italian exiles at Marseilles in the autumn of 1831. They
aimed at arousing Italians, whether in Italy or South Amer-
ica,1 to a sense of duty to the nation; and out of their slender
means they started a journal, Young Italy. When expelled
from France by Louis Philippe's Government, they sought
refuge in Switzerland; and a few of them attempted a raid
into Piedmont which completely failed. In fact, most of
their undertakings were so ill-timed and imprudent, as to
lead to a useless effusion of blood. But nothing could long
daunt Mazzini. Whether hunted about Switzerland, or
vegetating in distress among Italian organ-grinders in Hatton
Garden, he (with the exception of some dark hours of doubt
and despair) maintained a firm resolve to persevere in his
quest.

This fixed determination was fed from diverse sources.
His nature, though intensely nervous and far from strong,
was singularly buoyant. It rallied soon, even after trials
and reverses that depressed men of sounder physique. His
mind, too, possessed that sharp edge, that rigid grip, which
fortified him against disappointment. Under soft and almost
feminine features there worked a powerful brain, a steel-like
will. Moreover, his personality brought him troops of
friends. His conversation charmed and delighted all who
came near him. Men so diverse in character as Carlyle,
George Meredith, and Joseph Cowen of Newcastle, acknowl-
edged the spell of his presence. Meredith, in Vittoria,
speaks ecstatically of his "large, soft, dark, meditative eyes, "
which drew in the soul of the observer into the midst of a

1 In Uruguay, Joseph Garibaldi [born at Nice in 1807] was won back
for the Italians by Mazzini's propaganda.

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 83

"capacious and vigorous mind"; of his smile which "came
softly as a curve in water," which "seemed to flow with
and to pass in and out of his thoughts, to be a part of his
emotion and his meaning when it shone transiently full.
For, as he had an orbed mind, so he had an orbed nature."
Mrs. Hamilton King, in that inspired poem, The Disciples,
tells enthusiastically how

" the orb of that great human soul
Did once deflect and draw this orb of mine
Until it touched and trembled on the line
By which my orbit crossed the plane of his."

And Swinburne, in A Song of Italy, hails him as the first of
her liberators. He hymns the Italians as:

"Thy children, ev'n thy people thou hast made,

Thine, with thy words arrayed,
Clothed with thy thoughts, and girt with thy desires,
Yearn up towards thee like fires."

Not that Mazzini was devoid of faults of character. They
were the excess of his qualities, but some of them were seri-
ous. His convictions were so intense as to blind him often
to the good advice of others. Hence he was often intolerant
towards those who differed from him. But these defects
belong rather to Mazzini, the man of action, than to Mazzini,
the thinker; and we are concerned solely with his political
thought, not with his many abortive conspiracies or even
with his highest achievement, the administration of the
Roman Republic of 1849.

In this sphere of thought he had one great advantage over
his German predecessors. They were so obsessed by the
idea of the State as to work their way tardily and doubt-
fully to the idea of the nation. This was natural. In modern

84 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Germany the Prussian State overshadowed everything else;
and under it the German nation loomed nebulous. There-
fore, the German thinkers on nationality (except during the
ill-starred democratic efforts of 1848-9) tended to Prussianize
their notions and often became hide-bound bureaucrats.
Not so with the Italians. They were not overshadowed
by the Sardinian State; and they detested every other State
of the Peninsula. Consequently, the political thought of
Italy was free from the distracting influence of the State
idea. The Italian thinkers, including Balbo, Cavour, Ma-
miani, and Gioberti, saw the nation clearly; and for them
the State was merely the concrete embodiment of the na-
tional idea. In Germany the national idea was Prussianized,
to its infinite harm. The Italian idea was never in danger
of being Sardinianized; though Mazzini, amidst the disap-
pointments of old age, declared that to have been its fate.

During his manhood, Mazzini not only saw clearly, but
believed absolutely in, the nation. The story of Italy's
past as well as her natural tendencies to unity combined
to nurture in him a profound belief in her future. In common
with all thinkers who have exercised a lasting influence on
their fellows, he was pre-eminently a man of faith; and his
creed for Italy aroused a unique fervor, because it formed
part of a far wider creed — the Gospel of Humanity. No-
where does he describe the creed in set terms. No prophet
ever does. But we catch a glimpse of his meaning in these
words: —

"When in my earliest years I believed that the initiative of the
third life of Europe would spring from the heart, the action, the
enthusiasm, and the sacrifices of our people, I heard within me the
grand voice of Rome sounding once again; its utterances treasured
up and accepted with loving reverence by the peoples, and telling
of moral unity and fraternity in a faith common to all Human-
ity. ... I saw Rome in the name of God and a republican Italy

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 85

substituting a Declaration of Principles for the sterile Declaration
of Rights; . . . and I saw Europe, weary of scepticism, egotism,
and anarchy, accept the new faith with acclamations."

The Genoese republican here speaks almost with the tongue
of the old monarchist of Florence. This neo-Roman creed
is a modern version of the De Monarchid of Dante. Rome
(not the city of the Popes but the centre of a world-republic)
calls the peoples about her to listen to the voice of faith and
authority, faith in the perfectibility of man, authority in-
herent in the genius of the eternal City. A dream, you will
say. Well! a glorious dream. It inspired Mazzini to struggle
on through a life full of disaster, until, as he breathed his
last at Pisa in 1872, his ideals lay shattered by collision with
coarse reality. That faith must have been intense which
impelled him forward, and which, working through him,
impelled many thousands of Italians to endure prison, exile,
torture, and execution for the cause. An intense faith like
his evades mere analysis. Cold criticism misses the soul of
it. If we ask — What do you mean by your neo-Romanism? —
we receive an inadequate answer. The disciple may reply —
Rome has twice given laws to the world, once through the
matchless organization of the old Empire, and again through
the decrees of the Church; therefore she is destined a third
time to initiate an era for mankind. "Not proven," the
logician will say. "Contrary to the tendencies of Vatican
policy," the historian will say. Mazzini and his disciples
ignored both objectors. The eye of faith saw Rome rid her-
self of Vaticanism and with magical power gather Italians
about her in order to revivify the life of all peoples.

The conception was not wholly visionary. Mazzini was
convinced that French democrats at the time of the great
Revolution had gone utterly astray. That is the meaning
of his phrase, "the sterile Declaration of Rights," a reference

86 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

to the Declaration of the Rights of Man drawn up by the
Constituent Assembly in August-September, 1789. In its
place Rome, the true birth-place of law, was to sound forth
a Declaration of the Duties of Man.

This is the bed-rock of Mazzinian doctrine. Let us test
it. He declares the French Rights of Man to be sterile;
and elsewhere he terms that programme false, hurtful, the
mother of selfishness and strife. Thus, in Faith and the
Future (1835): —

"Right 1 is the faith of the individual. Duty is the common
collective faith. Right can but organize resistance; it may destroy,
it cannot found. Duty builds up, associates, and unites; it is
derived from a general law, whereas Right is derived only from
human will. There is nothing, therefore, to forbid a struggle
against Right. Any individual may rebel against any Right of
another individual which is injurious to him; and the sole judge
between the adversaries is force; and such, in fact, has frequently
been the answer which societies based upon Right have given
to their opponents. Societies based upon Duty would not be com-
pelled to have recourse to force. Duty, once admitted as the rule,
excludes the possibility of struggle, and by rendering the individual
subject to the general aim, it cuts at the very root of those
evils which Right is unable to prevent. . . . The doctrine of
Rights puts an end to sacrifice and cancels martyrdom from the
world."

Such is the moral elevation of this teaching that we are
apt at first to overlook its good sense. But students of the
French Revolution, who look beneath the surface of events,
will realize the truth of Mazzini's criticism. The fact that
the reformers of 1789 laid stress only upon the Rights of Man
produced at once the wrong kind of impression both on the

1 Mazzini in this passage uses the term "Right" as equivalent to
"The theory of individual Rights."

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 87

deputies and the people at large. They were led to regard
politics as a struggle in which you seize what you can for
your class and yourself. In the course of such a struggle the
rights of others are disregarded; they resist; and the only
method of deciding the issue is in the last resort by tumult
or by civil war. To emphasize the rights of the individual
in the summer of 1789, when the old order was vanishing
amid the flare of burning castles, was the very worst training
for the young French democracy; for it accentuated the ego-
tism of the time, which needed to be kept under restraint. In
the absence of the old authority, the only method of pre-
serving order was a sense of civic duty, which would pre-
scribe first and foremost a feeling of regard for the common
weal, a conviction that the new democratic system must be
based on the loyalty and self-restraint of the masses. Some
deputies (e. g. the Abbe Gregoire and Camus) realized this
all-important truth. Mounier's committee on the constitu-
tion proposed an article (coming just after the definition of
Rights) which thus defined duty: "The duty of everyone
consists in respecting the rights of others." But the Assembly
struck out this article and also another phrase binding them
to prescribe the Duties of Man. A motion of Camus to that
effect was defeated on August 4 by 570 votes to 433. One
member went so far as to say that the duties of man spring
naturally from his rights — a disastrous blunder, which was to
cost France dear.1 Its result was seen in the rampant in-
dividualism of the following months, when politics degener-
ated into a game of grab and the Revolution into a tug-of-war
between hostile parties. The tendencies towards anarchy
were quickened; and seeing that anarchy leads, sooner or
later, to a military despotism, Mazzini scarcely exaggerated
when he summed up the dynamics of the time hi this sug-
gestive formula: "The French Revolution, having begun
lHist. parlementaire de la Rev. franqaise, II, 177, 222.

88 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

with a Declaration of the Rights of Man, could end only in
a man, Napoleon."

The French Revolution, running in this vicious circle,
fatally prejudiced the success of the democratic experiment.
Mazzini maintained that it merely closed an old era, the era
of individualism, and did not initiate the new era, the era
of collective energies inspired by duty. This, then, was
to be the mission of Italy. Looking back over her annals,
blood-stained but ennobled by the unceasing self-sacrifice
of her best sons, he believed that so much suffering must lead
to a noble consummation. Community in suffering had
weakened the old local feelings: the glory of dying for la
patria had aroused generous feelings which would banish
political egotism. Italy, therefore, was the chosen land of the
future; and from Rome would sound forth the gospel of duty
which Paris had stifled. This is the essence of Mazzini's
faith — no blind instinct, but a belief based on knowledge
of the past. France had lost her opportunity. England was
a land of timid compromise. From Italy, when fully aroused,
would come the life-giving message, that all the peoples were
bound together by the sacred tie of duty towards Humanity.

Mazzini believed that this inspiring ideal would widen
the outlook of Italian patriots. They must be true patriots
in order to deaden petty local jealousies. But they would
not cast the slough of provincialism in order to encase them-
selves in the mail of patriotism. The idea of duty must
reign in the national sphere. The Italian Republic of the
future must consult, not its own interests primarily, but those
of all nations, an ideal which would finally sterilize national
rivalries. Or, as he developed the theme in his Duties of
Man (1858), family duty saves a man from being hide-bound
in egotism; the national idea ought to exorcize merely family
or clan selfishness; while duty to mankind will raise national
patriotism on to that higher level where wars of aggrandize-

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 89

ment become impossible. As he pithily phrased it: "You are
men before you are citizens or fathers." 1

On the other hand, he reminded those who sneered at
patriotism, and put their trust only in cosmopolitanism,
that theirs was a futile creed. How can you attain to the
vague and vast ideal of Humanity unless you have midway
some intermediate form of association? How can individuals,
as mere units, move the world? Of course, the thing is
impossible save to a handful of idealists. The masses must
have something tangible to work on. To take a parallel case.
The nation can effectively exist only where men are first
banded together in towns and counties. Because narrow-
minded people cannot see beyond their town or county, you
do not therefore abolish the organization of the town or
county. You retain that organization and seek to widen
their outlook, so that the Yorkshireman or the Devonshire-
man may attain to the nobler pride of being an Englishman.
During long ages tribe fought with tribe, county with county,
then Scots with English. But the tendency, though painfully
slow, is sure, which endows men with the wider vision; and
then these local strifes of Irish and English, Venetians and
Genoese, Lombards and Tuscans, seem absurd. They die of
themselves because men have gained the broader view, and
use these local sentiments as means of attaining to a higher
level than would be possible if they sought to reach it by a
single bound. The cosmopolitan, who sneers at his country
and raves about Humanity, is like a man who disdains the use
of stairs and seeks to leap to the first floor. Such efforts
have always failed. To ignore the tremendous force of
nationality, and grasp at a vague cosmopolitanism by means
of groups and unions, is to bridge the torrent by gossamer, as
recent events have shown. No! The true line of advance is,
not to sneer at nationality and decry patriotism, but to try to
1 Mazzini, Duties of Man [Everyman edit.], ch. 5.

90 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

utilize those elemental forces by imparting to them a true
aim, instead of the false aim which has deluged Europe with
blood.

No part of Mazzini's teaching is sounder than that which
deals with the necessity of recognizing the patriotic instinct
as fundamental to human nature, and also of educating and
directing it to nobler ends than those to which it has so often
been perverted. To the Italian workingmen, some of whom
were running after cosmopolitan will-o'-the-wisps, he gave
this wise advice: "Do not be led away by the idea of improv-
ing your material conditions without first solving the na-
tional question. You cannot do it." And again: "In labor-
ing, according to true principles, for our country we are
laboring for Humanity. Our country is the fulcrum of the
lever which we have to wield for the common good. If we
give up this fulcrum, we run the risk of becoming useless both
to our country and to Humanity." *

On the question of assuring political unity to his divided
and oppressed countrymen, Mazzini accepted no compro-
mise. He would not hear of a federalized Italy, vegetating
under the shadow of the Vatican. On the surface that
scheme of Gioberti (outlined above) seemed easy to realize;
and in 1846, when the reforming Pope Pius IX was elected, its
chances seemed roseate. Gioberti appealed to history and
tradition as proving that Italians needed a large measure of
freedom of action in local affairs; and he summed up his con-
tention in these impressive words: "To suppose that Italy,
divided as she has been for many centuries, can peacefully
submit to the rule of one man is mere folly. To desire that it
should come about by violent means is a crime."

Well! The folly has been committed. The crime has
been perpetrated. The impossible has come to pass. Thanks
to the fiery zeal kindled by Mazzini; thanks also to the sword
1 Mazzini, Duties of Man, pp. 54, 55.

MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY 91

of Victor Emmanuel, the diplomacy of Cavour, and the self-
sacrificing heroism of Garibaldi, Italy is united, though not
in the form of a Republic. The causes of the failure of the
Republic do not concern us here. The ideal of Mazzini was
unattainable, but not because the Italians rejected it. On
the contrary, they rallied to it enthusiastically and in large
numbers. In the early half of 1849, when Mazzini was the
leading Triumvir of the Roman Republic, with Garibaldi as
virtual commander of the troops; when also brave Manin and
the Venetians kept the banner of the Republic flying against
the shot and shell of Austria, there was some ground for
hoping that the cause of Young Italy would survive. All
depended on the action of the young French Republic; and
if that Government had granted the support which Mazzini
at first expected, France and Italy might have expelled
Austria's white coats, as they did ten years later. The fate
of Young Italy was sealed when the French Republic (or
rather its President, Louis Napoleon) attacked the Roman
Republic, while Austria wore down the defenders of Venice.
The Italian Republic was crushed by foreign intervention;
and the Judas of the time was Louis Napoleon.

Nevertheless, though Young Italy lay crushed in the
summer of 1849; though Mazzini and Garibaldi barely
escaped with their lives; though French bayonets supported
the Pope at the Vatican, and the white coats of Austria
terrorized the North, Italy did not die. She lay stunned and
bleeding under the heels of the autocrats, Napoleon III and
Francis Joseph. But she had caught life-giving words that
were more potent than the bayonet and the gibbet. Garibaldi
had shown that her sons could fight on equal terms with the
best troops in Europe. The "honest King," Victor Em-
manuel, was a centre of hope; and his Minister, Cavour,
sought by all possible means to remedy the disasters of 1849
by pitting France against Austria. He succeeded; and the

92 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Italian monarchy of to-day is largely the outcome of his
masterly statecraft. Even Cavour and Victor Emmanuel,
however, would not have succeeded but for the faith and
enthusiasm kindled by Mazzini. Men who are nerved by a
conviction of the justice and beneficence of then* cause are
not daunted by one or two disasters. As Mazzini wrote after
the surrender of Rome to the French: "What was failure to
men who were imbued with our beliefs? "

That faith was rooted more deeply than in a merely na-
tional patriotism. The men of Young Italy shed their blood,
not merely that their country might gain the unity she so
much needed, but in order to assure her civilizing mission to
mankind at large. They caught a vision of other peoples
freed and regenerated. In words which are prophetic, if not
for his day, then perhaps for ours, Mazzini thus outlined the
future: "The map of Europe will be remade. The countries
of the peoples will arise, defined by the voice of the free, upon
the ruins of the countries of kings and privileged castes.
Between these countries there will be harmony and brother-
hood. . . . Then each of you, strong in the affections and aid
of many millions of men speaking the same language and
educated in the same historic tradition, may hope by your
personal effort to benefit the whole of Humanity."

Yes: the map of Europe is now to be remade. The re-
making can proceed on two methods; either on force or
on a sense of duty; either on the military results and the
calculations deduced therefrom, or according to the dic-
tates of justice and enlightened common sense. If the peace
of the year 1916 or 1917 be merely the law of the strongest,
expressed in terms of their actual losses and hoped-for gains,
it will be the parent of future wars. If, however, the settle-
ment be dictated by a deep sense of public duty both towards
the present and future generations, then the future may prove
to be that which the prophetic eye of Mazzini discerned.

LECTURE VI
THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS

THERE is a homely saying, "It takes all kinds of people to
make the world." And this, which is said of individuals,
is equally true of the peoples. The richness of the life of
Europe is due mainly to the variety of its races and to their
strong individuality. Their competition in the spheres of
thought and action, even their collisions in war, are healthier
than the stagnation produced by the dead uniformity of the
life of pre-reform China. Even to-day, surely, it is true:

"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."

To dash off the characteristics of the European peoples
would lead merely to smart epigrams, and I will not attempt
it. It is impossible to assess correctly the peculiarities even
of the subdivisions of the great family which we are now
attempting to study. But there is a general likeness about
all the Slavs, especially those who still remain in the great
plain of East Europe.

Those wind-swept steppes, where winter fastens a relent-
less grip for five months and then breaks into a brief spring
and an almost torrid summer, beget extremes of character.
The long and bitter cold fosters the virtues of toughness
and endurance, also of firm comradeship. For the millions
of Russian peasants life is a stern struggle, and only by hold-
ing stoutly together in their Mir, or village commune, have
they survived. The drought of summer is equally to be
dreaded. A prey, therefore, to extremes of climate, the
peasant develops a tenacity unequalled except among races

93

94 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

that struggle against the sea; and there is in the landsman of
the East more of resignation and melancholy than is found
among the seamen of the West. When the Muscovite has
fought on to the very end and knows he is beaten, he lies
down and dies with the fatalism of the Asiatic. The Slavs,
essentially an emotional people, have been moulded by this
life of extremes. Both they, then* literature, and their music
are intense and passionate; but an undertone of melancholy
pervades even their outbursts and their excesses. It is the
grund-motiv of the Russian winter.

Their great enemy of peace time is also their best friend
in war tune. From the dawn of history in the days of Herodo-
tus the dwellers in the great plains have, with the aid of this
fearsome ally, worsted all invaders. Darius, the Tartars,
the Poles, Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon (shall I add
Hindenburg?) recoiled, shattered. On the other hand, the
plain-dwellers have been remarkable for a certain want of
enterprise in war. In campaigns far from home they have
rarely been formidable, except against Turks and Tartars.
Russia, while strong for defence, is weak for offence. She
resembles Antaeus rather than Hercules. Her people and her
Government lack the resourcefulness, foresight, and organ-
izing capacity needful for the success of distant expeditions.
Professor Brandes goes so far as to say: "Passivity shows
itself in their public and private life, in the submission to the
powers that be. ... Though the Russians are a brave and
a remarkably steadfast people in war, they are the most
peaceful and unwarlike people in the world." 1

This is a little exaggerated; for Russian Tsars have given
rein to warlike ambitions; and their people have followed
them; but the people themselves cling to their homes, to
their creed, and to the old ways. From the tune when the
Greek colonists of the North Euxine gazed with terror on the
1 G. Brandes, Impressions of Russia, p. 26.

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 95

Scythian tribes moving about in their quaint caravans,
those barbarians were far less formidable than they appeared.
Only when pressed from the East, in the Dark Ages, did
they or their successors send forth swarms that overran
Europe. Considering her vast bulk, Russia has played a
curiously small part in European history. Her natural trend
was towards Asia rather than Central Europe; and she rarely
moved westwards except after attacks from the west.

The first event that thoroughly aroused her from Oriental
torpor was the invasion of Napoleon in 1812. Untaught by
his failure to break down the resistance of the Spaniards,
he strove to wear them out in the South- West and the Mus-
covites in the North-East, though in both cases he con-
fronted an enraged people, unconquerable if only they would
persevere. The life of Russia was widespread, impalpable,
scattered through myriads of villages, each of which, thanks
to the Mir, was a self-sufficing unit. So soon as these units
were resolutely of one mind, the only thing left for the in-
vader was — to decamp.

Among the many perversities of that curious book, Power
and Liberty, Tolstoi hit upon an undoubted truth, that
Napoleon's Grand Army had to leave Moscow because the
peasants burnt their corn and fodder rather than let the
French have it. The triumph was essentially a national
triumph; and the spirit of the Russian troops led even single
individuals to attack the French during the long retreat.
In a military sense, the Russian pursuit was often tardy and
ineffective; but General Whiter did his work thoroughly;
and the Russian people have never lost the feeling of pride
in that overthrow of the great Emperor. It was in Spain
and Russia that he encountered forces beyond even his power,
the strength of a truly national resistance.

As in Spain, however, the new patriotism was soon diverted
into reactionary paths. The Tsar, Alexander I, drifted away

96 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

from the Liberalism of his youth; and, worst of all, he did
not keep troth with the Poles. That gifted people had done
and suffered much for Napoleon; and in 1814-5 Alexander
held out to them the hope of a national kingdom under his
suzerainty. The autonomous Kingdom of Poland soon
vanished, and Alexander's suzerainty became a despotism.
Since then there has been no real union of sentiment between
Poles and Russians, and the latent hostility of the Poles to
Russia is, perhaps, the chief of the weaknesses of that Em-
pire. That huge organism has never been thoroughly unified.
It is an agglomerate, in which the Great Russians of the North
and North Centre predominate; but their hard and practical
nature consorts ill with the more sensitive Little Russians
of the South, the Poles of the West, and the Finns of the
North- West. Whether these peoples will ever cordially unite
is one of the problems of the future. Certainly, the autocracy
has failed to unite them. Perhaps this war, and after the war,
democracy, will accomplish the feat. Russian enthusiasts
are confident that democracy will succeed where despotism
has failed. In this respect the development of Russia pre-
sents a signal contrast to that of Prussia and Germany, which
has been vitally connected with the House of Hohenzollern.
That House has unified the German people, and, since uni-
fication, has drilled them with Prussian rigor. Whatever
be the faults of the Tsardom, it has not cast all the Russians
into the same mould; but perhaps the failure to unify them
results from the lack of cohesion which has always marked
the Slav peoples. They have attained to a racial feeling, but
not to the wider feeling which may be termed national.

The centrifugal tendencies of the Slavs of the Austrian
Empire are also very marked. Limiting our attention here
to the South Slavs, we notice that the awakening of their
national sentiment somewhat preceded that of the Russians.
Nature and the current of events had alike been unfavorable

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 97

to the South Slavs. Their furthest off-shoots on the South-
West had settled in the mountainous country a little to the
North-East and East of the Adriatic. Those living north of
Trieste and around Laybach are termed Slovenes; those
further East are Croats; those to the South-East, Serbs.
The Slovenes are almost completely cut off from the Adriatic
by a thin but tough belt of Italians around Trieste; and the
Croats and Serbs, who stretch as far as that sea, have long
been severed from it politically by the Venetian Republic
and by its heir, Austria. Those Powers kept a tight hold on
the coast line and rigorously subjected the Slavonic popula-
tion. It has never been Italianized, still less Austrianized.
These Slavs, cut off from effective use of the sea, and divided
between Hapsburg, Venetian, and Ottoman rule, remained
in a state of torpor until about the time of the French Revolu-
tion, when the blows dealt by the Republican armies to Venice
and Austria awakened the Slovenes and Croats. Already the
latter had resisted the attempts of the Magyars to denation-
alize them. In the Hungarian Diet the proud nobiles began
to use the Magyar tongue instead of Latin. The Croat
deputies resisted; and in 1805 the Bishop of Agram advocated
the use of the Slavonic tongue in public speech and documents.
Thus the national sentiment of the South Slavs was first
excited by Magyar aggressions at the expense of their mother-
tongue.

Next, the blows of Napoleon fell on the House of Haps-
burg. After Austerlitz he compelled Austria to cede East
Venetia, Istria, and part of Dalmatia to his new Kingdom
of Italy. After the campaign of Wagram, he forced her to
give up the lands which he styled the Illyrian Provinces,
and they formed part of the French Empire during the years
1809-13. Marshal Marmont, the new Governor, introduced
the Code Napoleon and many of the benefits of the French
administration. The effects were very marked. These

98 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

South Slavs, previously divided and misgoverned, now en-
tered into a large and generous polity. The French encour-
aged the official use of the Slovene and Croat languages,
which had previously been proscribed; and a new national
feeling was aroused by newspapers and books written in the
vernacular. Such was the gratitude of these downtrodden
peoples to the French Emperor that the poet Vodnik sang
his praises in an ode, entitled Risen Ittyria: "Napoleon has
said 'Awake: arise, Illyria.' She wakes, she sighs — 'Who
recalls me to the light? O great hero, is it thou who wakest
me? Thou reachest to me thy mighty hand; thou liftest me
up.' . . . 'Resting one hand on Gaul, I give the other to
Greece that I may save her. At the head of Greece is Corinth ;
in the centre of Europe is Illyria. Corinth is called the eye of
Greece. Illyria shall be the jewel of the whole world. ' " On
the fall of Napoleon, the Slovenes again reverted to Austria,
and the Croats to Hungary. Again the Magyars began their
attempts to Magyarize, but encountered an equally obstinate
resistance, the Croat and Serb provinces declaring their equal-
ity of rights with the Hungarian. They were sister provinces,
not daughter provinces.1

When part of an oppressed people gains the boon of self-
expression it is natural that the other part, which is still
gagged, should struggle ceaselessly. Already the Serbs
had striven valiantly against Turkish tyranny. They never
despaired of casting off their vassalage to the infidel; for deep
in their hearts was the memory of the glorious days of King
Dushan, who, about 1350, ruled over all the lands from Philip-
popolis to Agram, and southwards as far as Corinth. Serbia
was then the most powerful State of South-East Europe,
and owned ports on the ^Egean and Adriatic. At the capital,
Uskub, Dushan held a splendid Court, Greeks, Bulgars,

1L6ger, Austria-Hungary, p. 440: Seton- Watson, The Southern Slav
Question, pp. 25-9.

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 99

even the proud Magyars bowing before Serb supremacy.
This promising civilization fell at one blow. The Turks
burst upon it and levelled it to the ground at the Battle of
Kossovo (1389). A legend, preserved ever since in ballad
form, tells how the fate of Serbia and of Christendom was
decided by the treachery of a Serb chieftain, Vuk Branko-
vich, who, at the crisis of the struggle, rode over to the infidels
with 12,000 panoplied horsemen. Whether true or not, that
story struck deep into the hearts of the Serbs. During five
centuries of slavery the exploits of Dushan and Milosh were
handed down by minstrels (gosslari), who secretly assembled
the peasants and sang to them of the great days when Serbs
gave the law to Bulgar and Greek, and fell beneath the Mos-
lem yoke only because of treachery within the fold. Thus
a consciousness of superiority lingered on, inspiring the belief
that, if ever they had a chance, they would beat back the in-
fidel to Asia and renew the ancient glories of Uskub. A people
that cherishes those historic memories can never be alto-
gether enslaved. The fire of patriotism, though choked
down, will smoulder on; and a spark may bring it to a flame.

That spark, as we have seen, was blown eastwards from
Italy and Croatia. The exploits of Napoleon and the fall
of Venice and Austria sent a thrill through the Slavonic
world; and the Serbs challenged the supremacy of the Turks.
At that time the Ottoman Empire was rent asunder by
revolts of local pashas and of that privileged military caste,
the Janissaries. The Serb peasants therefore won many suc-
cesses; and the invasion of Turkey by the Russians in 1809
promised for a time to lead to the expulsion of the Turks
from Europe. In 1812 the Russians had to withdraw in
order to meet Napoleon's Grand Army; but, as formerly in
1791, they had spread far and wide the hope that the great
Slav brother would free his "little brothers," the Roumans,
Bulgars, and Serbs. By the treaty of 1812 Russia wrested

TOO NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

from the Turks the boon of autonomy for the Roumans,
together with certain privileges for the Serbs. These last
were soon revoked by the ever faithless Turks, who sought
to cow the Serbs by impaling or brutal floggings. They
failed. An enterprising Serb peasant, Milosh Obrenovich,
proclaimed a general rising on Palm Sunday, 1815, worsted
the enemy and extorted the right to bear arms.

In the sequel the Ottomans might, perhaps, have over-
whelmed the Serbs but for the risings of the Greeks, the
revolts of the Janissaries, and the Russian invasion of 1829.
The rapid advance of the Russians as far as Adrianople
spread dismay among the Turks; and Sultan Mahmud II
made peace with Russia, conceding among other things
further rights to the Serbs. Thus a second tune Russia be-
friended the Slavs of the Balkans, and they (the Bulgars
included) acknowledged her as their champion. In 1842
Serbia (now enlarged) refashioned her popular Assembly, so
that what had been merely a mass meeting of warriors be-
came an organized representative body. Thus the Serbs
were the first of the lesser Slav peoples to develop constitu-
tional rule, albeit of a very crude and primitive type. This
fact is far more significant than the sanguinary strifes be-
tween the rival Houses of Karageorge and Obrenovich.
Those struggles, culminating in the murder of King Alexander
in 1903, are relics of a barbarous past; but they have not
very seriously retarded the progress of the people at large.
That progress is what really matters; and the acts by which
a community of peasants step by step won its freedom from
the warlike Turks and then gradually attained to self-govern-
ment bespeak not only tenacious bravery, but also a political
capacity of no mean order. In the nineteenth century na-
tionalism which is limited solely to military exploits counts
for little. As Napoleon once remarked, the civilian is a
wider man than a mere warrior, because "the method of

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 101

the soldier is to act despotically; that of the civilian is to
submit to discussion, truth, and reason." Similarly, a people
which excels in the affairs of peace must in the long run
surpass one which, like the Turks, devotes itself almost ex-
clusively to war. In fact, nothing is more remarkable than
the manner in which the Christian peoples of the Balkans
though often defeated and massacred, have slowly but
surely outstripped their Ottoman conquerors and perse-
cutors. It is because the latter have relied upon force, while
their subjects have applied the new national enthusiasm to
all sides of the widening life of to-day. The futility of rely-
ing merely upon armed might nowhere appears more clearly
than in the changed relations of the Turks and their victims.
The fortunes of those subject peoples, however, depended
largely upon their champion, Russia. In that Empire, es-
pecially at the old capital, Moscow, pride of race has always
been strong. If Petrograd was, as its founder claimed, the
eye by which Russia looked out on Europe, Moscow was
the eye of faith, which discerned in Muscovy the means of
national uplifting. There are always two currents of thought
in Russia, the cosmopolitan, strong at Petrograd, which has
tended to rely on Germany and France; the other, all-powerful
at Moscow, which circles about things Muscovite, and
claims that they alone will save Russia. The former party
tend to depreciate Slavonic customs and sometimes vent
their despair in such an outburst as that of Turgenieff:
"What have we Russians invented but the knout?" The
others, strong in faith and contemptuous of foreign ways,
retort: "Yes: whenever it rains at Paris, you put up your
umbrellas at Petersburg." The men of faith point out that
in 1812 the might of Napoleon collapsed before the patriotic
endurance of Russian peasants; and in that time of trial the
nation proved its capacity both to save itself and save
Europe. Away, then, with servile imitation of the foreigner!

102 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Away with the German customs and notions imported by
Peter the Great and Catharine!

Such was the creed of a group of students at the Univer-
sity of Moscow. They sought "to found an independent
national culture on the basis of popular conceptions and
Byzantine orthodoxy, forsaken since the time of Peter the
Great." x In the main they relied on the Mir and the com-
munal customs connected with it; also on the Greek Church
as the true exponent of Christian tradition. They forswore
the use of French and German in favor of the hitherto
despised vernacular. At first, i. e. early in the thirties, the
movement had no political significance; but Nicholas I soon
used it to further his reactionary policy; and the tendency
of a narrow nationalism to play into the hands of a despot
was illustrated in Russia more promptly and banef ully than
perhaps anywhere else. Thanks to the Slavophiles of Mos-
cow, Nicholas was able to subject the teaching of philosophy
to the clergy of the Greek Church and that of history to the
supervision of the public censor. Foreign books and news-
papers were as far as possible excluded; and Russia entered
upon the path of political and religious reaction.

A similar degradation befell a somewhat cognate move-
ment. Panslavism can boast a revolutionary origin. It
was first proclaimed at Paris by a Russian, Bakunin, who
is also the father of Nihilism. A Russian student, he sat
at the feet of Hegel at Berlin, and finally settled in the
French capital, where he associated with many Polish exiles.
At a banquet, held in 1847 to commemorate the Polish rising
of 1830, he spoke passionately in favor of a federative union
of all Slavs. Such a scheme implied the grouping together,
not only of the Russians and Poles, but of the Checs and
Slovaks of Bohemia and Moravia, and of the South Slavs
oppressed by Austria and Turkey. As a revolutionary pro-
1 Russia before and after the War, p. 138.

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 103

gramme this scheme of Bakunin surpassed all the political
schemes of the nineteenth century. Its complete realization
would involve the destruction, not only of Austria and
Turkey, but also of the Empire of the Tsars; for, as was
said by Herzen, one of the Russian revolutionaries: "When
we win Constantinople, then the iron sceptre of Peter the
Great must break; for it cannot be lengthened to reach to
the Dardanelles." l The Russian anarchists, then, hoped by
arousing a Slavonic enthusiasm among all branches of that
widely scattered race to break up three great Empires and
spread revolution far and wide. In its origin Panslavism
was rather an anarchic than a merely national movement.
In this respect it contrasts with the Pangerman movement,
which has always been intensely national.

Panslavism, however, gradually shed its revolutionary
slough and became almost a conservative force. The steps
by which this came about are obscure; and we need merely
note that hi the critical years 1875-7 Panslavists and Slav-
ophiles tended to merge. Both sections sought to force the
Tsar, Alexander II, to draw the sword against Turkey; and,
despite his clinging to peace, they prevailed. In the period
of reaction which set in under Alexander III Panslavism and
the Slavophile movement proper were the twin steeds yoked
to the autocrat's car. Both proved to be equally amenable
to the yoke; and the reactionary Ministers of Petrograd
succeeded so skilfully in manipulating Panslavism that wags
have wittily dubbed it "the romanticism of red tape."
The phrase crystallizes the tendencies of the Slavs towards
emotionalism in politics, which, in practice, inclines them
towards submission to the powers that be in Church and
State.

Another weakness of the Slavs is their wide dispersion.
The Germans and Magyars thrust a solid mass between the
1 Ibid., p. 308.

104 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

North and South Slavs of the Austrian Empire; so that, even
in the cataclysm of 1848-9, the two halves of that people
failed to unite. For all their eager fraternizing in a great
Slavonic Congress at Prague in the spring of 1848, 1 the South
Slavs soon ranged themselves on the side of the Hapsburgs
and helped to re-establish that dynasty. It is curious that
those years witnessed the rise both of the Panslavonic and
Pangerman ideas, the former at Prague, the latter at the
German Parliament assembled at Frankfurt; but nothing
came of either of them. Democracy and nationality then
hindered each other, and found no support from any powerful
State. Their ignominious collapse subjected those formative
ideas two decades later to the domination of Realpolitik; of
Gortchakoff in Russia, of Bismarck in Prussia.

Not that the call which in 1875 came to Russia from the
Slavs of the Turkish Empire was devoid of romance; for, if
ever cause was lofty and holy, it was that which the Tsar,
Alexander II, championed in the ensuing years. But the
Slav movement was finally to suffer from the bargaining and
the statecraft which accompanied and closed those liberating
efforts. Assuredly, the cries which came from Bosnians,
Serbs, and Bulgars were such as no patriotic Russian could
hear unmoved. Bulgaria had lagged far behind her neigh-
bors in developing the national idea, a fact which we may
explain partly by her semi-Slavonic origin. The Bulgars
are akin to the Magyars and Turks. True, after their long
stay in Russia, near the Volga, they were Slavized and finally
became Christian. But their stolid and unemotional tem-
perament still proclaims their affinity to the Turanian stock;
so that persons who lay stress on mere questions of race and

aThe Committee's manifesto contained these words: "After centuries
of misery we have at last become aware of our unity, our responsibility
for one another." But the proceedings at the Congress demonstrated
the extreme difficulty of common action.

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 105

ignore the higher and more lasting influences making for
nationality may perhaps find some slight excuse for the re-
cent treachery of the Bulgars to the Slavonic cause. But let
it ever be remembered that the Bulgars owe everything to
the Slavs. Besides, of themselves they would never have
shaken off the Turkish yoke. In 1834 Kinglake travelled
from Belgrade through Sofia to Constantinople. In Serbia
he recognized the people as Serbs. East of the Dragoman
Pass, that is in Bulgaria, he deemed all the inhabitants
Turks, except a substratum of Christina rayahs unworthy
of his notice. It was reserved for the French professor of
Slavonic literature, Cyprien Robert, to unearth the Bulgars,
and he found them secretly cherishing their religion, customs,
and language, all of them not very unlike those of the Serbs.

Apart from a few local risings of Bulgar peasants, goaded
to madness by Turkish tyranny, nothing of importance oc-
curred in their history until 1870, when they gained the right
to have their own religious community, that is, apart from
the Patriarch of the Greek Church. The Porte was induced
to take this step, partly by the demands of Russia, France,
and Great Britain, who always favored Bulgarian claims;
partly also because it hoped by this means to divide the Chris-
tians and weaken them. Far from that, the formation of a
national Church strengthened the Bulgarian movement at
the expense both of Greeks and Serbs. To the new Church
were allotted Bulgaria Proper, also the vilayets of Adrianople,
Salonica, Kossovo, and Monastir. In these districts, which
Serbs and Greeks also claimed, the Bulgars soon began a
vigorous propaganda by means of churches and schools,
which soon withdrew vast numbers from the Greek Church.
Sir Charles Eliot believes that this act halved the numbers
of those who previously were counted Greeks.1 The Bulgars
also stole a march on the Serbs in the districts of Kossovo
1 Sir C. Eliot, Turkey in Europe, pp. 259, 291.

106 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

and Monastir. A Serb gentleman once informed me that
his people never suffered a worse blow than the allocation of
Old Serbia to the Bulgarian Church. The consequence was
the growth of an intense rivalry between Bulgar, Greek, and
Serb, especially for supremacy in Macedonia. The present
war is in large measure the outcome of the racial jealousies
which the Porte kindled, or rather rekindled, by its firman
of 1870. Bulgaria is making a mad bid for the conquest of
the territory which the Porte gave to her ecclesiastically
in 1870. It was not until late in the nineteenth century that
the Serbs gained the right to open their schools in the vilayets
of Monastir and Salonica: and not until 1900 did they acquire
a national church.

In this respect Serbia has been very unfortunate, while
Bulgaria enjoyed exceptional good fortune. Ever since
1805 the Serbs were struggling for their independence from
the Turks. Yet in 1870 at one bound the Bulgars passed
them by in the race for supremacy, which depends largely
on religious organization. How much this meant was seen
in the racial statistics of Macedonia; in which the priest and
schoolmaster were able to make what they liked of that doubt-
ful material. The report of a Russian victory, a lavish dis-
tribution of Austrian gold, or fear of the incursion of a robber-
band of Greeks sufficed to make the wretched peasantry of
Macedonia turn over from one side to the other with unblush-
ing effrontery.

To revert to the events of 1875; the reopening of the East-
ern Question certainly came from the Serbs of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Their revolt in the autumn of 1875 was caused
by the exceptional cruelty of the Turkish tax-gatherers after
a bad harvest. That rising has by some been ascribed to
Austrian agitators. But when crops were seized wholesale,
and the sanctities of home were foully outraged, what need
is there to drag in the foreign agitator? The explanation

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 107

is not supported by the facts of the case, and it is, in general,
a singularly superficial way of accounting for a widespread
movement.

Last of all the Slavonic peoples, the Bulgars began to stir,
but in the partial way that might be expected from their
canny and suspicious nature. An ambitious Bulgar youth,
named Stambulofif, who had been educated in Russia but
expelled thence as a revolutionary, came back to Bulgaria
in 1875 and sought in mid-September to raise the peasants
against Turkish tyranny. Of the thousands who promised
to help him only thirty assembled at the rendezvous near
Eskizagra. These courageous men fled to the Balkans.
Thence Stambulofif and a very few escaped to Russia, where
once again he sought to rouse his sluggish countrymen.

He had grounds for hope. The men of Herzegovina and
Bosnia held out on the mountains, despite the hardships of
the winter of 1875-6. The efforts of the three Empires
(Austria, Russia, and Germany) to induce the Sultan to
grant effective reforms were thwarted by the British Cabinet.
Lord Beaconsfield, unwarned by the utter failure of our
Crimean War policy, refused to support the efforts of the three
Empires to apply pacific coercion in order to extort from
Turkey the needed reforms. The British Ministry went
further. It sent our Mediterranean squadron to Besika Bay,
near the entrance of the Dardanelles, a step which encouraged
the Sublime Porte to expect the armed succor of Britain in
case of war with Russia. These events increased the excite-
ment both of Moslems and Christians in the Peninsula.
Serbia could scarcely keep her sword in its scabbard; and the
Bulgars hoped for armed aid from Russia. A Bulgar school-
master found out a curious anagram. The Bulgarian letters
which make up the words "Turkey will fall," when put in the
form of an addition sum (letters serve as figures in the Cyrillic
alphabet) amount to the total 1876.

io8 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

The news whetted the eagerness of the peasants. The
Bulgarian novelist, Vazoff, in his romance, Under the Yoke,
has described the secret preparations for the revolt. The
women worked hard to bake quantities of biscuit for the men
who were to take to the hills at the end of April, 1876. The
men made guns, pikes, knives; while the more ambitious of
them, who had heard tell of what the Carlists did long before
in Spain, cut down their finest cherry trees, hollowed them
out, hooped them with iron clamps, and hoped for great
things from these curios mounted on the hills. Imagine the
sequel on the first of May, when the Turkish Bashi-bazouks
marched in. No deafening roar, no devastating volleys of
grape shot on the Moslems; only a dull puff, a sound of rent
wood, and the gunners themselves laid low. That pathetic
incident was typical of the whole rising. With the narrow
view of things, which is characteristic of the Bulgars, some
villages waited for the others to begin; and most never began
at all. On the few bolder spirits the Turks burst like a whirl-
wind; and then the work of murder and outrage began. At
Batak the Moslems, after accepting the surrender of the
place, drove the men into the great church and set it on fire.
Out of seven thousand inhabitants five thousand were done
to death.

But the victims did not die wholly in vain. When these
horrors became known in England they aroused a storm
of indignation against Turkish misrule. Mr. Gladstone
voiced that indignation in tones which rang through the
world. Even to-day, or certainly up to their last mad plunge,
the Bulgars reverenced his memory and kept his portrait in
their cottages beside that of "the Tsar Liberator."

For Alexander II now listened to the fervid demands of
his people for armed intervention. Gallant little Serbia had
drawn the sword against the Turks; and the sight of the
Serbs struggling against great odds stirred Slav opinion to its

THE AWAKENING OF THE SLAVS 109

depths. As before, Slav sentiment centred at Moscow, while
official circles at Petrograd and the Tsar himself, suspect-
ing that crusading fervor concealed revolutionary designs,
sought to turn the people from their purpose. In this they
failed. Finally, after curbing Slavophile sentiment for a year,
the Tsar perceived that further delay would unite the nat-
urally conservative Slavophiles with the Nihilists; and when
the Sublime Porte, still trusting to British succor, refused all
offers of compromise, he declared war on Turkey. The
ensuing struggle was fertile in surprises. Even with the help
of Roumania, Russia barely overcame the Turks at Plevna,
and then had to submit her first terms of peace, those of San
Stefano, to the arbitrament of Europe. Owing to the opposi-
tion of England and Austria, a far less drastic settlement of
the racial questions of the Balkans was arrived at in the
Treaty of Berlin (July, 1878). That treaty cut down the
new Bulgarian State, from the San Stefano limits, which
would have brought it near to Salonica, and penned Bul-
garia Proper up in the province north of the Balkans. The
Bulgars there were divided from their brethren south of that
chain so as to weaken that people, whom British and Austrian
statesmen hastily assumed to be the puppets of Russia. The
gratitude of the Bulgars to Russia, however, vanished when
the new Tsar, Alexander III, proceeded to treat them as
puppets. His harsh overbearing ways alienated them; and
on their declaring for the union of the two Bulgarias in 1885,
it was England, under Lord Salisbury, which favored the
union, while the Tsar, chiefly from hatred of the Bulgarian
prince, Alexander, opposed that most natural and salutary
step. The statesmanlike policy of Lord Salisbury had been
prompted largely by our ambassador, Sir William White, a
warm friend of the Christians of the Balkans; and thus the
evil effects of Beaconsfield's pro-Turkish and anti-national
policy were reversed.

no NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

We must postpone to a later lecture a consideration of
Balkan politics in the sequel. I have sought to bring before
you a succession of scenes in which the Slavonic peoples
struggled for self-expression and for the most part utterly
failed. During many years Panslavism was a name that
aroused terror hi the clubs and salons of London. The
reality never alarmed those who observed the centrifugal
tendencies always potent among the Slavs. Hitherto Pan-
slavism has been a political Tower of Babel.

LECTURE VH
THE GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE

"The aim of the State is not dominion or the restraining of men
by and the subjecting of them to a foreign yoke. On the contrary,
its aim is to deliver each man from fear so that he may be able to
live with the utmost possible security. . . . The aim of the State
is liberty." — SPINOZA, Theological Politics, ch. 20.

Ax the beginning of this lecture I wish to make it clear
that my aim is, not to discourse upon any one theory of
the State, but rather to show how the notions about the
State, now prevalent in Prussia and Germany, developed
there. I will also not waste time by seeking to frame an
elaborate definition of the term "State." The word itself
means that which is fixed or established, that is, in regard
to law and government. Setting aside minor differences,
there are three chief conceptions regarding the State. The
first regards it as depending on the will of the monarch
(e. g. VEtat c'est moi, of Louis XIV) ; or, secondly, of a priv-
ileged set of persons; or, thirdly, of the mass of the people.
The organism which gives effect to one or other of those
wills is the State. Notions respecting it are always changing;
and amidst the present cataclysm he would be a bold man
who would ascribe definiteness and fixity to the conception
of the State.1 But the desire for something approaching to
definiteness, if not fixity, is inherent in the human mind,
witness the declaration of poor, bewildered Louis XVI not

1 1 accept the description given by Mr. C. Delisle Burns [The Morality
of Nations, p. 28] as "the sovereign organization for the attainment of
common political good."

112 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

long before the French Revolution. Conscious that le regime
du bon plaisir (i. e. of the King's will) was doomed, he de-
clared that France desired une manibre, fixe d'etre gouvernee.
That admission heralded the dawn of a democratic order on
the Continent. Thenceforth the typical State was not to be
the expression of one man's will, but of "the general will,"
which Rousseau affirmed to be the source of all law and
administration.

But even when we limit ourselves to the modern State
based on representative institutions, we find a great variety
of conceptions regarding its functions. The most important
of these differences arise respecting the claims which the
State may make on the liberty and services of the individual
citizen. Here at once we plunge into the region of contro-
versies that are certain to become more and more acute.
In this connection it is well to remember that the democratic
States of the Ancient World, e. g. that of Athens, required
implicit and almost unlimited obedience from their citizens.
These were bound in many ways which we should deem
abhorrent to true liberty. Transport a Londoner to the
Sparta of Lycurgus, and he would protest vigorously that
he was a mere bondman, not much better off than the actual
slaves. Again, the fact that a Roman citizen could for
heinous crimes be degraded to the position of a slave illus-
trates the radical difference between the authority of the
State over the individual in the Ancient and Modern World.
The power of the Greek or Roman State was far greater than
we should allow; yet that power was accepted as in the nat-
ural order of things by citizens who considered themselves
entirely free.

When, therefore, we approach the subject of the authority
of the modern State over its citizens, we must remember
that all well-educated men were familiar with a condition
of society in which a democratic State could demand nearly

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 113

everything from its subjects. Lord Acton well describes the
State in ancient times as being "both Church and State" in
one.1 It was even more. It was Church and State and an
exacting employer all in one.

Lord Acton's simile is even more applicable to the absolute
monarchies of Western Europe; for their authority was based
on a theocratic creed as well as on military force. Henry
VIII, Philip IV, and Louis XIV claimed to exercise an au-
thority conferred by divine power and sacred unction. This
was the theory adopted by the Hohenzollerns in the year
1701. The claim in their case was singular; for everyone who
looked on at the gaudy ceremony of coronation of the first
Prussian King at Konigsberg was aware that the royal title
was gained by hard bargaining with the Hapsburg Court at
Vienna. Nevertheless, Frederick I of Prussia decided that he
would be a king by the grace of God, and he did his utmost
to get himself taken seriously in that character. He crowned
himself, as all his successors have done, excepting the greatest
of them. Frederick the Great deemed that ceremony a
farce, besides wasting money better spent on troops or road-
making.

By this resolve he struck the key-note of Prussian policy.
Nothing for show, everything for efficiency. Rigorous
efficiency in all departments of government, such was the
aim of Frederick II. Nothing was too small to escape his
ken. In time of peace he visited once a year every part of
his kingdom. He decided what marshes should be drained,
or what rivers embanked for the prevention of floods. It
was his fostering care that unproved the woollen trade,
founded new villages, and sought to construct a navy and
plant colonies overseas. He was his own commander-in-
chief, foreign minister, chief engineer, and chief develop-
ment commissioner. Woe betide the official who neglected
1 Acton, History of Freedom and other Essays, p. 16.

H4 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

his work! Frederick's eye was sure to detect the fault and
punish it severely. During one of his journeys he happened
to find out that a courier was kept waiting owing to the
somnolence of a postmaster. The King rushed upstairs into
the offender's bedroom, dragged him from bed, and admin-
istered a severe caning under the most favorable conditions.

Frederick II was the Prussian State. To his nephew he
described his feelings early in the reign as he surveyed the
splendid troops and full coffers bequeathed by his fathers.
He spent some of the money and increased the troops. Then
he looked around him and saw four provinces that he might
seize. He chose Silesia. "Therefore" (he wrote to his suc-
cessor), "have money, give an air of superiority to your
troops. Wait for opportunities, and you will be certain, not
merely to preserve, but to increase your dominions. . . .
All depends on circumstances and on the courage of him who
takes." Such are the fundamental maxims of Prussian state-
craft: "Be strong, be ready, then make your coup."

But if Frederick schemed and tricked, it was for Prussia;
and it was for Prussia that he was ready to bleed and die.
His letter, of October, 1760, written in the midst of a seem-
ingly hopeless campaign, strikes a high note: "I regard
death from the Stoic point of view. Never shall I see the
moment that forces me to make a disadvantageous peace.
No persuasion, no eloquence, shall ever induce me to sign
my dishonor. . . . Finish this campaign I certainly will, re-
solved to dare all, and to make the most desperate attempts,
either to succeed or to find a glorious end." — That is the
spirit which prevails over less determined foes, whose chatter
about peace proclaims their half-heartedness, or at least
their lack of the supreme resolve of the hero. It is this
rigorous spirit, rigorous towards self as well as towards
others, which has made Prussia so formidable. Rightly
to understand the Prussian idea of the State, you must

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 115

first understand historically the Hohenzollern spirit; for it
is that spirit which has made the State. The State is merely
the machine; that spirit is the inner fire which imparts to
the machine its terrible force; and that spirit is still in its
essence the relentless but also self-sacrificing energy of Fred-
erick the Great.

The extent to which the personality of her rulers affected
the administration of Prussia is obvious from a glance at
her fortunes. Frederick the Great raised her to the rank
of a Great Power. But, as Mirabeau pointed out in 1786,
that position was very precarious. Under the rule of his
vicious, extravagant, and vacillating nephew, Frederick
William II, Prussia sank quickly to the second rank. The
weakness and pedantry of his son, Federick William III,
completed her misfortunes. But a change came over the
scene in the years 1807-13. The people, formerly passive
in the hands of their rulers, became keenly interested in the
revival of their State. Schiller and Fichte had awakened
a truly national German feeling; and the reforms of the
Prussian statesmen, Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg,
in those years made Berlin the one possible centre of political
union for all Germans. The Prussian people were identified
with the Prussian State, as was the case nowhere else in
Germany; and Germans elsewhere looked to Prussia to save
them from Napoleon. It was the energy of thinkers and
men of action at Berlin that expelled the French and made
Prussia the leader of Germany. Depressed by the weaknesses
of Frederick William IV, she was raised to unexampled
glory by William I and his paladins; and in 1871 she unified
Germany.

Now, Prussia was the same State, yet that State varied
enormously according to the human element. Therefore
it is fallacious to suppose that there is some magic in the
Prussian State, or in the German Empire founded on it.

Ii6 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

To theorize about the Prussian State as though it were
everything hi the developemnt of Prussia and Germany
is absurd. The rulers and statesmen are more important
than the State. Indeed, from the time of the Great Elector
down to Wilhelm II it is they who have made or unmade
the State.

Nevertheless, the development of ideas about the Prus-
sian State deserves careful study. Though that polity made
unheard of demands on the citizens, yet it looked after their
interests with almost grandfatherly care. Bismarck, on in-
troducing the first measures that were to be known as State
Socialism, declared that they formed no new departure;
for the House of Hohenzollern had always governed with
a view to the welfare of the poor. This was certainly true
of its best members. For instance, Frederick the Great,
in 1766, refused to countenance a proposal of one of his
officials to tax fat cattle when imported. "A crown a head
on the import of fat cattle? Tax on butcher's meat? (he
exclaimed). No. That would fall on the poorer classes.
To that I must say no. I am, by office, procurator of the
poor (avocat du pauvre)." The Hohenzollerns have generally
sought to consult the welfare of their poorer subjects; and
this was the reason why German provinces, like Silesia,
which were annexed to the Prussian monarchy, soon became
Prussian. That kingdom was not liked — it never has been
— but its vigorous rule promoted prosperity and pushed the
people on. By these qualities many able Germans were at-
tracted to Berlin. Of the men who helped to raise up Prussia
after the terrible overthrow of 1806-7, the most illustrious
were non-Prussians. Stein was a Franconian, Hardenberg
and Scharnhorst were Hanoverians, Queen Louisa and Blii-
cher were Mecklenburgers, Fichte and Gneisenau were
Saxons, etc.1 Scarcely a single able leader was a Prussian.
1 Seeley, Stein, II, 403.

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 117

Yet the best brains in Germany gravitated to Berlin. What
was the attractive force? Not mere ambition; but rather
the conviction that there alone worked an efficient machine.

These considerations explain why practically all German
theories as to the State originated in Prussia. Omitting the
French and freedom-loving theories of William von Hum-
boldt, the first is that of Kant, the idealist of Konigsberg.
Sir John Seeley said that Kant's severe gospel of duty was
a natural outcome of the age and the polity of Frederick
the Great. It may even be affirmed that Kant's teaching
about the State is an idealization of all that was best in the
actions of the great King. Kant seeks to repress the selfish-
ness of individuals, and to compel them to work for the
general weal. They must do so (he claims) in the interest
of order; for order is essentially the aim of the State; and
order can be assured only by submission of individual whims
to the will of the community. True; for the purpose of se-
curing order, the State must be endowed with force; but
it does not exist for the sake of developing force. (There
Kant is far ahead of the latest school of German thinkers.)
The raison d'etre of the State is order.

On the outbreak of the French Revolution, liberty, prog-
ress, and peace become the dominant aims of Kant. They
are set forth in his essay, Perpetual Peace (1795), which re-
mains a landmark of the generous cosmopolitanism that was
soon to be submerged by the Napoleonic deluge. We shall
return to Kant's Essay in Lecture X.

The next of Germany's thinkers was a Saxon by birth.
Fichte (1762-1814) spent most of his early life hi Saxony,
Switzerland, and at Jena; but a charge of infidelity drove
him from his professorship at that University; and in his
thirty-seventh year he settled at Berlin, where he found
more toleration and freedom of speech than in the smaller
centres. In 1800 he published an Essay, The Exclusive

n8 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Commercial State, in which he advocated rigorous protection
and an almost socialistic ordering of all activities. The
work glorified the rigorous tendencies of Prussian politics;
and may be termed a rather viewy precursor of the State
Socialism of Lassalle and Bismarck.

Far fuller and more philosophical were Fichte's lectures on
"The Characteristics of the Present Age" (1804) — at which
we glanced in Lecture III. In them he eulogized Prussia.
In the tenth lecture he rejected a theory of the State, which
describes it as merely a juridical institution, i. e. concerned
with the making and administering of law. Such a concep-
tion might do for Saxony or Wiirtemberg; but it appeared
to him inadequate amidst the varied activities of Prussia.
He put forward one which certainly did not err on that side.
He called the absolute (i. e. complete or perfect) State "an
artistic institution, intended to direct all individual powers
towards the life of the race and to transfuse them therein."
In previous lectures he had explained his sense of the impor-
tance of the universal life, declaring that the aim of mankind
was, or should be, " to order all their relations with freedom
according to reason." Human life, then, ought to be con-
cerned with reasonable activities, which must enjoy a reason-
able amount of freedom. As for the State, it would be the
means of furthering the higher aims of mankind. It would
restrain the selfishness of individuals by directing their
energies towards the welfare of the whole of Society. Fichte's
aim, at this time, was cosmopolitan, not Prussian.

But his methods were autocratic. As the collective ac-
tivities of mankind do not in the least degree attract the
numerous individuals to whom the triumph of reason is
naught and the pursuit of their own unreason is everything,
he maintains that they must be compelled to enter into the
collective life. Seeing that they "feel no desire, but, on the
contrary, a reluctance, to offer up their individual life for

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 119

the race," there must be some power which will compel
them, if need be, to die for the community. That power is
the State.

Fichte's words describing the State as an artistic institu-
tion are somewhat odd, seeing that it directs all individual
powers towards the life of the race. But he explains that
by "artistic" he means that which raises men above their
natural level so as to fulfil the destinies of the race.1 The
State carries out this purpose and compels all citizens, with-
out a single exception, to dedicate themselves to this duty.
Even the rulers are subject to this obligation. It is their
directing power and the directed energies of the governed,
which together make up the State. He proceeds to make
another claim: "All individual power which is known and
accessible to the State is necessary to it for the furtherance
of its purpose: its purpose is Kultur (civilization) ; and in
order to maintain the position to which a State has already
attained, and to advance still further, it requires at all times
the exertion of every available power; for, only through the
united power of ALL, has it attained this position. Should
it not take the Whole into account, it must needs recede,
instead of advancing, and lose its position in the ranks of
civilization."

These statements call for some explanation. Fichte spoke
at a time when the Government of Prussia was in the weak
and nerveless hands of Frederick William III; when, also,
Germany was sinking under the control of Napoleon and
accepted his direction in the spoliation of the Ecclesiastical
States and knightly domains. In view of that disgraceful
scramble Fichte desired to strengthen Prussia; he sought
also to remind her King and nobles that the State had de-
clined in authority and prestige since the days of Frederick

1I think that the phrase "a civilizing institution" comes nearer to
Fichte's real thought.

120 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

the Great. Then the Prussian State was the embodiment
of power. In 1804 it was not; and unless it recurred to the
forceful ideals of the earlier generation Prussia must degen-
erate. Fichte therefore sought to press every faculty of the
Prussian people into the public service; and he clinched his
demand by this declaration: "In a perfect State no just
individual purpose can exist, which is not included in the
purposes of the community, and for the attainment of which
the community does not provide." Or, to translate it into
modern parlance: "Every activity of life belongs to the
State; and the perfect community will have a place for
every man and will see that he fills that place to the utmost
of his power."

Obviously, Fichte was heading towards a drastic State
Socialism. He did not use the term "Socialism," which,
indeed, does not first appear until some thirty-two years
later. Still less did he see his Spartan ideals realized. But
his system would have imposed on Prussia a polity as ab-
solute as that of the Pharaohs, a regime in which individual
liberty would vanish and all the activities of life would be
regulated as they are in an ants' nest. "The general will"
of Rousseau, having passed through the mill of German
philosophical method, came out as the Prussian State, thus
outlined by Fichte.

For the attainment of its complete and characteristic
growth one more element was necessary — that of Nationality.
In 1804-5 Fichte had not yet hit upon that formative idea.
Perhaps he derived it from Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, which
seems to have influenced Fichte's Addresses to the German
Nation. Or else, as I ventured to suggest, the fall of the
Prussian State after Jena (1806) revealed to him the German
nation. In the earlier lectures on the State he never men-
tions the nation. He conceives the Christian European
peoples as being very much alike and concerned with the

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 121

same purposes. It is the States that are in perpetual conflict,
some rising, some falling, according to the degrees of energy
and ability which they display; and their true aim is to
further the progress of the race as a whole. To take a con-
crete instance, Prussia and Austria are in constant com-
petition, sometimes in actual conflict. Their rivalry calls
forth the powers of their rulers and subjects. Prussia wins
because she is the better organized; and her triumph, being
a survival of the fittest, furthers the progress of the human
race. Fichte was not then thinking of the German race;
for indeed it was in so divided and discordant a condition
that you could not discern it as a political unit.

By the winter of 1807-8 the way was cleared, and Fichte's
Addresses to the German Nation called to action, not hide-
bound States, but a half-strangled people. As always hap-
pens in time of crisis, he sought to revive their courage by
recalling the mighty deeds that Germans had accomplished
both in war and in the peaceful arts — their inventions, com-
mercial development, and learning. He claimed the Refor-
mation as a truly German assertion of liberty of thought;
and he vaunted the superiority of the pure Germans over
the Franks and other Teutons that had unlearnt their mother-
tongue. The nation was now the dominant thought. It
eclipsed the idea of the State, as appeared in this passage
(Lecture VIII): "Nation and Fatherland in this sense as
bearers of and security for earthly immortality . . . far
transcend the State in the usual sense of the term. . . .
The State only amis at security of rights, internal peace.
All that is only the means, the condition, the preparation,
for that which patriotism essentially aims at, the blossom-
ing of the eternal and divine in the world." He then asserted
that patriotism must direct the State, individual liberty
being restricted within as narrow limits as possible. In his
earlier notions the State was supreme in order by competi-

122 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

tion with other States to advance the welfare of the human
race as a whole. In 1807-8 he reduced the State merely
to a piece of mechanism, driven onwards by the nation,
with patriotism as the directing agency. The union of his
earlier Pharaoh-like theory with his later claim of the su-
premacy of the nation prepared the way for the later theory
of the German State, conterminous with the German na-
tion, and both impelling, and impelled by, that nation.

His teaching bore fruit in many directions. As the State
or the nation requires all the activities of its citizens, it
follows that all distinctions of privilege must vanish; for the
unprivileged (e. g. the serfs) cannot develop their full powers.
The serfs therefore become freeholders; national education
begins, so does municipal government, in which men are
compelled to take up their duties. All these changes aim
at the increase of power and efficiency. For this same pur-
pose compulsion is laid upon them to defend their country.
That duty had been required of all Frenchmen of military
age by the French Republic in 1793, and more systematically
in 1798. After the Peace of Tilsit (1807), Prussia extended
the principle of compulsory service to all her sons. Scharn-
horst and Gneisenau, the chief designers of the new Prus-
sian army, demanded in the preamble to their reforms that
the army must be "the union of all the moral and physical
energies of the nation." The phrase recalls the words of
Fichte; and it well summarizes the aims of the Prussian
patriots of that tune. The realization of their ideal in the
glorious efforts of the War of Liberation reveals the poten-
tialities of the Prussian State. Dowered with the toughness
of the Frederician regime, it is strengthened and enriched
by the doctrines of civic self-sacrifice proclaimed by Kant
and Fichte.

Long after the fall of Napoleon, the memory of the events
of 1813-5 inspired the thinkers of Prussia and Germany.

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 123

The energy and order prevalent at Berlin attracted thither
many thinkers who began life in the small States. That
had happened to Fichte, and in 1818 it happened to Hegel,
his successor in the chair of philosophy in that University.
Earlier in his career Hegel (1770-1831) had been an en-
thusiastic admirer of Napoleon and viewed the overthrow
of Prussia with supreme indifference; for he saw in the French
people and their Emperor the outcrop of the world-spirit.
But in his Berlin period he became Prussian. In his lectures
delivered there in 1820 he delivered his theory of the State
in regard to law. His conclusion was that the State was in
the moral order what Nature was in the physical order.
As the State sustained and regulated everything, it formed
the chief necessity of life for civilized men, and became, in
effect, the realized ethical ideal or ethical spirit.

By these claims Hegel raised the State to a supernatural
level. There it existed as something perfect, absolute, and
superhuman, yet dominating the fortunes of mankind.
Apparently, the Hegelian State could not develop or change;
for development implies advance from a less perfect condi-
tion to one that is more perfect. Hegel also made no allow-
ance for its permeation by the ideals of other States.1 His
ideal creation remains alone, like some Zeppelin tethered a
mile or so above Berlin, and dominating earth, air, and
heaven itself. Indeed, this simile is too weak to express the
absolute self-sufficiency of the Hegelian State. Its creator
scoffed at all inquiries as to its origin; for it had always ex-
isted while the nation existed. All that he will say on this
head is that the State is the outcome of the deep-seated
principle of order.2 This it is which determines the exercise
of what Rousseau termed "the general will."

Here at last we come to firm ground; but we remember

1 See D. Burns, op. cit., pp. 45, 53.

J Hegel, Philosophy of Light, transl. by S. W. Dyde, pp. 240-65.

124 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

that forty years earlier Kant had affirmed the raison d'etre
of the State to be the craving for order. In this respect, then,
the Hegelian notion links itself on to the doctrines of Rous-
seau and Kant; but the outcome is a terrifying and steriliz-
ing creation, whose chief practical duty is to protect "the
life, property, and free-will (!) of every person, simply in
so far as he does not injure the life, property, and free-will
of any other." But, he proceeds, the State is far more than
a magnified police officer. The perfect State is a spiritual
and all-pervading entity. It is not something separate from
each of its subjects. It is not distinct from you, from me.
We form part of it; and in this consciousness lies our political
freedom. Here we must remember that Hegel admits that
a bad State is finite and worldly. But wherein the perfect
State consists and wherein a State is bad is not clearly de-
fined.

It may seem impertinent in a mere historian to criticize
Hegel; but I cannot avoid the suspicion that, in identifying
the subjects with a perfect State, he is confusing the State
with the nation. My insular imagination fails to conceive
so complete an identification of the citizen with the most
perfect State as to become merged into it. That merging
is possible in the case of the nation; and I believe that it
can be affirmed of every true patriot at a great crisis. Cer-
tainly every Briton who now dies for his country makes that
supreme surrender on behalf of the nation, or for His Maj-
esty as typifying the nation. Professor Edward Meyer hi
a recent work claims that it is the great defect of our public
life that we do not think about the State. He says: "The
Briton never speaks of his State — a State does not exist for
him. He either speaks of the Empire or he speaks of the
Government, meaning the Government which then handles
the rudder of State. A State high above the clash of parties
does not exist for the Briton as it exists for the German":

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 125

and to this he attributes our political helplessness in this
war. Events, of course, will decide that point; l and I ques-
tion whether the average German is filled with much enthusi-
asm for the German State. I believe that he fights and dies
for das Vaterland, which is a far more human and inspiring
conception than that of the State. The idea of the State,
I believe, appeals chiefly to the intellectuals; for, ever since
Hegel's day, it has supplied them with a motiv for theory-
weaving.

However, the question whether a soldier fights and dies
for his nation or his State is academic trifling; and (to return
to Hegel) I believe that he ascribed to the State much that
Fichte had ascribed to the nation. It seems to me that on
this topic Fichte's view was sounder. The nation it was
which fired France with hope and enthusiasm. The Ger-
mans defiantly retorted with their national idea in 1813;
and though the idea of the German nation did not in that
age find visible expression in a national State, yet there was
the chance that it would one day embody itself. To idealize
the State in 1830 was surely doubtful psychology and false
as history. The criticism of some of Hegel's contemporaries
crystallized in the joke that he mistook the Kingdom of
Prussia for the Kingdom of Heaven.2

Hegel even affirms that the State is the nation's spirit.
That again is a question of words; and I cannot see that
such a description of the State advances our knowledge of
it. We worldly minded students of history want to know,
not what the State is, but how it works; how it reconciles the
often divergent claims of general order and the liberty of the
individual. On these topics Hegel is as silent as Rousseau.

1 See the suggestive remarks of Rev. J. Oman, The War and its Issues,
ch. Ill [Camb. Univ. Press, 1915], as to the difference of British and
German ideas of the State.

2 G. P. Gooch, in Contemporary Review, June, 1915.

126 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

In fact, Hegel, like Rousseau, seems to believe that in that
ideal entity, the absolute State, there will be no opposition.
We reply that that is unthinkable among a free community;
and our suspicions of the Berlin professor are not lessened
by his assertion that to offer the people a constitution is a
mere whim, seeing that a constitution must grow from the
consciousness of the people. "True!" we English reply;
"that is the best method, the English method; but is that a
sufficient reason for refusing the beginnings of a free govern-
ment to a less fortunate people? " There is, of course, much
truth in Hegel's further statement, that every nation has
the constitution that suits it and belongs to it; but this
assertion again is liable to abuse, if it implies that no arbi-
trary Government is ever to be overthrown, because the
people do not deserve a better.1 In practice, Hegel's theoriz-
ing about the State came to be a defence of paternal and
almost despotic Government. "You have a nearly perfect
State" (said he); "be content with it; identify yourself
with it; you need not wish for anything better." Some of
his friends reproached him with deserting his earlier progres-
sive views; and the charge seems proven.

In his next political work, The Philosophy of History (1830),
Hegel implicitly defended the Prussian system, which ex-
cluded the populace from the political life of the State: he
also decried the results of the French Revolution; and, as for
the English Reform Bill, he declared that it would destroy
what slight measure of governing capacity still survived in
these islands. Moreover (said he), the typical Englishman
was too insular, too whimsical, to understand real liberty,
and always looked at it from the point of view of his own
home. As for Prussia, despite her exclusion of the citizens
from political affairs, she was on the right track; for she
embodied the principle of reason. She was Protestant, and
1 Dyde, op. cit., pp. 274-82.

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 127

she admitted capable men to all posts.1 What more could
they want?

Notwithstanding this discouraging conclusion, the in-
fluence exerted by Hegel was very great. Discredited though
he was by the later Liberalism (which found its exponent in
Bluntschli 2), his State-absolutism lived on and helped to
reinforce the masterful notions of the Bismarck-Treitschke
period. Another Hegelian theory tending in the same direc-
tion was that of the World-Spirit visiting and vivifying the
great peoples in turn, and, in the fullness of time, the German
people. But we must postpone to Lecture X an examination
of that theory.

So far we have been considering the German idealists.
It has been stated that their political teaching was sound,
and that the poison which has crept in was due solely to
materialism of thought and to its political resultant, Real-
politik.3 But, as I have tried to show, danger lurked in the
teachings of Fichte and Hegel. In their Berlin periods they
denied individual liberty and exalted the State to a dangerous
pre-eminence, while Hegel's later teachings fostered the
growth of Prussian Chauvinism. The following years wit-
nessed the publication of Clausewitz's work On War, memora-
ble for its declaration that States were always in a condition of
struggle, of which war was only an intenser form. Then, too,
appeared that exciting poem, " Deutschland, Deutschland uber
dies."

The popular outbreaks of 1848-9 in Germany concern
us here only because the populace everywhere affirmed the

1 Hegel [op. tit., p. 437] recognizes a South German nationality, be-
cause that people was too mixed to accept Protestantism.

* See J. K. Bluntschli, The Theory of the State [Eng. edit, (and), Oxford,
1892]; especially Bk. II for suggestive remarks on the State and Nation-
ality.

' Prof. J. H. Muirhead, German Philosophy in Relation to the War,
Lects. I, H.

128 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

supremacy of the whole nation; and when Frederick William
IV for a time surrendered to his "dear Berliners" and de-
clared that thenceforth Prussia would merge herself in Ger-
many, the triumph of the nation over the Prussian State
seemed assured. Owing to the inexperience and reckless
enthusiasms of the first German Parliament, which met at
Frankfurt in 1848, all went awry. The old political mechan-
ism was set up again; and, when Germany achieved her
union in 1870-1, it was through the House of Hohenzollern
and the Prussian State. Consequently, the failures of Ger-
man Liberalism hi 1848-9 have profoundly affected the trend
of political thought. Idealism, democracy, and voluntary
methods being discredited, the tendency was towards the
precepts and practice of Frederick the Great. In short, the
age became ripe for Bismarck's gospel of "blood and iron,"
the way for which was further facilitated by prosperity, and
the development of a materialistic philosophy.1 Bismarck
often gibed at the professors and barristers of 1848; but it was
their viewiness which prepared the way for his statecraft.
The excesses of democrats have always been the best help of
reactionaries.

The first sign of the new spirit was an essay by Rouchau
on Realpolitik. Published in 1853, when the reaction was
in full swing, it trumpeted forth the new political mate-
rialism. "The State is Power" — such is its thesis. It at-
tracted a far more important man than Rochau, Heinrich
von Treitschke, who afterwards developed that theory to
its logical conclusion. Treitschke (1834-96) came of a Slav
family and was endowed with Slavonic intensity and ve-
hemence, which he vented against that race with all the
acerbity of a renegade. His father was a Saxon officer of
proved loyalty and steadfastness; but the youth soon dis-
played far other tendencies. For his first recorded speech,
1 See Professor Muirhead, op. cit., Lect. III.

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 129

delivered at a prize-giving, he chose as his subject praise
of Prussia's championship of German unity; and that incident
is typical as illustrating his natural bent towards Prussianism.
As a student, he read with ardor the Politics of Aristotle and
the Prince of MachiaveUi, dangerous reading for a youth of
his ardent temperament. The study of Fichte and Hegel
fortified his conviction of the need for the supremacy of the
State; and in 1861 (the year of the consummation of Italian
unity) he set forth the ideal of "the nationally exclusive
State," i. e. a State composed of one people. "For (said he)
where the living and indubitable consciousness of unity per-
vades all the members of the State, there and there only is the
State what its nature requires that it should be, a nation
possessing organic unity." He prophesied that the great
peoples would everywhere form national States — a singularly
correct forecast. In common with all nationalists he de-
tested the House of Hapsburg as artificially clamping together
diverse elements which Nature meant to exist separately.
What, then, would he have said about the Hohenzollern-
Hapsburg-Bulgar-Turkish compacts for the domination of
neighboring lands? Probably he would have defended that
strange league on the ground that the State is power and must
hew its way through to more favorable positions on the North
Sea and in the Levant; but assuredly such a plea would
contradict his earlier contention, that the State must be
conterminous with the nation, and that it is well even "to
amputate alien elements of the population." *

His eager nationalism led him to advocate the absorption
of the smaller German States by Prussia; and indeed he
invited her to attack them. The end, said he, would justify
the means; and they would soon benefit by her vigorous
rule. Such was his plea in 1864. He knew perfectly well

1 Treitschke overlooked the Poles of Posen, then, as now, utterly un-
Prussianized.

130 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

that the King and Bismarck were then governing illegally
and despotically. All the same, he prayed that they might
succeed; for Prussia alone could unify Germany. She alone
could win the coveted duchies, Schleswig-Holstein, and
thereby assure to Germany a commanding position in the
North Sea and the Baltic. Similar reasons induced him to
side against Austria and her South German allies in the
struggle of 1866. After the triumph of Prussia, he, a Saxon
by birth, demanded that she should annex Saxony outright,
for the crime of taking the side of Austria; and he professed
to be surprised and pained that his father should speak of him
as "a political Jesuit."

Treitschke persisted in his claim that Prussia should lead
the German people forward to power and prosperity far
beyond the bounds of the nation. In a remarkable passage in
his essay Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat he pleaded for an
effective unity of Germans so that they might be able to
compete with other peoples for the commerce of the oceans.
The South Sea was calling for traders; and mighty united
nations were pressing in, while the Germans could only fol-
low humbly at a distance their more fortunate predecessors.
Why should Germans be steeped in inland notions? Let
them hear the call of the sea and organize themselves
fitly for a great future. That future they could realize only
by means of political unity. Enough of their old federalism!
What they needed was unity — an Einheitsstaat (a united
State).

This was the thought that impelled his angry demand for
the annexation of Saxony, as well as Hanover and Hesse
Cassel. In August, 1870, even before Napoleon III was
overthrown at Sedan, Treitschke passionately demanded the
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. That the people of those
provinces objected to such a change was nought to him.
"These provinces (he cries) are ours by the right of the sword;

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 131

and we will rule them in virtue of a higher right; in virtue of
the right of the German nation to prevent the permanent
estrangement of her lost children from the Germanic Empire.
We Germans, who know both Germany and France, know
better what is for the good of the Alsatians than do those un-
happy people themselves, who, in the perverse conditions of a
French existence, have been denied any true knowledge of
modern Germany. We desire, even against their will, to
restore them to themselves." Then comes the naive and
illuminating admission: "We are by no means rich enough to
renounce so precious a possession." He also expressed the
hope that the extension of the responsibilities of the German
people would lift their politics above doctrinaire pettiness "to
a great, strenuous and positive conduct of the affairs of the
State." 1

This last statement is instructive, in view of the opposi-
tion already offered by German Liberals and Socialists to
the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. The progressive elements
hi Germany deprecated such an act,2 not only from principle,
but also from expediency; from principle, because the transfer
of people like cattle to an alien rule was abhorrent to democ-
racy; from expediency, because the Government of these
unwilling subjects must be more or less coercive; and coercion
renders the Government harsher towards its own subjects,
besides furthering the growth of militarism. Now, it was
precisely for these reasons that Treitschke advocated the
annexation. He wanted to have done with idealism in order
to assure "a positive conduct of the affairs of the State," in
other words, he aimed at the triumph of Realpolitik. Bis-
marck was of the same mind as Treitschke. The Iron Chan-
cellor, speaking to Busch just after Sedan, laughed at the
notion that Germany would annex Alsace in order to re-

1H. W. C. Davis, The Political Thought of Treitschke, p. 112.
1 Busch, Bismarck in the Franco-German War, 1, 147.

132 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

teutonize her lost children. All that talk was merely the
vaporing of German professors (not yet in favor) : " It is the
fortresses of Metz and Strassburg which we want, and which
we will take."

That is the essence of Realpolitik. Germany needs Metz
and Strassburg for military reasons. Therefore she will
annex them. True, a little later, Bismarck wavered about
annexing the wholly French population of Metz; but the
German Staff never wavered. They had their way, and that
way led towards a more drastic polity. Thus, just as Freder-
ick II 's persistent rigor resulted from his deliberate choice of
an aggressive and therefore militarist policy, so, too, the ag-
grandized Germany of 1871 imposed on Europe the evils of
an armed peace and on herself a more absolutist regime.

In proportion as the amis of Berlin politicians became
more and more objective, so did the teaching of Treitschke.
He laughed at a political science based on abstract principles,
viz., the science of Kant, Fichte, Hegel. He claimed that it
must be the outcome of the experience of each people. As
the peoples differed widely in character and local conditions,
so, too, must their polity. To affirm the necessary superiority
of any one State-system was ridiculous. The nation must
construct its own form of polity in order that it might lead
its own Me. The true guide was history, not the doctrine
of abstract right; for history showed what the people was and
what it wanted. So far, good. Few Englishmen will dis-
pute these dicta. But Treitschke proceeded to claim that in
matters political there was no positive right and wrong.
Every nation must construct its own moral code — as the
Germans have done.

His reasoning at this point is illogical; for, though he
postulated the complete supremacy of the State in secular
affairs, he deliberately excepted matters of conscience which
(said he) pertained to the relations between God and man,

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 133

and were beyond the cognizance of the State. Yet the State
must form its own code of morality. The only escape from
the difficulty is to claim that State morality is something
entirely separate from the morality of the individual. That
is what the followers of Treitschke have both affirmed in
their lecture-rooms and practiced in Belgium.

Finally we may note that Treitschke identified the State
and the nation. He defined the State as a people united by
legal ties to form an independent power. On this subject
again his ideas were inconsistent. Sometimes he denied that
the State was an organism and declared it to be a person
(presumably the nation personified). Elsewhere, however,
he thus defined it: "The State is the public power for de-
fensive and offensive purposes." (That is, it is a magnified
drill-sergeant.) Pursuing this trend of thought, he thus
narrowed down the functions of the State: "It only repre-
sents the nation from the point of view of power" (a political
Hercules). But, again, he said: "The State is the basis of all
national life" (an eternized Frederick the Great).1

It is difficult to frame any intelligible theory out of these
descriptions; and the composite photograph made up from
these personifications would be an odd creature, recognizable
only by the spiked helmet. But there is one feature common
to them all. They body forth the idea of power; they imply a
something which functions with tremendous energy, which
belongs more to the barracks and the workshop than to the
Church and the University. Treitschke's State, whatever
he may at times say to the contrary, is a mechanical contriv-
ance designed for conquest; and to this contrivance the
German people is closely linked.

These conceptions of the State as drill-sergeant and of the
populace as recruits mark a serious set back from the ideas

1 Treitschke, Politik, I, pp. 28-32, 62-3; quoted by H. W. C. Davis,
op. cit., pp. 127-131.

134 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

of Fichte; for he insisted on the ideal character of the nation.
In his view the nation far transcended the State, which con-
cerned itself with government and law. The nation looked
to higher things, to the blossoming of the eternal and divine
in the world. Despite his too hopeful idealism, Fichte was
far nearer to the truth than Treitschke. For, surely, the
State is the organism, while the nation is the brain and the
soul. True, the nation needs the State to endow it with
hands and feet. But the nation remains the directing agency
vitalizing and directing the body politic. Indeed, the nation
survives, even when all the machinery of Government is
shattered. At this very time the Belgian State and the Ser-
bian State scarcely exist; but the Belgian nation and the Serb
nation endure — aye, and will endure; for their sublime
courage has endowed them with immortality. This is what
German politicians and German professors cannot under-
stand. Destroy all the machinery of government and you
have destroyed the nation, say Treitschke and his succes-
sors. Possibly it is, in part, these mechanical notions which
have led them astray into their recent adventures; for other-
wise their conduct is altogether inexplicable. It becomes
dimly intelligible when compared with that of Napoleon, who,
carrying eighteenth-century materialism into the realm of
high policy, deemed the Spanish nation conquered when he
had beaten their armies and seized the machinery of govern-
ment. It is the nemesis of a forceful regime that it neglects
everything which cannot be measured in battalions, money,
and foot-pounds.

Treitschke had before him the example, not only of Na-
poleon's disastrous blunder, but also that of two peoples who
defied all assessment by official measures. During a century
(with a short interval after Waterloo) the Poles enjoyed no
political existence. Yet have the Poles ever ceased to be a
nation? The other instance is even more striking. During

GERMAN THEORY OF THE STATE 135

1800 years the Jews have had no State. Nevertheless, Jew-
ish nationality is one of the powerful influences of the world,
often seemingly destroyed, but ever rising again in Phcenix-
like vitality. In spite of these patent proofs of the superiority
of the nation to the State, Treitschke and his many followers
insist upon degrading the nation, which is essentially a spirit-
ual entity, to the level of the organism which merely endows
it with power for action. I believe that there is no hope for
German political thought until it frees itself from this dis-
astrous confusion. "Back to Fichte" ought to be the cry
of all German idealists; for, though his political creed con-
tained much that was despotic, yet he proclaimed the all-
important truth (veiled to Treitschke), that a nation exists
in the realm of spirit and cannot be made or unmade by force.
When that discovery is brought home to the German people
they will have taken the first step towards a political renas-
cence. Then they will liberate themselves from the traditions
of Frederick the Great. Then they will reorganize themselves
on rational lines, free from the overmastering influence of
the Prussian State.

OUR studies in national movements have been by no means
complete. We have passed by the struggles of the Poles,
Belgians, Greeks, and Hungarians, also the efforts of the
French for a revival of their polity in the critical years 1871-5.
The study of the French Risorgimento reveals the sterling
worth of that people and also the practical usefulness of
patriotism in rebuilding an almost shattered society. No
better guide and inspiration can be found for the tremendous
work of reconstruction which awaits the European peoples
at the close of this disastrous war.1

We have also had to omit from our survey the most sur-
prising of all national movements in our age, that of Japan.
A genuinely patriotic impulse it was which suddenly trans-
formed Japan from a mediaeval into a modern State, which
absorbed much of the best in European civilization without
impairing the strength of the old Japanese chivalry (Bushido).
Finally it was a keen sense of national honor which flung
back Russia from Korea, expelled Germany from Shang
Tung, and is now loyally helping the Allies by furnishing
Russia with the munitions of war. All this has been done
by a people which less than half a century ago fought with
bows and arrows and frightened the enemy with masks.
It is a romance; and the soul of the romance is the intense

1 The revival of France in 1871-5 will form one of the " special periods"
for the Historical Tripos of 1917, etc.; and will be dealt with by members
of the Cambridge History School.

136

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 137

patriotism which nerves the Japanese, from the highest
to the lowest, with devotion to the Mikado as the embodi-
ment of all that is holy and lofty in the national life. There
is terrible poverty in Japan; but no Japanese would dream
of whining: "I have no country to fight for."

These great movements one and all demonstrate the tre-
mendous force of Nationality. It may be granted that
that feeling appeared long ago in England, France, and
Spain; yet its influence was fitful by comparison with that
which it has recently exerted upon the European peoples;
and I think we may ascribe its development largely to the
spread of education and of facilities for trade and travel.
In the Ancient and Mediaeval Worlds the town or even the
village was the typical social unit. By degrees that unit
enlarged. In times of general danger men recognized their
kinship with men previously deemed strangers or enemies;
and with the widening of social intercourse that conception
acquired strength until it flashed forth in a universal con-
sciousness at a time of mental exaltation such as that which
exhilarated France in 1789-90. Elsewhere, as in Spain, Eng-
land, and North Germany, danger of conquest by the for-
eigner furnished the mental stimulus; and then what had
been a group-consciousness, a county or provincial feeling,
became a permanently national feeling. As I have tried to
show in these lectures, this widening outlook, this pride in
the country instead of merely in the county, opens up an
immense store of vital energy. There passes through those
diverse groups and classes a thrill which makes them one
body politic — not a corpus vile on which Kings and lawgivers
may work their will, but a conscious powerful entity which
bends them to its will. Such is the change which has come
over the peoples. It has refashioned the map of Europe,
forming in the centre massive blocks out of what was a
feudal mosaic, dissolving the Ottoman Empire into its com-

138 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

ponent racial groups, in short, giving political expression to
the settlements of the peoples effected during the Dark Ages.

Reverting to our political bioscope of Lecture I, we see
that the political boundaries of Europe now correspond
nearly to the more permanent of the conquests made by the
barbarian invaders who shattered the Roman Empire. First
there was imperial unity, which gave way before tribal
chaos; then there ensued long and painful jostlings; then an
assorting process under monarchs; then there emerged groups
of tribes nearly related, which developed at the expense of
merely traditional or enforced groupings; finally there were
formed the solid homogeneous blocks of to-day. Obviously,
here we have an elemental force of incalculable potency,
whether for good or harm. The reasonable method of re-
garding this national instinct is, not to sneer at it as something
old-fashioned and certain soon to disappear before an en-
lightened cosmopolitanism, but rather to try and understand
it, so as to dissociate its baser elements from those which
may further the progress of mankind.

Firstly, then, what is Nationality, using the term in its
abstract sense? l Perhaps we shall come nearer to the truth
if we apply the method of exclusion and discover what it is
not. Our studies have, I believe, led us to doubt whether it
is determined by race. Let us consider this question in the
light of the science of ethnology. We now know that the
old notions about "the European family" and its supposed
division into Celts, Teutons, etc., are without scientific
foundation. There is no European family, no Celtic race,
no Teutonic race. Anthropologists, by their careful exami-
nations of certain physical characteristics, such as the shape
of the skull and the color of hair and eyes, have proved that
so-called racial divisions based on language or tradition are

1 See the Preface for notes on the terms "people," "nation," "nation-
ality."

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 139

not fundamental. Speaking broadly, there are three races in
Europe: (i) the tall, fair, long-haired race which spreads
from the British Isles and the North of France through
Flanders and the North European plain and Scandinavia as
far as the Gulf of Finland; (2) the broad-headed race, gener-
ally termed the Alpine, which inhabits the greater part of
Central France, Central Europe, and the Balkan Peninsula;
(3) the Mediterranean race, inhabiting the European lands
north of the Mediterranean Sea, with the exception of North
Italy and the Balkan Peninsula.1

Science, then, knows of no essential physical difference
between a North-West German, a Fleming, and a North
Frenchman. There is a difference between this northern
family and the Central and Southern Germans and French-
men. Considered according to race, Germany is tripartite,
and so is France. There is no marked distinction of race be-
tween a Norman and a Hanoverian; between a Lyonnais
and a Bavarian; between a Provencal and a Calabrian. In
the French army there are three distinct racial types: so there
are in the German army. Yet those three diverse types are
welded into political and military entities, which oppose
each other with the most desperate determination. But this
political and military grouping is not racial; it is based on
difference of culture (using the term in its widest sense).
Though there is no such thing as a Celtic or Teutonic race,
Celtic or Teutonic culture is a reality. So, too, the Anglo-
Saxon people is a conglomerate, made up of several racial
elements; but Anglo-Saxon culture has marked and distinct
characteristics, which, from our present point of view, over-
shadow the physical differences above noted. It is also im-
portant to get rid of the old notion that there is a fundamental

1 The above summary, of course, does not comprise the Jews, Turks,
Bulgars, Magyars, and Finns. It is only a very general statement.
Deniker subdivides the three races named above into several groups.

140 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

physical difference between the average Englishman and the
average North Frenchman, and between him and the average
North German.1 What differences there are have developed
later. They are due to language, tradition, religion, custom,
and, finally, political grouping and political sentiment. Of
course these differences make up nearly the whole of life to
the modern man; but (to put it baldly) the Englishman is
not a different animal from the North German, or he, again,
from the North Frenchman. Science has rendered a great
service by disproving that hoary superstition.

No! Only in a very crude form (like that which now pre-
vails hi Germany and the Balkans) does Nationality depend
on race. The Belgian litterateur, Laveleye, well expressed
the thought: "In proportion as the culture of a people ad-
vances, identity of race and of blood exercises less power on
it, and historic memories exercise more power. Above
ethnical nationalities there are political nationalities, formed
by choice (one may say), rooted in love of liberty, in the cult
of a glorious past, in accord of interests, in similarity of moral
ideas, and of all that forms the intellectual life."2 Here,
however, I must regretfully remark that this peaceful and
ideal development is apt to be interrupted by inrushes of
sentiment and passion. At such crises, especially during
war, the adage "Blood is thicker than water" holds good;
and the affinities produced by generations of culture vanish
under the drag of racial instincts that seemed to be dead.
Then the cultured European gives place to the tribal warrior.

In normal circumstances, however, Nationality does not
depend on race. Does it, then, depend on language? Here
certainly we come nearer to a powerful political influence.
But again consider. In the French army are Bretons and a
few Basques and Spaniards who speak no French, yet are

1 W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, ch. 6.

*E. Laveleye, Le Gouvernement et la Democratic (1891), I, p. 58.

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 141

enthusiastically French at heart. In the German army are
Wends who in a political sense are thoroughly Germanized,
not to speak of Poles, Danes, and Lorrainers who are not
Germanized. In the Austrian army are peoples speaking
eleven distinct languages; yet there is in that army, as in the
Austrian Empire, far more solidarity that was believed to
be possible. But the crowning proof that language does not
determine Nationality is found in Switzerland. The Swiss
comprise portions of three peoples, which speak French,
German, and Italian;1 yet they remain at peace, though
over the borders their kith and kin are at war. How is this
possible? Merely because language does not determine
nationality. The sentiment of Swiss Nationality, rooted in
pride in their historic past and in contentment with an almost
ideal polity, has triumphed over linguistic differences. Tri-
lingual Switzerland remains at peace — agitated, it is true,
for language is a powerful tie. Nevertheless, the spiritual
union of that people holds firm; and its triumph is an augury
of hope for the future. Scarcely less remarkable is the case
of the Jews, at which we glanced in Lecture I. They have
retained their solidarity, though dispersed during long ages,
and divided by sharp differences of language. Only where
congregated together in large numbers do they habitually
use Hebrew. In Spain and the Balkan States they use
Spanish; in Russia and Poland they speak either Polish or a
corrupt German; in Morocco, Arabic. Yet they rarely lose
their Nationality.2
The case of the Swiss and that of the Jews, then, seems to

1 1 omit the Romansch, spoken in the Engadine, as too small to count.

2 Ripley, op. cit., p. 369; S. B. Rohold, The War and the Jew (Toronto,
1915), shows that 350,000 Jews are fighting for Russia, 180,000 for
Austria, over 15,000 for us, and over 10,000 for France. Yet, though
loyally obeying their Governments and fighting against their co-religion-
ists, they remain Jews.

142 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

show that language is not necessary to, though it may help
on, the forming of a nation. Probably, with the spread
of education, language will play a smaller part than before.
Welsh is dying in several parts of Wales, especially in the
industrial districts; and the smaller languages will doubtless
vanish, and with them racial differences and jealousies.
Migration and emigration help on the assimilating process.
In the United States and Canada few languages except
English, French, and German have a chance of surviving,
and French and German only hi certain areas. Speaking
generally, in the new lands the smaller languages tend to
disappear. Dutch (in a very simplified form) persists in
South Africa; but there, too, commerce helps on the more
useful language, English. Indeed, the victory of General
Botha over Herzog at the polls in South Africa may prove
to be the beginning of a genuinely Anglo-Dutch reunion,
which will be neither English nor Dutch, but Africander
(perhaps bi-lingual for some generations), loyal to the Em-
pire which not only tolerates but fosters within its fold
all peoples, all creeds, all languages. The present war has
been a terrible set back to the progress of mankind; for it
has revived national hatreds and has arrayed against each
other peoples speaking different languages; but there are
tendencies at work, more permanent than war, which lessen
linguistic differences and induce peoples of diverse tongues
to live together in friendly union. Of these Federations,
Switzerland, the United States, and the British Empire
(which is in spirit a Federation rather than an Empire)
form the most promising examples; and the present disastrous
conflict will probably tend ultimately to strengthen the devel-
opment of such unions existing independently of race or
language. Such at least is the tendency among the leading
peoples of the West. They do not need to conquer their
neighbors; they attract them by the charm of their culture.

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 143

And this, surely, is the type of Nationality which will ulti-
mately prevail over the crude force that is now devastating
the world.

No! Nationality does not depend on language. Still less
does it depend on a State. As we saw in the last lecture,
a nation that depends on a State is mistaking an organism
for the life and soul of that organism. In modern tunes,
national feeling has fashioned States, and is always at work
refashioning them in accordance with new needs. Nations
make States; not States, nations. The one exception is
Prussia; so long as she limited herself to the unification of
the German people, she achieved remarkable success; but
so soon as the Prussian State sought to Germanize other
peoples, it utterly failed. Herein, surely, lies one of the chief
causes of the deep hostility between the Germans and other
peoples. The Germans have glorified the State and have
sought to force their Kultur on neighboring highly civilized
peoples, who resent that process. Even if, by some miracle,
they succeeded in this war, their effort would be doomed to
failure, as surely as that of Napoleon the Great. For it
violates a fundamental conviction of the modern man.

Lastly, is Nationality an emanation of the World-Spirit?
Hegel (in his Philosophy of History, 1830) put forth a theory
which assumed that a world-force visited the peoples in a
predetermined order and endowed them with exceptional
vitality for some special task. While they performed that
task, they were "moral, virtuous, vigorous." Thereafter,
they declined, and another took up that or some similar task.
The theory finds little support from History. It breaks down
in the case of China, which during thousands of years has
pursued the even tenor of its way, with few signs of decline,
and, indeed, recently with many signs of rejuvenescence. The
theory also seeks to account for the decay of the nations, both
ancient and modern, on a single hypothesis; whereas history

144 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

shows that decline and decay were due to very diverse causes,
many of them of an agrarian or social character but slightly
understood in Hegel's day. Nations also may seem to be on
the downward trend, like the France of Louis XV and XVI,
and then by a conscious and determined effort of reform they
will shoot up again to unimagined heights of power, declining
once more when that power is abused by a dictator, Napoleon.
If Napoleon was the chief emanation of the World-Spirit,
as Hegel long assumed him to be, how came it that he left
France far weaker than he found her? Did the World-Spirit
suddenly change its mind in 1813 and resolve to desert him
and go over to the Allies?

On these and similar topics the World-Spirit theory offers
no adequate explanation. Indeed, it cannot explain the
complex phenomena of the rise and fall of nations. That
certain peoples have now and again displayed marvellously
increased vigor is true; but that phenomenon is generally
due to one or more of the following causes: There may be a
f using together of various tribes by some able leader or under
the impulse of religious fervor (as happened to the Arabs
after the time of Mohammed). A great warrior may have
incited peoples to wars of ambition. Or, on the other hand, a
nation, when threatened with conquest, may be thrown back
on itself and develop to the utmost the powers that generally
go unused. Or, again, a people can be stimulated by becom-
ing the exponent of some great idea, as were the Swedes of
Gustavus Adolphus by Reformation fervor, or the French
Revolutionists by the ideas of liberty, equality, and National-
ity. Lastly, geographical discoveries and mechanical inven-
tions bring some peoples to the front and depress the fortunes
of others, as is evident from the history of Venice, Portugal,
Holland, Great Britain. Looking at the causes that make for
the rise and fall of nations, we discern a great variety; they
range from warlike ambition or the spur of hunger, to impulses

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 145

of an ideal nature, such as religious zeal, or newly aroused
national pride, or wars of liberation. Sometimes a new energy
raises the people to a higher level of thought, art, or inven-
tion. Again, it drives them to the conquest of new markets.
How is it possible to refer to any one cause impulses of so
bewildering a variety? Label your causa causans "World-
Spirit" if you like; but remember that it is a very Proteus,
now flashing forth as a warrior, then shrinking into a huck-
ster; now an artist or poet, then a politician; now a philoso-
pher, then an explorer; now an admiral, then a mechanic or
engineer. You must run through the whole range of life in
order to fill up all the characters that your Spirit may assume.

Lastly, remember that the theory of a World-Spirit in-
flating one people and deflating others in a predetermined
order is morally mischievous. For it tends to puff up with
pride a people which believes it detects some sign of the
spiritual afflatus; while it also disheartens peoples that deem
the deflating process begun, and thereby discourages the
timely efforts at reform which can nearly always avert
collapse. Believe me, that a fatalistic theory, such as that
of the World-Spirit, has little warrant from history. It does
not apply to peoples that refuse to bow down to the supposed
decrees of fate. Only those peoples are sure to perish who
tamely prostrate themselves before those decrees.1

We have now cleared the ground of faulty or inadequate
explanations of Nationality. Perhaps we shall best under-
stand what it is if we briefly review the events that first made
it a force in the modern world.

Recent history is held to begin with the French Revolu-
tion of 1789: and Alison classed all the campaigns up to
Waterloo under the Revolution. Is it not truer to fact to sub-
divide the period and say that the first phase of Nationality

1 1 think that Nationality explains several of the cases of exceptional
vitality which Hegel ascribed to his World-Spirit.

146 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

as distinct from Democracy begins with the Spanish Rising
of 1808? It ends with Waterloo. The second phase com-
mences fitfully in 1830 and 1848, and more definitely with the
Italian War of Liberation in 1859. From 1859 to the present
is pre-eminently the climax of the Age of Nationality. By
this I mean that the idea has permeated the masses of the
population and has increased their power for action. True,
the national idea had previously dawned upon poets and
thinkers. It vibrates in the verse of Dante, Chaucer, and
Shakespeare; but, as we saw in Lecture I, it did not permeate
the masses, except at intense moments of their life, such as
coincided with the exploits of Jeanne d'Arc, the repulse of the
Spanish Armada, or the revolt of the Dutch "Beggars"
against Spain. Subsequently, it died down even in France,
England, and Holland; for the Religious Wars divided peoples
against themselves, and, on the cessation of those strifes,
dynastic wars or the growth of absolutist States half stifled
the sentiment. Louis XIV personified the French nation, but
so successfully that the nation was but half aware of its own
existence.

Much preparatory work had to be done before this dis-
covery was possible. The shipbuilders, road-makers, and
traders played their part in bringing men together. Thinkers
pointed out what was natural, what artificial, in their society.
But when all this preliminary work was ended, and men of
different provinces of France began to greet each other instead
of scowling, any widespread impulse was certain to produce a
new and vital union.

Such an event was the Revolution. It changed the half-
'animate clods into citizens, but it also sent through them
a sympathetic thrill which made the citizens a nation. France
is often termed the political laboratory of Europe; for her
actions are more striking than are the gradual unfoldings that
characterize our annals. Certainly, it is in French history

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 147

that the development of Nationality is most clearly outlined.
The merging of different peoples and diverse provinces in a
single monarchy was the work of French monarchs and
statesmen, so that, except in a few moments of inspiration,
the nation existed only by and in the person of the King. As
the monarchy declined under Louis XV and XVI, the nation
emerged; and, early in the Revolution (as we saw in Lec-
ture II), the disputes of the National Assembly with the King
brought the sense of Nationality to sudden maturity. It
found expression during the famous sitting of August 4, 1789,
when Lorraine, youngest of the French provinces, expressed
her desire to join intimately in the life of "this glorious
family."

I know of no words that better describe Nationality. It is
an instinct, and cannot be exactly defined; it is the recognition
as kinsmen of those who were deemed strangers; it is the
apotheosis of family feeling, and begets a resolve never again
to separate; it leads to the founding of a polity on a natural
basis, independent of a monarch or a State, though not in any
sense hostile to them; it is more than a political contract; it is
a union of hearts, once made, never unmade. These are the
characteristics of Nationality in its highest form — a spiritual
conception, unconquerable, indestructible. So soon as clans,
tribes, or provinces catch the glow of this wider enthusiasm,
they form a nation. And thus it was that France burst into
her new life. Her long chrysalis stage, when patriotism clung
about the old monarchy, was ended; and the nation stood
erect and defiant. England, Italy, Illyria, Spain, Russia,
Germany, successively felt the impact of this new vital force,
and responded with messages, first of sympathy, then of dis-
trust, finally of hostility. Thus, within twenty-five years,
Europe was awake, and became a camp of warring nations.

During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Age, then,
France exhibits Nationality at its best and at its worst. In its

148 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

higher developments in 1789-91 that principle endowed her
with a distinct and vivid consciousness, so that what had
been a set of limbs, worked in the main by a master, became a
body-politic — nay, more, a soul-politic that defied division.
In this new and intense life she exerted a singular fascination
on all peoples. Thinkers felt her magnetic potency. Goethe,
unresponsive to German politics, bowed before the manifesta-
tion of her uncanny strength at Valmy. Schiller and Fichte
hailed her as the source of light and warmth to a dead world.
Wordsworth and Coleridge first felt the full thrill of poetic
ecstasy as they gazed on her civic raptures, and foretold
defeat to all who withstood her new-found might. That
was Nationality in its purest form. It corresponds to the
tune in lif e when the youth finds himself.

But, as often happens in human affairs, this strength ran
riot. Self-realization begot self-confidence, and that in its
turn contempt for those who were still inert. Hence the
crusade of 1792 for the liberation of unfree peoples degen-
erated into wars of aggression. As Wordsworth phrased it: —

"But now, become oppressors in their turn,
Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence
For one of conquest, losing sight of all
Which they had struggled for. . . .

... I read her doom,
With anger vexed, with disappointment sore." l

This sudden degeneration of French Nationality reminds
us that there is a baser side to the instinct. In this respect
it does not aim at the union of all who desire to share hi the
common life, but seeks to compel aliens to come in. It uses
force, not attraction. Its outcome is tyranny, not liberty; a
military Empire, not a free Federation.

Not only events in France in 1792-1815, but also the
1 Wordsworth, Prelude, Bk. XI.

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 149

Continental movements of 1848-9 reveal the ease with which
Nationalism is perverted and becomes an enemy to freedom.
When the peoples of Italy, France, Germany, and Austria-
Hungary rose to demand constitutional rule and a more
natural political grouping, Democracy and Nationality
seemed for a time to have achieved a complete triumph.
But the two principles soon clashed, especially among the
Germans and Magyars. In Hungary, the Magyars won their
freedom from the House of Hapsburg, but soon showed their
unfitness for the boon. No sooner did they gain constitutional
rights than they used them to force the Magyar language on
their Slav fellow-subjects — an act of intolerance fatal to
Hungary in 1849, as similar acts have been hi the recent
past.1 At other points, too, the Nationalists of 1849 strained
their case to breaking point, with the result that in Central
Europe and to a less extent in Italy Democracy and National-
ity parted company, to their mutual detriment.

The upshot of it all was that the programme of Mazzini
failed in the sphere of practice; and the peoples, unable to
achieve self-expression by their unaided exertions, fell back
on the methods of diplomacy and force exemplified in the
careers of Cavour and Bismarck, and championed by the
Houses of Savoy and Hohenzollern. In that statement
much lies enfolded; for it implies that they entered upon
paths parallel to those which led Revolutionary France
towards Militarism.

True: the successes won by Cavour and Bismarck were
phenomenal. The Italian and German movements rushed
to victory in the eleven years 1859-70; but I believe that all
intelligent Germans now regret the suddenness and the
brilliance of that triumph of military force. Better that

1 Bluntschli (Theory of the State, Bk. II, ch. 3) says that a State cannot
deny a Nationality the use of its language and literature, though it may
use the predominant language for convenience.

150 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Germany and Italy had struggled on some decades longer,
and won their national unity by less forceful means and at
the cost of fewer national antipathies.

Let us retrace our steps in order to observe the parallel
courses of Militarism in Republican France and Bismarckian
Prussia. As we saw in Lecture II, France adopted the prin-
ciple of civic service for her newly enfranchised sons in 1789;
and Lafayette, shortly after the capture of the Bastille, when
founding the new National Guard, pronounced that force
"an institution at once civic and military, which must prevail
over the old tactics of Europe, and which will reduce arbitrary
Governments to the alternative of being beaten if they do not
imitate it, or overthrown [by their subjects] if they dare to
imitate it." 1 This remarkable prophecy did not come true
until the national danger became acute; but then, in the
spring of 1793, the organization of the National Guards was
greatly extended, so much so as to cause the first outbreaks in
recalcitrant La Vendee. After the individualist Girondins
were overthrown on June 2, thoroughgoing Jacobins leaped
to power, and they proceeded to enforce the principle of
national service. With Robespierre supreme in the Com-
mittee of Public Safety and Carnot as its military organizer,
conscription became the groundwork of the national defence.
In a great speech at the Jacobins' Club on August 1 1 Robes-
pierre thus set forth the gravity of the military crisis: "...
The remedy is in you yourselves. ... If the whole people
does not derive fresh courage from our reverses; if one single
citizen fails to rush forward to devote himself to the salvation
of the country by beating back its oppressors, it is all up with
Liberty: she will not survive our courage." Thereafter a
Report was presented to the National Convention urging
drastic measures, because "half measures are always fatal
in extreme peril. The whole nation is easier to move than a
1 Lafayette, M€ms., II, 267.

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 151

part of the nation. . . . Let there be no exceptions save
those which are necessary for the sowing and harvesting of
the crops." Barere then declared that the whole nation
ought to rise in defence of freedom and constitution and to
drive out the foreign despots and then* satellites. On Au-
gust 23 the National Convention placed all males of military
age permanently at the service of the armies. The decree ran
thus: "The young men shall go to fight; married men shall
forge weapons and transport supplies; the women shall make
tents and uniforms or serve in the hospitals; the children
shall make lint; the old men shall be carried to the public
squares to excite the courage of soldiers, hatred of kings,
and enthusiasm for the unity of the Republic." l That is
how France interpreted the new device on its flags: "The
French nation risen against tyrants."

It has been asserted that the decree of 1798 is the first
law of conscription. True, it carried out more methodically
the system imposed hi August, 1793. But the later decree
was merely the extension of the earlier decree, which gave
France those massive arrays so fatal to the thin lines of
Coburg and the Duke of York. The momentum of the new
national forces carried them into Holland, the Rhineland,
and the Genoese Riviera in the campaigns of 1794-5, thus
inaugurating the period of conquest, which was prolonged by
the genius and ambition of Napoleon.

These facts should be noted carefully; for they dispose
of the assertions often made, that conscription was a device
of the monarchs for the enslavement of their peoples. Far
from that, conscription was a device of the most democratic
government in the world for the expulsion of the armies of the
monarchs. None of them dared to copy the democratic
principle of national service, until Frederick William III of
Prussia doubtfully adopted it as a desperate expedient for
1 Hist, parlementaire, XXVTII, 455-469.

152 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

saving that humiliated State from utter ruin; and the Prussian
army, when nationalized, played a very important part in the
overthrow of Napoleon. I believe that there is a vague
notion that conscription originated with him. He merely
systematized its application. The responsibility for the
introduction of the system lies with the French Republicans
of 1793 and 1798. It was therefore a result of the national
and democratic sentiment which swept through France at the
tune of her great Revolution. The statement that Militarism
is the outcome of a deep-laid plot of rulers to enslave their
peoples is so far wrong, that, after the Restoration of the
French Bourbons in 1814-5, the national army was con-
siderably reduced; and the same thing happened among
other peoples. Autocrats do not like universal service; for
they cannot trust it. Thus ended Militarism hi its first
phase.

The second, or Prussian, phase began in 1860, when, for
purposes of defence, after the humiliations of the previous
years, the Regent (soon King), William I of Prussia, intro-
duced the first of his famous Army Bills. They were fiercely
opposed by the Prussian Parliament in the belief that he
would make the army the tool of absolutism. But his aim was
patriotic, not despotic. After the overthrow of Denmark and
Austria by means of that army, Prussian Liberals withdrew
their opposition and condoned all the illegal proceedings of
years 1860-6. Why? Because, however high-handed, the
the Bismarckian policy had enabled them to win Schleswig-
Holstein from the Danes and to weld the North German
States on the firm basis of the Prussian monarchy. Their
constitutional scruples vanished when it appeared that the
policy of "blood and iron" had prevailed over two neigh-
boring States, and had nearly solved the problem of German
unity. The Prussian deputies now saw that the King's aim
had been national. The triumph of 1870 clinched the success

NATIONALITY AND MILITARISM 153

of Prussia; and the German Empire of 1871, though federal in
form, was, in effect, an enlargement of Prussia. In March,
1849, King Frederick William IV had solemnly promised that
Prussia should merge herself in Germany. In 1871 Germany
merged herself in Prussia.

The brilliance of these military triumphs led neighboring
peoples to copy the Prussian army; and once again Europe
became an armed camp. The results are well known. Just
as Napoleon diverted to purposes of conquest a citizen-
army which at first was solely defensive, so Kaiser Wilhelm II
has misused the enormous resources of men, arms, and money
which his grandfather is believed to have amassed primarily
for the sake of defence. Worst of all, the national army
which enabled Prussia in 1866-70 to effect the unity of Ger-
many, has been prostituted to colossal schemes of aggrand-
izement at the expense of weaker neighbors. The conduct
of Wilhelm II in this century therefore resembles that of
Napoleon a century ago. But in one respect the Hohen-
zollern has less excuse than the Corsican. In the years 1805-
15 national sentiment was far less developed than it is to-day.
A century of effort has strengthened the individuality of
all the peoples, so that their merging in any one State or
Union, which was possible under Napoleon, is unthinkable
under Wilhelm. Prussia now offers her victims no high
ideal of citizenship, only the prospect of unlimited drilling
with a view to the subjection of other peoples; no inspiring
traditions s,uch as glorified the French Empire — little else
than records of astute opportunism, sudden attack, and now,
as hi 1871, brutality in the hour of real or fancied triumph.
Such is the history of fifty-five years of Prussian Militarism.
Under Napoleon (at any rate up to Friedland, 1807) the
French polity had not so far belied its democratic origin
as to be a tool of despotism and ambition. The men who
carried Napoleon's eagles to Vienna, Rome, and Warsaw

154 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

believed that they were furthering the cause of liberty.
Do the German troops in Belgium, Poland, and Serbia be-
lieve that? Will a foreign poet and a foreign composer
ever sound forth the heroism and chivalry of zwei Grenadieren,
as Heine and Schumann immortalized those of Napoleon?

LECTURE IX

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885

"Weak and incapable nations must look on while foreign na-
tionalities gain in number and importance within the borders of
their State." — PRINCE VON BULOW, Imperial Germany, p. 240.

THE previous studies have illustrated the excellences and
defects of the national movements up to the year 1885. The
instinct of Nationality has endowed the European peoples
and Japan (perhaps soon we shall add China) with a vitality
and force which resembles, say, the incoming of steam-power
into industry. What previously had been minutely sub-
divided and inert became united, vigorous, aggressive. Con-
trast the ridiculous Germany at which Heine mocked, the
torpid Italy which Mazzini awakened, with the great and
powerful nations of to-day. The changes wrought by the
national wars of the years 1859-70 are among the most im-
portant of all tune; for they altered not only the polity but
the national character in France, Germany, and Italy.1
Further, the Balkan peoples were nerved to struggle for
their rights, and in 1876-8 and 1885 they largely succeeded
in shaking off the Turkish yoke. In the autumn of 1885
the union of the two Bulgarias almost completed the aspira-

1 In a Paris paper early in February, 1871, was an article by "Fer-
ragus" which began: "Bismarck has probably done better service to
France than to Germany. He has worked for a false unity in his country,
but very effectually for a regeneration of ours. He has freed us from the
Empire. He has restored to us our energy, our hatred for the foreigner,
our love for our country, our contempt for life, our readiness for self-
sacrifice, in short all the virtues which Napoleon III had killed in us."

156 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

tions of that people; and (as we saw in Lecture VI) it enabled
them to escape from Russian tutelage and to proceed with
internal developments of great promise. On the other hand
British policy, which under Lord Beaconsfield had thwarted
the national efforts of the Balkan peoples, now, under Lord
Salisbury, resumed its traditional r61e of protector of the
small nationalities. Thus, up to the month of September,
1885, Nationalism won portentous triumphs. True, in 1866
Prussia overstepped her fair limits by annexing the Danes
of North Schleswig, and in 1871 by wrenching Alsace-Lor-
raine from France. Still, the balance was decidedly favorable
for the national principle.

We now approach events of a different order. I propose
to review them here as impartially as possible, and in the
mam to leave you to draw your own conclusions.

On November 14, 1885, King Milan of Serbia suddenly
declared war against Bulgaria on a frivolous pretext, his
real reason being jealousy of the increase of her power con-
sequent on the recent union. The Serbs entered Bulgaria,
and were advancing towards Sofia, when the Bulgars, speedily
rallying, soundly beat them at Slivnitza, and chased them
back into their own territory. Near Pirot the victors were
bidden to halt. The Austrian general, Khevenhiiller, de-
clared in imperious terms that any further advance would
oblige the Dual-Monarchy to send in its white-coats. The
Bulgars thereafter retired, and patched up matters with
Serbia; but the incident rankled in the breasts of both
peoples and excited racial jealousies dating back five cen-
turies to the time of Serbia's glory under the sway of King
Dushan.

The collision has a double significance. Only seven years
after deliverance from their bondage to the Turk two Chris-
tian peoples flew at one another's throats and thereby pro-
voked hatreds whose ghastly sequel has recently appalled

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 157

the world. Secondly, the intervention of Austria on behalf
of her protege, King Milan, gave color to the story that she
had incited him to that fratricidal attack in order to weaken
the Balkan peoples and thus prepare the way for her advance
southwards to Salonica. As she had bargained with the Tsar
hi 1876 with a view to the acquisition of that long-coveted
port,1 she probably had a hand in Milan's enterprise. There-
after both he and his son, Alexander (the latter reigned at
Belgrade from 1889 to 1903) were notoriously under Haps-
burg patronage, which often screened them from the resent-
ment of the Serb people. The murder of Alexander and the
accession of Peter (of the Karageorge family) inaugurated
a national policy, which increasingly incurred the displeasure
of the Hapsburgs. But, despite the long tutelage of Serbia
by them, and that of Bulgaria by the Tsar Alexander III;
even despite the cruelties of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II
against both the Serbs and Bulgars in Macedonia, these races
could not lay aside their mutual hatreds. Consequently,
the ideal of a Balkan Federation remained a dream; and
disgust at the narrow and vindictive Nationalism of the
Balkan peoples probably figured among the motives which
led the new Tsar, Nicholas II (1894- ), to turn away from
their exasperating feuds towards the golden visions opening
out in the Far East. Whatever his reasons, he certainly took
less interest than his father in Balkan affairs.

In 1897 the Greeks struggled unsuccessfully to extend
their too narrow bounds in Thessaly. They met with no
support whatever from Serbs and Bulgars, and succumbed
to an unexpectedly sharp counter-stroke from Turks and
Albanians. In the same year ruthless massacres of Mace-
donians and Armenians by order of Abdul Hamid mani-
fested his resolve to effect a Moslem revival by the tradi-
tional Turkish method; and the sight of this energy produced
1 Debidour, Hist, diplomatique de I' Europe, II, 515.

158 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

no small impression at Berlin. In face of these glaring vio-
lations of the articles of the Treaty of 1878, guaranteeing
good government to the Christian subjects of the Sultan,
Great Britain, France, and Italy displayed an apathy highly
discreditable to their rulers. Their inaction in a matter
closely concerning their honor, the orientation of Russian
policy, and the warlike prowess of Abdul Hamid served to
strengthen a Panislam movement, which soon received a pub-
lic benediction from Kaiser Wilhelm II. During his Eastern
tour in 1898 (that is, two years after the adoption of
Weltpolitik) he announced his resolve to befriend the Sultan
and the 300,000,000 Moslems — a declaration destined to
strengthen Mohammedan fanaticism and to cause further
massacres of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire. Further
troubles having ensued, especially in that seething cauldron
of races, Macedonia, the Emperors of Russia and Austria
drew up at Miirzsteg in 1903 a programme of reforms for an
unproved administration of that province.1 The "Miirzsteg
Programme" completed and strengthened one that the two
Sovereigns had framed in 1897, the other Powers on both
occasions agreeing to delegate special functions to those
previously rival Empires. Both efforts to put down anarchy
in Macedonia failed, either from lack of energy in the efforts,
or because the racial feuds were insoluble. Accordingly,
the Great Powers once more took up the duties imposed on
them by the Treaty of Berlin, and in April, 1907, sought to
cure the maladministration of Macedonia. This attempt
came too late; for the situation had recently changed in

1 Very many Macedonians have no definite racial affinity, which
enables rival claimants to number the Greeks either 600,000 or 200,000;
the Bulgars, 2,000,000, 1,500,000, or 60,000; the Serbs 2,050,000 or nil;
the Wallachs 100,000 or 75,000; the Turks 600,000 or 230,000. See J.
Cvijic, Remarques sur V Ethnographic de la Macedoine; Ichircoff, Etude
ethnographique sur les Slaves de Macedoine (Paris, 1908).

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 159

favor of the Central Empires. Russia was badly beaten by
Japan in 1904-5, whereupon the Berlin Government dic-
tated terms to France in the Moroccan affair of 1905-6;
and, with the accession of Aehrenthal to office, in 1906,
Austria entered upon a vigorous foreign policy. The results
were seen in an increase of Teutonic energy in all quarters,
while the Slav cause, which Russia had neglected since 1897,
underwent a notable decline, the prestige of Austria and
Turkey proportionately rising.

These facts explain the daring stroke of Austria in annexing
Bosnia outright; while at the same time her protege, Prince
Ferdinand of Bulgaria, proclaimed himself Tsar of the Bul-
garians (October, 1908). Coming soon after the Young Turk
Revolution at Constantinople, these events foreshadowed
a future in which Austria, Bulgaria, and a renovated Turkey
would share the Peninsula about equally between them.
Germany threw her weight into the scale in favor of Austria;
and a threat from Kaiser Wilhelm to Russia in the spring of
1909 caused the latter to accept the Hapsburgs' /#^ accompli
in Bosnia. Thenceforth the future of the Balkans lay with
the Central Empires and with their proteges, Bulgaria and
Roumania.

To the confusion caused by threats from without were
added the miseries due to ever-increasing racial feuds and
mad misgovernment. The Young Turks, far from carrying
out their much-vaunted programme of reforms, soon exas-
perated their subjects by an " Ottomanizing" policy of the
most pedantic and irritating kind. Consequently, the Greek,
Serb, and Bulgar elements in Macedonia despaired of ob-
taining redress except by force, and what the Turkish vam-
pires spared the armed bands of these rival races swept off.
The beginning of the end came for Ottoman rule when the
usually faithful Albanians rose in revolt against stupid inter-
ferences with their customs and language. Consequently,

160 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

the Eastern Question in 1909-12 entered upon its last and
most terrible phase.

While Nationalism in the Balkans made more and more
for strife, the same instinct waxed powerful and aggressive
in Central Europe. The interaction of these cyclonic systems
has finally produced the present appalling tempest. In order
to understand that interaction and the tremendous forces
which it set in motion, we must retrace our steps and note
the rise of Chauvinism in Germany and the outlet which it
sought to acquire towards the East.

As we have already seen, Kaiser Wilhelm II has modelled
his policy largely on that of Frederick the Great. Now, dur-
ing that reign, as also subsequently, Prussia often made use
of the Turks to annoy and weaken either Russia or Austria,
whenever those realms were at feud with her. Another fact is
equally significant. The rival Houses of Hapsburg and
Hohenzollern have rarely continued long in close union except
for purposes of aggression against their neighbors. Cases in
point are their agreements to effect the Partitions of Poland
(1772, 1793, 1795, though in 1793 Austria complained of being
left in the lurch) and those of 1792 and 1815 for the annexa-
tion of large portions of France. In 1827-30 they united in
order to thwart the emancipation of Greece, then championed
by Russia, France, and England, the general aim of the
Germanic Powers being to uphold Turkish authority and
stay the growth of the Christian peoples of the Balkans.1
But that negative and cramping policy has of late given way
to one that has sought to range Turkey, if possible along with
Roumania and Bulgaria, on the side of the Central Empires.
Serb nationalists, inspired by jealousy of Bulgaria and the

1 See, too, Debidour, Hist, diplomatique de V Europe, II, 181-3, for
Austria's opposition to the formation of the Principality of Roumania
in 1858, which was helped on by Russia and Napoleon III, "the friend
of nationalities."

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 161

hope of detaching their kith and kin, the Croats and Slovenes,
from Austria, firmly opposed all attempts at bullying or
bargaining from Vienna. But the stolid Tartar strain in the
Bulgars' nature afforded some hope of rallying them, under
their Coburg prince, to the side of their Moslem oppressors
and against their Russian liberators. This done, Serbia alone
barred the way to the formation of a Teutonic-Magyar-
Turanian League, extending from the North Sea to the
Persian Gulf. For such a purpose Hohenzollern and Haps-
burg might well clasp hands and consort with the butchers of
the Balkan Christians. That this Eastern expansion would
crush Balkan Nationalism was nothing to the leaders of
thought and action in the Central Empires; for their concep-
tion of things had wholly changed since the time when Bis-
marck and Deak achieved the triumph of that principle for
the German and the Magyar.

Let us, then, review the events which transformed Bis-
marck's Austro-German alliance of 1879 (an essentially
defensive compact) into an aggressive league aiming at the
domination of the land hemisphere. The determining event
was the accession of Kaiser Wilhelm II to the German throne
in 1888. Inheriting a powerful and prosperous domain,
protected by an invincible army and unassailable alliances, he
nevertheless declared hi his first proclamation that he would
ever be responsible for the glory and honor of his army. To
this was added keen solicitude for naval and colonial expan-
sion, as appeared in his very profitable bargain with Lord
Salisbury in 1890 for the cession of some untenable claims
over Zanzibar against the acquisition of that valuable naval
base, Heligoland. But the fact that he bargained anything
away in East Africa angered the more eager of the German
patriots, who sought to prevent a recurrence of such a humilia-
tion by founding a kind of watchdog Society in 1891, which,
three years later, became the Pangerman League. Claiming

162 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

that the German Empire must become a World-Empire, it
set forth the following ideal: "Above the interests of the
State should be those of the Nation. Even more sacred than
love of the Fatherland should be love of the Motherland."
It soon appeared that the nation was the totality of all
German-speaking peoples, and the Motherland was the area
(geographically vague but mentally stimulating) which
would bring all these peoples into the Teutonic fellowship.
The Germans of Austria, Switzerland, and the Baltic prov-
inces of Russia (though the last were but a small minority
among the Letts and Esthonians) were all to be swept into
the Motherland's arms, which would finally close around
Dutch, Flemings, and Scandinavians. The day of little
States and little peoples was over; for they lived a narrow
existence, oppressed by fear of vigorous neighbors. Let
them, therefore, merge their miserable lives in that of the
Teutonic Superman. Such was the Pangerman propa-
ganda, directed by a friend of the Kaiser, Dr. Hasse. It
soon gained an immense vogue; and around the League
clustered several organizations, chief among them the Navy
League.

The generation which grew up during the years of Konig-
gratz and Sedan (William IPs generation) was in the mood
to regard even those triumphs as precursors to others of
world-wide import. Merely by skilful carpet-bagging and
diplomatic hustling, Bismarck and agents like Peters, Nachti-
gall, and Liidertiz had secured a considerable colonial Empire;
and if that were gained by craft, what might not be the
outcome of a well-prepared effort of the whole German
nation? After the surrender of Paris in January, 1871,
Bismarck called his people "the male principle, the fructify-
ing principle" of Europe; while the Celts and Slavs repre-
sented the female sex. As for the English, they were con-
temptible hucksters, envious of the brave Germans but

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 163

afraid to fight them.1 Such was the doctrine taught to young
Germany in and after 1871. To it Treitschke merely added
an academic veneer. Viewing history from the standpoint
of a patriotic pamphleteer, he excited the youth of Germany
by sentences such as these: "To tell the truth, the Slav
seems to us a born slave"; 2 or again: "What nation will
impose its will on the other enfeebled and decadent peoples?
Will it not be Germany's mission to ensure the peace of the
world? Russia, that immense Colossus with feet of clay,
will be absorbed in its domestic and economic difficulties.
England, stronger in appearance than in reality, will doubt-
less see her colonies break loose and exhaust themselves
in fruitless struggles. France, given over to internal dis-
sensions and the strife of parties, will sink into hopeless
decadence. As to Italy, she will have her work cut out to
ensure a crust to her children. The future belongs to Ger-
many, to which Austria will attach herself if she wishes
to survive." With a few honorable exceptions the teachers
at the German Universities adopted this tone, and thus
nursed the feeling of national pride which the parade ground
brought to lush maturity.

Along with this, however, there grew up a passion to
excel, to push through every task to thorough completion.
An English correspondent long in Germany has described
it by their word Drang — driving force, or the resolve to
make your will prevail.3 It is a formidable force in all de-
partments of life, and contrasts sharply with the easy good
nature and weak tolerance of bad work far too prevalent
among us. In this respect we need to copy the Germans
and regain that passion for thoroughness which used to be

1 Bismarck: some secret Pages of his History, I, 500, 526; Bismarck in
the Franco-German War, I, 277, II, 8, 19, 333, 345 (note).

2 Treitschke, Germany, France, Russia, and Islam (Eng. edit.), p. 17.
* C. Tower, Changing Germany, p. 255.

1 64 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

ours, but which has vanished of late under the influence of
pleasure, sport, or the worship of the eight-hours' day. It
is significant that the German phrase Attes in Ordnung,
which corresponds to our "All right," conveys a guarantee
that all is right. Whereas our phrase "All right" has come
to mean: "Now, don't bother: I've done all I mean to
do." This is the spirit which we must drive from our Uni-
versities and schools, our workshops and public offices. We
need a new sense of the dignity of work such as Thomas
Carlyle hammered into his generation — a healthy public
opinion which will be stronger than official etiquette, stronger
than red tape, stronger even than Trade Union regulations.
In this respect Germany has much to teach us regarding
her matchless power of organization; and at bottom that
means power of hard work and clear thinking. In the fierce
competition of the modern world (a competition which will be
fiercer than ever after the war) no nation is sure of holding
its own unless it puts forth its utmost powers, directs them
wisely, and minimizes the friction between Capital and
Labor.

To return to Germany: the intense devotion of her people,
fostered in the schools and Universities, has permeated all
parts of the national life; and it must be remembered that
that feeling, with its counterpart, contempt for other peoples,
is based on a not unnatural belief in the primacy of Germans
in all important spheres. Thus a new tone has permeated
the German people during the reign of Wilhelm II. It has
also profoundly affected their settlers in other lands, who,
under the influence of patriotic clubs, have tended to form
garrisons for the Empire, ready, when called upon, to take
action against the communities out of which they have
made their money. No harm would have resulted from
this fanatical Teutonism if the Kaiser and his paladins had
been wise and prudent. But startling results followed when

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 165

he, they and the leading professors and journalists sought
to outcrow each other in praise of Germania. Sheer political
vertigo was the outcome, especially since 1896, when Wilhelm
proclaimed Wdpolitik as the goal of her efforts. The Panger-
man League first enunciated the programme in 1894. Not
to be outdone, the Kaiser adopted it at the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the proclamation of the Empire (January 21,
1896).
In other matters the League has pushed him on. In

1895 it urged the acquisition of a good naval base in China;
the mailed fist in 1897 descended upon Kiao-Chao, after
the opportune murder of two German missionaries. In

1896 the League earmarked Asia Minor as a fit sphere for
economic penetration by the Germans. Again after an in-
terval of two years, the Kaiser proceeded to Constantinople
and Damascus, making at the tomb of Saladin his promise
ever to champion the Moslem- World. In 1896-7 the Panger-
man and Navy Leagues began a systematic agitation in
favor of a great navy. The Kaiser responded by appoint-
ing Admiral von Tirpitz to the Admiralty, and an expansion-
ist, Count (now Prince) von Billow, to the Foreign Office;
while the Navy Bill of 1898 ushered in the long series of
measures for the systematic and sustained increase of the
German marine. Certain acts of the Kaiser, such as his
proclamation as to Weltpolitik, bear the impress of his per-
sonality, which loves to seize a great occasion for the utter-
ance of a sonorous and telling phrase. But in the main it
seems that he has been pushed on by eager and ambitious
patriots, who, after gaining the ear of a morbidly sensitive
public, have reproached him for timidity whenever he has
sought to steady the pace.

It is worthy of note that he has given them their head
on occasions when he deemed Germany to be well prepared
for war. Such occasions were the years succeeding the

1 66 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

opening of the Kiel Canal in 1895; the completion of the
first instalment of the new navy in 1905 (which coincided
with Russia's defeats in the Far East) ; the opportunity which
offered for supporting Austria's forward move of October,
1908, in the Near East; and the completion of the enlarged
Kiel Canal in June, 1914 (which coincided with singular
difficulties for the Entente Powers and a unique state of
military preparation in Germany). On other occasions he
has often held in the Pangermans despite their champing
the bit and pawing the air. But again, as if to relieve his
pent-up feelings, he has uttered words that struck like a spur:
"Our future lies on the water" — "The trident must pass
into our hands"— "We are the salt of the earth"— "The
German nation alone has been called upon to defend, cul-
tivate, and develop great ideas" — "Our German nation shall
be the rock of granite on which the Almighty will finish his
work of civilizing the world. Then shall be fulfilled the words
of the poet: ' German character shall save the world. ' " The
ruler who uttered these words, and tried to live up to them,
must bear a heavy share of responsibility for the growth of
an overweening Chauvinism. The collective impulse, which
up to 1870 had been a healthy endeavor to achieve national
union, has under Kaiser Wilhelm II been degraded into an
aggressive Nationalism utterly callous of the claims of other
peoples.

Rash in word but prudent in deed, Wilhelm kept a tight
curb on his high-spirited charger until a clear field was before
him; and in this respect he may count as the new Machiavel.
During the Boer War of 1899-1902 he turned the furiously
Anglophobe passions of his subjects into a practical channel
by carrying through an immense naval programme; and in
the spring of 1905, when Russia's military power tottered
under the blows of Japan, he embarked on the Moroccan
policy which the Leagues had pressed on him long before.

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 167

Meanwhile his Chancellor, Btilow, had secured the passing
of the Tariff Laws of 1902 for the protection of agriculture
so that the Germany of the future might not depend too
largely on foreign foodstuffs. A further aim of the Kaiser
and Chancellor was to stimulate tillage of the soil so as to
maintain a healthy balance between industry and agricul-
ture, as was summed up in the phrase, "Agriculture must
provide soldiers and industry pay for them." l

Thus was built up a polity no less prosperous in peace
than well prepared for war; and the outcome of this material
preparedness and national confidence was seen in the rebuffs
dealt to France in the Moroccan affair of 1905-6. Appre-
hension of Germany had prompted the Anglo-French En-
tente of 1904, and in 1907 came that between England and
Russia, which was clinched by the recent declarations of
Germany at the Hague Conference, that she would neither
lessen her armaments nor submit disputes to arbitration.
The Ententes, though merely conditional agreements far
removed from definite alliances, ought to have warned the
German people of the need of lowering its tone. In normal
conditions a nation would regard the alienation of an old
friend, like Russia, and her drawing towards other States
for protection, as a sign that its conduct had been unduly
provocative, and that bluster must give way to conciliation.
But this is not the way of champions of Drang. Their aim
being to carry matters with a high hand, they interpret all
signs of distrust as a challenge to their honor. Newly awak-
ened Nationalism (and that of Germany dates from 1870)
has always displayed the morbid sensitiveness of youth, and
has given out that the Entente is contriving a villainous plot
to "encircle" Germany and Austria with a view to bring-
ing about their isolation and destruction.

Let us examine this charge in the light of facts. They are
1 Billow, Imperial Germany, pp. 209-11.

168 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

as follows: The Central Empires had a close alliance with
Italy and a personal compact with the King of Roumania,
a member of the Swabian branch of the House of Hohen-
zollern. A German prince reigned over Bulgaria, the Kaiser's
sister had married the Crown Prince of Greece, and the Sultan
of Turkey was notoriously a satrap of Berlin. Consequently,
the "encircling" of a block of territory, which extended from
the North Sea to the Tyrrhene and .^Egean, could scarcely
be taken seriously by those who knew the facts of the case.
But by dint of much noise and skilful suppression of facts, the
Germans, and not a few Englishmen, were led to regard the
Central Empires, etc., as pinched in by wily and aggressive
foes under the direction of the arch-plotter, King Edward
VII. The theory of "encircling" proved to be especially
serviceable in dulling the opposition of German Socialists
to the successive Army and Navy Bills. Unacquainted with
military history, they failed to realize the enormous advan-
tage of the central position in warfare; and the authorities,
who every year increased that advantage by constructing
strategic railways to the western and eastern frontiers, ceased
not to alarm then: subjects as to the terrible might of the
Eastern Colossus, the quenchless thirst of Frenchmen for a
war of revenge, and the malignant jealousy of England.

That the German Government was not actuated by fear
of Russia or France is obvious from its policy. At the Hague
Conference of 1907, as we have seen, it rejected all proposals
for arbitration and limitation of armaments; at the close of
1908 the Reichstag passed Bills for the Germanizing of
Alsace-Lorrainers, the Poles of Posen, and the Danes of
North Schleswig. At the same time Germany supported
her ally, Austria, in her annexation of Bosnia; and in March,
1909, a threatening note from Berlin to Petrograd led the
Tsar to withdraw his opposition to that step. Further, the
vigorous efforts of Teutonic diplomacy to recover the ground

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 169

at first lost at Constantinople in the Young Turk Revolution
of 1908 were completely successful. This forceful policy
upheld the arms of Austria-Hungary, browbeat Russia, and
encouraged the Young Turks to proceed with the "Ottoman-
izing" of their Christian subjects.1

In no quarter did the Teutonic idea work more effectively
than in Austria-Hungary. In its early stages the Panger-
man movement seemed to threaten the disruption of the
Dual Monarchy, whose Germanic subjects, hard pressed by
Slavs and Magyars, seemed likely to break away from the
crumbling heritage of the Hapsburgs and form a southern
annexe of the Hohenzollern Empire. But, however much
the Pangermans played with the notion, the statesmen of
Berlin finally discouraged it as tending to form a diffuse
realm in which Prussian influence would be lost.2 They
deemed it better to favor the German elements in Austria
and support that Empire in the difficult enterprise of domi-
nating the Balkans. In 1906 the Archduke Ferdinand and
the new Foreign Minister, Aehrenthal, inaugurated a spirited
foreign policy which succeeded in quieting, or crushing,
racial strifes within the Empire. The revival of the prestige
of the Dual Monarchy was assisted by the passionate Nation-
alism of the Magyars, which at times amounted almost to
frenzy. Excited by the celebrations of the thousandth
anniversary of their organized national Me in 1896, Hun-
garian patriots had resolved to ride roughshod over their
Slavonic and Roumanian subjects; and their exuberant
patriotism reduced parliamentary elections and procedure

1 Nationalism and War in the Near East, by " Diploma tist,"chs. Ill, IV.

1 G. Weil, Le Pangermanisme en Autriche, chs. 7, 8. But the revelations
of Mr. Wickham Steed (Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1916) as to the alleged
bargain between Kaiser Wilhelm and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in June, 1914, seem to show that the former may then have revived the
older Pangerman scheme.

170 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

to the level of a farce; while their sense of justice received
startling illustration in incidents such as that of the Agram
trial.1 Nevertheless this crude Nationalism succeeded for
the time; and, joining hands with the boisterous anti-Semites
of Vienna and the expansionists of Berlin, it prepared to
stride southwards to conquest over the hated Serbs.

Austro-Hungarian Chauvinism secured its first triumph
in the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in October,
1908. The significance of this event was doubled by its coin-
cidence with the assumption of the title "Tsar of the Bul-
garians" by Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria immediately after
a visit to the Hapsburg Court. Half Austrian by upbringing,
and largely Magyar by sympathy and territorial connections,
that wily schemer by his title now laid claim to lordship
over the large Bulgar population of Macedonia; and Austria's
longings for Salonica being notorious, it was clear that the
Dual Monarchy and her satrap were contemplating an even-
tual partition of that troublous province. In view of the
decline of Russia's prestige in the Near East since her dis-
astrous adventures in the Far East, the Central Empires
and their pro-consuls at Sofia and Bukarest had in their
hands the future of the Balkan Peninsula.

These brilliant successes, I repeat, rehabilitated the pres-
tige of Austria, stilled her racial disputes, and reduced the
Serbs and their Croat cousins to despair. The details of the
compromise framed by the Pangermans and the Dual Mon-
archy are, of course, not known; but the success of Austria's
forward and Teutonic policy, as contrasted with the barren
parliamentary and racial strifes of the earlier period, opened
up a new and promising future, in which it seemed that
Austria-Hungary would be predominantly German-Magyar
and would control the Balkans, thus forming an essential

1 See Dr. Seton- Watson's works, Corruption and Reform in Hungary,
Racial Problems in Hungary, etc.

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 171

link in the future Zollverein stretching from the North Sea
to the Bosphorus, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. As
this scheme developed, it naturally aroused alarm in Russia
and among the Mediterranean Powers. The Italians began
to sheer off from the Triple Alliance as its Oriental ambitions
developed; and fear of Austro-German aggressions grouped
Great Britain, France, and Russia more closely together.
The Franco-German agreement of 1909 respecting Morocco
did not, and could not, solve that question; while the Russo-
German compact arrived at late in 1910 failed to compose
then: rivalries in the Near East.

This brief survey will suffice to explain not only the political
tension prevalent throughout Europe but also the growth
of a neurotic Nationalism in Germany. Not satisfied with
her supremacy in Europe, she prepared to achieve world-
dominance; and the military weakness of Russia, together
with the absorption of France and England in parliamentary
disputes, furthered her schemes. The Western Powers
sought to solve social questions by concessions and bargains;
Germany prepared to solve them by distracting the attention
of the masses to national issues. Prince Biilow has frankly
avowed that intention. He states that the successive Army
and Navy Bills were designed to help on Germany's world-
policy, and, in order to secure a majority in the Reichstag,
the middle classes and as many as possible of the working
classes had to be won over. He admits that, notwithstanding
all the efforts put forth against the Social Democrats, their
votes at the polls steadily mounted, though the number of
seats gained curiously varied.

Votes polled. Seats gained.
1898. . .2,107, ooo 56

1903... 3,01 1 ,000 81

1907 •••3,539,000 43

1912... 4,250,000 no

172 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Their losses of seats in 1907 were due to speeches, explana-
tions, and "the direction of the electoral compaign." * As
to the Socialist gains of 1912, Billow says nothing, because
they were due to the spirited protests of that party against
Weltpolitik. On the general question of combating the Social-
ists, he says: "We must accustom them to the idea of the
State. . . . The idea of the nation must again and again
be emphasized by dealing with national problems, so that
this idea may continue to move, unite, and separate the par-
ties. Nothing has a more discouraging, paralyzing, and de-
pressing effect on a clever, enterprising, and highly developed
nation such as the Germans than a monotonous, dull policy,
which, for fear of an ensuing fight, avoids rousing passions by
strong action." Billow also advised the Government to fight
Social Democracy by "a great and comprehensive national
policy." By this he declares that he meant the Germanizing
of all the races within the Empire, especially the Poles,
whose political incompetence had subjected them to the
superior organization of Prussia. But he deprecated the con-
quest of neighboring territories.2

Such a limitation of Germany's expansive power displeased
German Chauvinists, who exercised greater pressure on Bil-
low's successor, Bethmann-Hollweg (1909- ). The Foreign
Assistant Secretary, Kiderlen-Waechter, favored the Agadir
coup of July, 1911, which is known to have been contrived
by the Navy and other patriotic Leagues. First, they pointed
out in the Press the urgent need of German expansion in
Morocco; and then the two Ministers declared that they
must try to keep pace with public opinion. Thus the mutu-
ally exciting influences of the Leagues and the Adminis-
tration worked up a furious national feeling which formed the

1 Billow, Imperial Germany, pp. 158-168. The total number of dep-
uties is 397.
* Ibid., pp. 157-204, 239-245.

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 173

chief danger of the situation. The dispute at Agadir in itself
was trivial, as was afterwards admitted by German patriots.
But their masterful tone nearly brought about a general
war. Probably this was their aim; for great was their wrath
when the Kaiser and his Ministry finally patched up the
Morocco dispute by the compact of November 4, 1911, with
France, gaining about 100,000 square miles of French Con-
goland at the price of their acquiescence in French supremacy
in Morocco. The rage of German Chauvinists against the
Kaiser for this profitable though inglorious bargain burst
out in downright insults, Die Post calling him ce poltron
miserable.1

In a short time the Germans saw that they had exag-
gerated the importance of the Moroccan affair. In 1912
that astute publicist, Maximilian Harden, said: "As for
the Morocco escapade, God knows the colonial fever was
there expended for nothing. It was simply an affair of
prestige, — national prestige, personal prestige. Germany
had no real interests in Morocco." The Pangerman cham-
pion, Count Reventlow, also blamed that adventure as ill-
judged because it offended both England and France. Never-
theless the Pangermans stirred up indignation against that
"failure" in order to effect and increase the already formid-
able armaments. The expenditure on the army was increased
by £6,450,000, despite the incidence of a severe financial
crisis in 1911. A prominent German newspaper stated that a

1 Dr. Rohrbach (Der deutscke Gedanke in der Welt, p. 216) declared that
Germany took the wrong turn about Morocco, which was not a vital
affair; besides the Hedjaz Railway, the Kiel-North Sea Canal and the
forts at Heligoland were not then in readiness. In the future, too, the
stake must be a greater one than a strip of Moroccan coast. He con-
cludes: "We are now (1912) in a position to launch out boldly." Rohr-
bach is a champion of the Bagdad and other Levantine schemes, which
will probably prove to be the chief cause of the present war. Certainly
they interested Austria and Turkey, which Morocco never did.

174 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

great war would be "perhaps delayed, but not averted, if
German armaments are not of a nature to intimidate every
adversary into beating a retreat." That is the essential
thought at the bottom of German Nationalism of the Sturm
und Drang type.1

The formation of the Balkan League and its successful
attack upon Turkey in the autumn of 1912 caused great
concern in Germany and Austria, where the triumph of the
crescent had been taken for granted. At once the Central
Empires declared the new League to be a mere tool of Russia;
whereas it was certainly the outcome of the grinding pressure
of the Young Turks on all their Christian subjects. M. Sazon-
off, the Russian Foreign Minister, at first discouraged the
Leaguers and advised them to come to terms with Turkey.2
As is well known, after the conclusion of a Balkan peace in
London in the spring of 1913, the Christian States fell out,
and, probably under the impulse of Austria, the Bulgar troops
in June, 1913, perfidiously attacked the Greeks and Serbs,
only to suffer condign punishment. Finally, the Treaty of
Bukarest (largely decided by the two Central Empires)
imposed the present unsatisfactory frontiers and left all the
races of the Peninsula at feud (August, 1913). Their friction
kindled the spark which set Europe in a blaze in August,

1 Bourdon, The German Enigma, pp. 158, 180, 198. Prof. Van Vollen-
hoven (War Obviated by an International Police, 1910, p. 7) calls them
"force-monomaniacs." They were long laughed at in Germany, but
carried the day in July, 1914.

Tor proofs see I. E. GueshofF, The Balkan League (Eng. transl.),

PP- 9-45-

3 Ibid., pp. 71-94. As to Austria's responsibility for the war of 1913
(not yet fully proven) see "Balkanicus," The Aspirations of Bulgaria
(1915), pp. 132-42. Very significant were the remarks of the Austrian
Reichspost (the organ of the Archduke Ferdinand): "The results of the
Balkan War (of 1913) have no disagreeable features for the Austro-

NATIONALISM SINCE 1885 175

Here again, then, the principle of Nationality, for which
Gladstone pleaded and Stambuloff struggled, has undergone
dire degradation. Promising to sort out the Balkan peoples
according to ethnic affinities, it has of late aroused their
baser passions and lent itself to intriguers who have ruined
their people and deluged the Peninsula with blood. The
part recently played by Bulgaria completes the career of
infamy on which she entered in June, 1913. Owing all that
she is to the principle of Slav Nationality and to the powerful
aid of Russia, she has acted as Judas both to the principle
and to her champion. In order to stab Serbia in the back
she has helped her age-long oppressors, the Turks, and those
more recent and more formidable enemies of Balkan in-
dependence, the Germanic Empires.

To all who were not blinded by revenge or blinkered by
mere peasant-cunning, it ought to have been clear that the
Austro-German intrigues with the Sublime Porte for pre-
dominance in the Near East involved the suppression of
all the free races which lay in their path; that, consequently,
the subjection of Serbia in the present war would but prelude
the subjection of Bulgaria. The Teutonic-Turanian policy,
summed up in the Bagdad Railway scheme, is based on
military and trading considerations, in which Belgrade and
Sofia figure merely as stages on the route from Berlin to
Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. What would be the lot of
Turkey in case of the triumph of the new imperial commer-
cialism is far from clear. That the lot of Bulgaria, Serbia,
and probably of Roumania and Greece, would be one of
political impotence, no student of German developments can
harbor a doubt. Such a finale to the present war would
imply the extinction of Serbia and the reversal of all that
Roumans, Greeks, Bulgars have achieved with the help of

Hungarian Monarchy or for the German nation. The last Balkan War
was more disastrous for Panslavism than the first one was for Turkey."

176 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Byron, Canning, and Gladstone; of Napoleon III and Gam-
betta; of Diebitsch and Skobeloff. The results of a century
of national striving would be swept away in order that the
Teutons might force their way to the East. It is in face of
such an issue that Greece, the first-born of Europe's children,
vacillates, while Bulgaria, the youngest of the family, has
foully betrayed the Slavonic national cause to which she
owes her very existence.

Such are the crucial developments of Nationalism since
the year 1885. The revival of racial feuds in the Balkans
at that time ensured the triumph of the barbarous policy
of Abdul Hamid, which continued to desolate Macedonia
and Armenia until 1908. The accession of Wilhelm II in
1888 inaugurated an era of aggressive Nationalism in Ger-
many and, somewhat later, in Austria, the result being
Pangermanism and its varied efforts which culminated in
July, 1914. After the accession of the Tsar Nicholas II in
1894 the diversion of Russia's energies towards the Far
East emasculated the Panslav movement, so powerful under
his predecessors; and Slavonic sentiment retained its vitality
chiefly among the Serbs and other South Slavs, who could
not effect much. The growth of Pangermanism and its
alliance with the Turks and the Panislam movement has
proved to be the chief determining factor in recent history.
That these national movements have developed immense
energies hi their respective peoples admits of no doubt;
but the events of 1914-5 form the supreme test as to the
worth of the new Nationalism.

LECTURE X
INTERNATIONALISM

"Si une guerre menace d'eclater, c'est un devoir de la classe
ouvriere dans les pays concern6s, c'est un devoir pour leurs repre-
sentants dans les Parlements, avec 1'aide du bureau international,
force d'action et de co-ordination, de faire tous leurs efforts pour
empecher la guerre. . . ." — Resolution of the Congress of 1'Inter-
nationale at Stuttgart, August, 1907.

PERIODS of war and peace succeed each other with a per-
sistence which must arouse the curiosity of every well-wisher
of mankind. Unless we accept Bernhardi's view (now so
popular in Germany) that war is a necessary school of the
manly virtues, its periodicity is a distressing symptom.
Certainly, those who believe that human progress is advanced
more by peace will continue to inquire whether means of
avoiding conflicts may not be discovered and successfully
applied. I will try here to review this question in the light
of the teachings of history.

Inquiries of this kind have been especially numerous at
the end of long and devastating campaigns; and it is not
too much to say that efforts in favor of peace and legality
have been in proportion to the horrors of warfare.

This truth is obvious in the case of the founder of Inter-
national Law, Hugo van Groot (Grotius). Living amidst
the atrocities that disgraced the Wars of Religion, that
Dutch scholar pondered over the utter lawlessness that had
of late afflicted mankind. In words that might now be written
by a Belgian, Pole, or Serb, Grotius in 1625 thus set forth
his reason for inculcating the principles of public right:

177

178 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

"I saw prevailing throughout the Christian world a licence
in making war of which even barbarous nations would have
been ashamed, recourse being had to arms for slight reason
or no reason; and, when arms were once taken up, all rever-
ence for divine and human law was then thrown away, just
as if men were henceforth authorized to commit all crimes
without restraint." l The subsequent atrocities of the Thirty
Years' War emphasized the need for some guiding and re-
straining authority; and hence by degrees there grew up a
code of public law, the chief contributors to which (like the
German Pufendorf in 1661) were those who had experienced
the terrors of lawlessness. In 1693, during our campaigns
against Louis XIV, the Quaker, William Penn, set forth
proposals for the preservation of peace; and in 1713, at
the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the French
priest, Charles de St. Pierre, drew up a scheme which I shall
notice presently. As the din of arms filled the greater part
of the eighteenth century, thinkers occupied themselves
with the problems of war and peace. Voltaire, Montesquieu,
and Rousseau in France;2 Adam Smith and the younger
Pitt in England; Kant and Lessing hi Germany, all voiced
the pacific aspirations of the age. The French Economistes
and Adam Smith advocated principles which would have
transformed the Continental States into friendly economic
units among a comity of nations.
Especially noteworthy were the efforts of German thinkers

1 Quoted by Dr. T. J. Lawrence, The Principles of International Law,
p. 42. I omit Henri IV's peace project as unimportant.

2 Again it is worth noting that the books which dealt heavy blows at
the warlike ambitions and false aims of the ancien regime appeared at
or near the end of wars, e. g. Les Lettres persanes (1721), L'Esprit des
Lois (1748), U Encyclopedic (1751-65), Le Contrat social (1762), Le
Systems, de la Nature (1770). As I have shown in my Life of Pitt (I,
p. 340), William Pulteney hi 1786 proposed to Pitt a plan of arbitration,
and Pitt's treaty with France of that year was an effort for lasting peace.

INTERNATIONALISM 179

on behalf of peace and brotherhood. The philosophical
movement in France found a clear echo across the Rhine,
where leading men desired to end racial rivalries. Deeming
patriotism a promoter of strife, they belittled that instinct.
The genial Lessing wrote: "I have no conception of the
love of country; and it seems to me at best a heroic failing,
which I am well content to be without." Indeed he aspired
to a far higher ideal. In his most perfect play, Nathan der
Weise (1779), the hero is a Jewish merchant of the time of
Saladin, who, even in that tune of bigotry, disarms racial
and religious hatreds by the attractive power of goodness.
Rivalries vanish before the magic of his virtue; and the play
ends with a spectacle of concord and happiness. Lessing
took the leading incident of the play from Boccaccio; but
he transformed the story by investing it with the ethical
promise of his own time, the Age of Enlightenment.

Kant enforced similar precepts in his tractate Perpetual
Peace, published in 1795 shortly after Prussia came to terms
with France in the Peace of Basel. He proposed as the chief
step towards peace a Federation of free States. They
must be Republics, i. e. they must be States endowed with
really representative institutions — which would rule out all
forms of Bonapartism with their modern equivalent, Kai-
serism.1 These free States would form definite compacts
one with the other, thus laying the foundation for a system
of International Law, binding on all, and thereby substi-
tuting the reign of right for merely national aims. Just
as individuals had by degrees consented to give up something
of their entire liberty so as to secure order, similarly (he
urged) it ought to be possible to substitute some measure
of international control for that extreme ideal of national
liberty which often led to war. Kant was not very hopeful

1 Kant, Perpetual Peace (Eng. Transl. by M. Campbell, Smith),
p. 123.

180 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

on this score. He saw that for nations to give up their natural
liberty (including the liberty to expand and to make war)
implied an immense advance in ethical ideas, as is now pain-
fully obvious. Further, in his Rechtslehre, he stated that
mankind can arrive at permanent peace "only in a universal
Union of States, by a process analogous to that through which
a people becomes a State. Since, however, the too great
extension of such a State of Nations over vast territories
must, in the long run, render impossible the government of
that Union — and therefore the protection of each of its
members — a multitude of such corporations will again lead
to a state of war. So that perpetual peace, the final goal of
international law, as a whole, is really an impracticable
idea." Nevertheless, he hoped that these political principles
might approximate towards that end.

For my part I do not admit that the extension of the area
of these federating States is an objection to Kant's theory.
His fear on this topic was, I believe, grounded on the ob-
jection felt by him, by Rousseau, and by all his contem-
poraries, to the formation of great realms. They all held
that civil liberty was incompatible with great States and
could be attained and retained only in small communities.
The fear was very natural in times of slow and difficult
communications. It is groundless now in the days of railways
and telegraphs; and in that respect we are far more favor-
ably situated than our forefathers for building up a great
Union of States. Indeed, it is essential that such a Union
or Federation should comprise practically all the great States.
It is not too great an extension, but too partial an extension,
that is the danger. As we have recently seen, there is no
security for peace so long as one great nation remains out-
side the circle of those that desire peace.

Further, if any great State comes into such a Union with
the notion of being the leader, that Union will be a sham and

INTERNATIONALISM 181

a delusion. Not until the federating States, one and all,
put far from them the idea of predominance, will there be
a reasonable hope of securing fair play, justice, and therefore
peace. Kant saw this clearly, and therefore stipulated that
there must be a "universal will determining the rights and
property of each individual nation"; and this universal
will (an extension of Rousseau's "general will" of a single
community) must take the form of a contract.1

Let us look at this question by the light of experience.
In 1713, at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession,
1'Abbe de St. Pierre pub lished a tractate on peace. His chief
contentions were that Christendom should combine to form
a federation of States under the lead of France, and proceed,
as the first of its pacific duties, to turn the Turks out of
Europe. These proposals sufficed to damn the scheme as a
device for re-establishing French prestige recently shattered
by Marlborough.

Not very dissimilar was a scheme of Napoleon I. During
his sojourn at St. Helena (which ought to have cured him
of his notions of world-supremacy) the illustrious exile de-
scribed his plan of forming the European Association. He
would have imposed the same system, the same principles
everywhere, the same Code of Laws, a Supreme Tribunal,
the same weights and measures, a similar coinage, so that
Europe would have formed but one people. But it is sig-
nificant that all these plans were closely connected in
his mind with the conquest of Russia. That implied in his
mind the "beginning of security"; and then only could
the European System be founded. Thereafter he would
have his Congress to settle Europe; also his Holy Al-
liance.2

1 Kant, App. II, § 2.

* Las Cases, Memorial de Ste. Eitene (B, 398-400), (August, 1816).
So, too, he told Count Rambuteau (Memoires, p. 55, Eng. edit.) that his

182 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

In much the same spirit the German Chancellor, Beth-
mann-Hollweg, said to the Reichstag on August 19, 1915:
"If Europe is to come to peace, it can only be possible by
the inviolable and strong position of Germany. The English
policy of the Balance of Power must disappear." These
words imply that Germany will not accept a position of mere
equality of power; she must be supreme. The claim is not
urged with the extravagance that characterized Napoleon's
final regrets. Nevertheless, the German claim to supremacy
is absolutely incompatible with the principle of proportion-
ate equality on which alone a federation of free States can
be firmly established. Minds of a certain bent cannot con-
ceive of any other way of imposing order and quiet than that
of enforcement by some superior Power. Well! It cannot
be too clearly understood that that way lies war. For,
sooner or later, your constabulary guardian will develop
into a drill sergeant; and thence must ensue the rule of force
and therefore strife. I grant that the drill sergeant theory
is the simpler; and very many people can understand no
other way. They cannot see that harmony attained by the
agreement of all is infinitely preferable to, and more probably
lasting than, a harmony produced by dread of a superior.

Let us, however, frankly confess that a union of peoples
on proportionate terms is difficult to attain and still more
difficult to maintain. The French Revolution egregiously
failed in the international sphere. Though it began with
the profession of fraternity, yet its practice degenerated
under the strain of war. Military considerations, backed
up by national pride, carried the day at Paris; and French
democracy, even before the rise of Bonaparte, was com-
mitted to courses directly opposed to the cosmopolitan
aims of 1789. It was a German thinker who in 1795 pointed

Empire would be safe only when he was master of all the capitals of
Europe.

INTERNATIONALISM 183

towards peace, while France headed towards wider conquests
— and Bonapartism.

The efforts of the Tsar Alexander I in and after 1815 to
promote a Confederation of Europe need not detain us long.
There prevailed then a general desire for peace, one expres-
sion of which was the founding of the Peace Society hi London
in I8I6.1 Whether Alexander had more hi view an Associa-
tion of Peoples on equal terms or a Confederation of States
more or less under his direction cannot be discussed here.
Certain it is that, if ever he cherished the lofty views ascribed
to him in 1815, they soon vanished; and the promised feder-
ation of the European peoples became a mere device for
depriving them of political and civic liberty. The period of
the Congresses (1818-22) therefore merits the sarcastic cen-
sure which Sorel applies to International Law, that it was
known "only through the declamations of publicists and its
violation by the Governments." It is not surprising that all
students of that disappointing era should view with reserve
and suspicion all proposals for World-Tribunals and Inter-
national Congresses. But the optimist may reply: "Both
the men and the methods were defective. The men were
autocrats and were easily turned aside ' into reactionary
paths." This is undeniable; and I refuse to believe that,
because Metternich lured Alexander aside, therefore Con-
gresses of delegates chosen for the purpose of founding a
Union of European States need necessarily be held hi vain.
We have nearly a hundred years of experience behind us
since Aix-la-Chapelle and Verona. I trust that, after the
present war, we shall have before us principles more definite
and sound than that of "morality based on bayonets," which
aptly summarizes the bastard Internationalism of 1818-22.

1 1 have no space in which to notice the works of Gentz, 1'Abbe de
Pradt, etc. See Pradt's L'Europe apres le Congres, and Alison Phillips'
Confederation of Empire.

184 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

It is, however, instructive to notice the extreme ease with
which the philanthropic views of the Tsar were perverted;
and the experience of those years bids us beware of benevo-
lent doctrinaires no less than wily diplomats. The dreamer
is as dangerous as his first cousin, the trickster, into whose
hands he frequently plays.

More genuine than the federalism of the Tsar Alexander
were the aims of Mazzini and the Young Europe Movement
of 1834-5 by which he sought to group together the democrats
of Italy, France, and Switzerland, as well as other peoples.
The sporadic movements of 1830 having failed owing to utter
lack of concert, Mazzini now sought to co-ordinate them.
By means of a central advisory body in Switzerland he en-
deavored to form what he called a "college of intellects,"
which would both incite and guide democrats of various lands.
But that movement failed, largely because its lofty aims
appealed only to groups of intellectuals. The generation
that grew up under Napoleon and his conquerors was too
exhausted to rise hi revolt until the hardships of 1847-8
reinforced the teachings of idealists. As Lord Acton observed,
Mazzini's conspiracy was founded not on a grievance but "on
a doctrine"; l and the experiences of 1848 were to show that
the doctrines must be practical and the grievances intense
to produce unanimity among peoples only half awakened.
"Young Europe" virtually collapsed with Mazzini's removal
to London hi 1837; and it is questionable whether the exiles
who founded "Young Europe," or the fiercer group of Panslav-
ists that gyrated around Bakunin in Paris in 1847, had any
practical influence on the democratic movements of 1848-9.

The events of those luckless years showed the extreme
difficulty of Democracy and Nationality working well to-
gether, and justify the belief that they are hi their nature
opposed. Wherever the fervid nationalists got the upper
1 Lord Acton, Essays on Liberty, p. 286.

INTERNATIONALISM 185

hand, liberty was jealously restricted to the leading race;
and as a result there prevailed those cries: "Hungary for the
Hungarians," etc., which brought Nationalism into deserved
disrepute. In Italy alone were the democrats inspired by
broader views, thanks to the inspiring influence of Mazzini;
but at Rome and Venice the foreigner stamped out both
Nationalism and Democracy, so that by the end of 1849
the future of the Continent was most dreary. In his essay
Europe: its Condition (1852) Mazzini pointed out that
Europe no longer believed in the Papacy, or hi dynasties
or aristocracies. In fact Europe possessed no unity of aim,
of faith, or of mission. But, he proceeded, a new initiative
would probably arise out of the question of nationalities,
which would destroy the Treaties of Vienna and assort the
peoples in accord with their desires. "The question of
nationalities (he wrote), rightly understood, is the alliance
of the peoples, the balance of powers based on new founda-
tions, the organization of the work that Europe has to ac-
complish." At that time such a solution was possible. The
peoples were not yet at enmity; and they all had an interest
in striving for more complete self-expression, firstly, by be-
coming complete political entities instead of remaining di-
vided fragments; secondly, by solving the social and indus-
trial problems in a way that was impossible in then" then
fragmentary existence. Alas! the nations did not rearrange
their political boundaries without strifes that left behind
rankling hatreds; and in consequence the social and industrial
problems have gone unsolved. Nationalism asserted itself
in its cruder form, clothed itself in Militarism, and made the
Continent a series of self-contained and hostile nations.

Consequently, the international movement, which con-
currently struggled for recognition, had little chance of
success. Its beginnings may be traced in the famous Associa-
tion called V Internationale, which was started by French

i86 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

and British workmen in London in 1864. Originating in
meetings of French working-men visitors to our Exhibition
of 1862 with our own artisans, it soon had branches in all
countries; and at its Congresses revolutionary Socialism of the
most advanced type gained ground. The anarchic section
got the upper hand in 1869, when Bakunin and his Russian
and Polish Nihilists joined the Association. Its influence
on the Paris Commune of 1871 has been disputed, but I
think on insufficient grounds. M. Hanotaux estimates the
number of its members in Paris at between 70,000 and
80,000, and thinks that Bismarck may have encouraged
the anarchic propaganda of the French Communists. The
idea may seem far-fetched; but Bismarck was a past master
in the art of weakening his enemies; and, on January 27,
1871, during an interview with Jules Favre, he alluded to the
dangerous state of public opinion in Paris on the eve of its
surrender to the Germans, and gave the following Machia-
vellian advice: "Provoke an entente while you still have an
army to suppress it with." l Favre looked at him with horror,
for making so bloodthirsty a suggestion. But evidently
Bismarck knew the state of things in Paris better than Favre,
who, later on, probably regretted that he did not follow that
cunning counsel.

The Internationale played Germany's game admirably
in completing the nun of France in the spring of 1871, when
Lyons and other cities of the Centre and South sought to
copy Paris and overturn the national Government. In its
place they sought to erect a system based on the Commune
as governing unit, with federations to endow these micro-
cosms with some solidarity. That the Communists should
have made their bold bid for power while France was still
writhing under the heel of the Germans sufficiently character-
ized their movement. It proved that among a fanatical
1 Busch, Bismarck during the Franco-German War, II, 265.

INTERNATIONALISM 187

minority of "Internationals" all claims of country were
ignored; nay, that the greater the agony of la patrie, the better
was the opportunity deemed for sweeping away old-world
notions and imposing a communistic and anti-national form
of society. Of course the national view prevailed, but after
a terrible struggle, which brought France to the verge of dis-
solution. The violence of the petroleuses in Paris and other
signs of political lunacy discredited the cause; and in 1872
the Internationale split into two factions. The more moder-
ate, led by Marx, outvoted the desperadoes of Bakunin; but
the latter found a considerable following among the artisans
of France, and, still more, of Spain and Italy. Worsted at
their own game of violence, the Nihilists gradually declined
in numbers; but the Russian branch of the sect effected the
murder of the reforming Tsar, Alexander II, and thus threw
Russia into the arms of reaction.

The chief significance of these facts lies in the reckless unwis-
dom of the champions of Internationalism and their utter
disregard of the claims of country, even after a most dis-
astrous war; but it is of prime importance to observe that
anarchic and anti-national theories had a far greater hgld
on the Slav and Latin peoples than on the Germans. The
Karl Marx party dominant in German Socialism, though
advanced in its opinions, was not anarchic. Indeed, Marx
often behaved like a German patriot. On July 20, 1870,
just before the Franco-German War, he wrote to another
Socialist, Engels, that he hoped the French would be well
thrashed; then the centre of the Internationale would be in
Germany. He was no less hostile to the French Republic.
On the contrary, Bakunin did his best to help the young
French democracy against the Germans.1 Thus, the Teutonic
Socialist tended towards Nationalism, the French and Rus-

1 James Guillaume, Karl Marx pangermaniste, et I' Association Inter-
nationale (Paris, Colin, 1915), pp. 85, 101.

1 88 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

sians towards Internationalism; the fractions that now and
again terrorized the Latin and Russian peoples were the de-
clared enemies, not only of those Governments, but of all
government.

This divergence between the Teutonic peoples on the one
hand and the Latin and Slav peoples on the other suggests
that there must be a fundamental difference of tempera-
ment and outlook. In the Latin and Slav peoples the sense
of the ideal is certainly stronger ; and the notion of a common
law and civilization has taken deeper root. Consequently,
on every important question the authority of the community
tends to prevail — a heritage bequeathed hi rich measure by
Ancient Rome to the Romance peoples. The Slav peoples
are characterized by similar notions, and by an even stronger
vein of sentiment. Consequently a movement that aims at
far-reaching changes, such as the sovereignty of the commu-
nity or of the human race at large over the individual, has a
greater chance of success among them than elsewhere. In
fact, far-reaching social revolutions have generally origi-
nated with them. On the other hand the Germanic, Anglo-
Saxon, and Scandinavian peoples are remarkable for attach-
ment to the home and to individual liberty. Luther and
Cromwell are their characteristic products; Rousseau and
Mazzini those of the Latin peoples. Accordingly, it seems
probable that Internationalism will develop first among the
latter, and will be retarded by the individualism of the former.

However, in 1871 the movement was wrecked mainly by
the extravagant ardor of its disciples. Mrs. Browning has
sung of the proneness of the French of her day to hurry to
extremes: —

"these too fiery and impatient souls,
They threaten conflagration to the world,
And rush with most unscrupulous logic on
Impossible practice."

INTERNATIONALISM 189

Never was this defect more flagrant than in the spring of
1871. It was due to the Communists that the French Re-
public became for a time a prey to reaction. In Germany,
on the contrary, the anarchist movement never was serious;
and the majority of the Socialists in the long run tended
to express not much more than the discontent naturally
aroused by the autocratic proceedings of the present Kaiser.
Even the Marxian Socialists have diminished in Germany,
where, indeed, the Socialists are often little more than up-
holders of individual liberty. During the first seven or
eight years of his reign William If sought to appease
them by measures known as State Socialism: but in
and after 1895 he found that his imperial palliatives were
not appreciated, and in 1896 he threw himself into Weltpo-
litik.

As we have seen, this commercial Imperialism gamed
ground rapidly; and, what is most remarkable, it won over
very many German Socialists. The reasons for their defec-
tion are still far from clear; but one cause, perhaps the funda-
mental cause, has been pointed out by a Belgian, M. fimile
Royer. He, the Socialist deputy for Tournay, states that
Marxism had devoted itself almost exclusively to the national
side of social questions, thereby losing sight of the wider
and humanitarian issues which nerved the Socialists of I848.1
This explanation goes far to solve the riddle; for since the
year 1888 the German Government has done much for the
workmen, and recently has tried to convince them of the need
of colonies and better outlets to the sea. To men who looked
chiefly to the loaves and fishes the Kaiser's policy presented
irresistible attractions. For instance, the Pangerman pro-
gramme, which he patronized, has aimed at the inclusion of
Belgium and Holland in a Greater Germany — to which a

1 Infependance beige, Feb. 17, 1915; quoted by J. Destree, Les Soci-
alistes el la Guerre europtenne, p. 20.

190 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Central Zollverein would be the convenient prelude; and this
programme has immensely furthered the growth of imperial
and Chauvinistic ideas among the Bavarians. Shedding
their former separatist notions, they have embraced the new
programme with ardor, because, as their King recently
stated, it promises to give to South German trade its natural
outlets to the sea, Rotterdam and Antwerp. Similarly in
the great commercial centres, very many Socialists have
favored the imperial policy of expansion.

Then* conduct has dealt a heavy blow to the international
cause. Most of the fathers of Socialism believed in Free
Trade between nations as a means of furthering friendly
intercourse and lessening the chances of war. But Bis-
marck's policy of protecting home industries (supplemented
by that of Billow respecting agriculture) had very important
results, far beyond the limits of commerce and agriculture.
For there were two alternatives before Germany; either
to continue in the path of Free Trade, which implies peaceful
intercourse, or to adopt a protective and narrowly national
policy. Bismarck chose the latter, and Wilhelm accentuated
the choice, his aim being to make the nation as far as possible
a self-sufficing unit. The result was that Germany in forty
years of peace piled up great stores of industrial energy
which threatened to burst their bounds. On the basis of
protection vast industrial interests were built up, which
could find no adequate markets unless other States let in
German goods on easy terms; and this they would not do to
a sufficient extent. Consequently the national or protective
system led to an impasse. The new trade interests clamored
for new markets, and the artisans concerned in them tended
to become imperial expansionists. Thus the protective sys-
tem adopted hi 1880 served to strengthen the demands for
further annexations.

In fact the whole system gyrated in a vicious circle, some-

INTERNATIONALISM 191

what as follows: First the colonial party demanded colonies
and protection. Then the colonies were stated to need a
great fleet; while protection led to a mushroom growth of
industries which helped to pay for the fleet. Industries,
inflated to near bursting point, demanded new outlets, and
all classes of the community, including many of the Socialists,
believed it necessary to support that demand, which the
army and fleet were prepared to satisfy. If Germany had
persevered with the system of free exchange which makes
the whole world an open market, the present cataclysm
would probably have been averted; for though the Prussian
Junkers would hi any case clamor for war, their cries would
have found no response in commercial circles, still less
among the artisans of Germany. These last, I repeat, have
been largely led astray from international ideals by a narrow
commercialism , which made either for an internal explosion
or a European war. In these islands we think of commerce
as a bond of peace. It has acted far otherwise in Germany,
where it takes on the guise of the old mercantile system,
that fruitful parent of wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Indeed, over-speculation and over-production
in Germany probably prompted the mad plunge of July,
IQI4.1 Antwerp, Salonica, Constantinople, and Bagdad
were to be the safety-valves for a surcharged industrial
system. The conquest of Belgium and North-East France,
Poland, Courland, and the Balkans seemed no difficult task
in view of the confusion and weakness in the Entente States
and Serbia. Commerce therefore joined hands with Milita-
rism, and German Socialists did not bestow on that suspicious
union the expected shower of curses.

Imperialism, of course, has sometimes assumed a threaten-
ing guise in these islands; but on the whole it has aimed at

1 See M. Millioud, The Ruling Caste and Frenzied Trade in Germany
'Eng. transl., 1916).

192 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

safeguarding the Empire by the upkeep of an adequate fleet,
the increase of which barely kept pace with that of the mer-
cantile marine and of our colonial responsibilities. The
r61e of the British fleet was necessarily defensive; that of
the German fleet, on its very limited coasts, could, after
the recent huge additions, well be offensive. In truth, the
danger of the situation lay in the fact that the greatest
military Power in the world aspired to rival on the oceans
the Power for which maritime supremacy is the first law of
existence. This difference in the situation of Germany and
Great Britain was never admitted by the German people;
and of late years their Socialists have ceased effectively
to protest against the increase of their armaments, and that,
too, despite the persistent refusal of the Berlin Government
to accept proposals at the Hague Conferences for limitation
of armaments.1

In view of the inaction of German Socialists at the greatest
crisis in the modern world, it is of interest to glance at the
resolutions which their delegates helped to pass at the chief
Congresses of the Internationale. At Paris in 1901 the Con-
gress engaged the Socialists of all countries to oppose votes
for naval construction and colonial wars. At Stuttgart in
1907 that able French writer, Gustave Herve, spoke ve-
hemently against patriotism as an anti-social prejudice. The
German leader, Bebel, opposed this on the ground that
la patrie belongs more to the poor than to the dominant
classes; and he warned Herve not to encourage the German
General Staff against "the eventual enemy." For himself,
he would not support war, but he supported defensive prepa-
rations. Herve, in reply, said that his propaganda in France

1 Bernhardi's claim, that Germany needs new colonies for her surplus
population, is refuted by the official statement in the Preussische Jahr-
biicher of March, 1912, that her emigration had of late sunk to about
20,000 a year.

INTERNATIONALISM 193

had disarmed the Government, which in case of mobilization,
would be faced with insurrection and chaos. Bebel declared
that there were two million Socialists in the German army,
but gave no promise as to then- conduct in case of a war,
which, moreover, would further their cause better than ten
years of propaganda. The Congress unanimously voted a
motion, the chief clause of which appears at the head of
this lecture.

The Congress held at Copenhagen in 1910 rejected Keir
Hardie's motion for a general strike of workers in case of
war by 131 votes to 51. In the majority were Germany
20 votes, Austria 18, Italy 15, America 14, etc.; in the mi-
nority, Great Britain 20, France 12, Russia 7, Poland 5,
etc. The delegates who met at the Bale Congress of No-
vember, 1912, were cheered by the sweeping triumphs of
the party hi the recent General Elections to the Reichstag
(see ante, p. 191). Referring to the Balkan War then raging,
the French leader, Jaures, called on the workers in Germany,
France, and England to prevent any help going to Austria
or Russia if those Powers came to blows. The German
delegate, Hasse, for his party, promised to use all possible
means to prevent a war.1

A sinister incident followed. In the hope of clearing up
the Alsace-Lorraine Question 180 French Socialists went on
to Berne, expecting to meet the same number of German
delegates. They found a mere handful; for as one of them
said to M. Vergnet: "Every German, from the highest
to the lowest, considers that the Alsace-Lorraine Question
can be reopened only on the battlefield. Let the French
have no illusion on that head."2 The German Socialists
also made no sustained protests against the barbarous treat-

1 E. Royer, La Social-Democratic allemande et austro-hongroise el les
Socialities beiges, pp. 8-24. (17-18 Green St., Leicester Square, London).
2 Vergnet, The German Engima, p. 138.

194 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

merit of certain harmless civilians of Zabern by German
officers near the close of 1913. At that time the centenary
celebrations of the German War of Liberation of 1813 turned
all heads in the Fatherland; and Germany, though she had
no Napoleon to fear, whipped herself to a frenzy of warlike
ardor, amidst which the no Socialist members of the Reich-
stag raised scarcely a protest against the enormous votes
passed in that autumn for military and naval purposes —
votes which far exceeded all possible demands of a defensive
character. Thereafter the Berlin Government was convinced
that in any eventuality the German Socialists would (to
use a famous phrase of Bebel's) "fight to the last gasp for
the Fatherland." Of course, the great Socialist had spoken
thus only for a really defensive war. In July-August, 1914,
his party condoned the action of the German Government
when it precipitated the long-dreaded European conflict.

Here it is well to recall the condition of Labor in the chief
countries. The spring and summer of 1914 were charac-
terized by great unrest in France, Great Britain, and Russia.
Strikes were numerous and others were threatened. Fre-
quent ministerial crises at Paris and public admissions as
to the unpreparedness of the army weakened public confi-
dence. As for the United Kingdom, it seemed on the verge
of civil war in Ireland. In Russia the strikes of the transport
workers and others opened up the most serious prospects.
It was in this state of affairs, when the Entente Powers
hovered on the brink of social revolution or civil war, that
Germany launched her ultimatums to Petrograd and Paris
(July 31). Those acts alone, following on the insolent de-
mands of the Austrian Government on Serbia, sufficiently
revealed the aggressive designs of the Central Empires, which
became clear as day when Germany sought to "hew her way"
through Belgium.

It is curious that, in the early stages of the diplomatic

INTERNATIONALISM 195

quarrel, the German Socialists raised protests against being
dragged into war. On July 28 they held twenty-eight public
meetings in Berlin alone for that purpose; and those meetings
were even protected by the police. This fact seems to show
that either the authorities had not yet decided in favor
of war (it is thought that they decided on the evening of
July 29) or that they were using the Socialists to lull those
of Russia, France, and Belgium into false security. In
either case the opposition of German Socialists to war thence-
forth collapsed — why is a mystery. Were they coerced by
the officials? Or were they terrified by the Muscovite bogey
which Berlin officials magnified into colossal proportions?
The latter supposition is incredible in view of the almost
complete paralysis of the transport services in Russia. It
seems, then, that the German Socialists must have followed
the imperialist impulse which had won them over in and
after the year 1912. Whatever the cause, they all (though a
few silently demurred) supported the war votes of August 4
for a campaign which a mere tyro hi diplomacy could see
was of an offensive character. Nevertheless, Hasse read
out the Socialists' declaration that they no longer had to
pronounce on the cause of the war, but only to defend their
fron tiers; and on this wretched excuse he and his party gave
the lie to their protestations of several years past. His
action was all the more disgraceful because on July 29, at
a great meeting of Socialists at Brussels, he declared Austria's
demands on Serbia a veritable provocation to war, and
affirmed the conviction of the German people that its Govern-
ment ought not to intervene, even if Russia intervened.
It was then decided to hold a great International Congress
at Paris on August 9 to concert general measures to prevent
war.1 Did the knowledge of that fact induce the Berlin

1 Royer, pp. 24-31: P. G. la Chesnais, "The Socialist Party in the
Reichstag and the Declaration of War," ch. 3, shows that that party

196 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Government to hurry on its ultimatums to Russia and France
on July 31? And why did not those obvious signs of hurry
arouse the suspicions of the no Socialist deputies? Why,
during the sitting of August 4th, did they not protest against
the violation of Belgium's neutrality, which the Chancellor
admitted to be a lawless act? Why, finally, did they not
protest against the horrors perpetrated in Belgium in August-
September?

In justice, it must be said that the Socialist journal, the
Vorwiirts, protested both against the war and the barbarities
of the army. Liebknecht, too, in December, 1914, in oppos-
ing the second war credits, declared the war to be an im-
perialist and capitalist war for the conquest of the world's
markets. By that time all German Socialists were aware
of the absolute preparedness of Germany and the unpre-
paredness of her opponents. Yet only sixteen Socialist
deputies joined in his opposition and protest. By degrees
Ms following increased; and the majority of the German
Socialist party has finally condemmed the policy of annexa-
tion openly avowed in the tune of fancied triumph. Some
of its members, however, sought to persuade their French
and Belgian comrades that France and Belgium ought to
discuss terms of peace. Against this suggestion Bernstein,
editor of the Bremer Burgerzeitung, strongly protested, point-
ing out that, as France was attacked and part of her territory
still occupied, discussions of peace by her would be a fatal
act. Bernstein, Liebknecht, Kautzky, and Hasse published
a Socialist manifesto demanding peace, without annexations

abandoned all opposition to war in its manifesto of July 31, that is before
war became certain. The Vorwiirts also wrote: "Social Democracy bears
no responsibility for forthcoming events" — a forecast of the passivity
of the party on August 4. On August i a German Socialist, M tiller,
arrived at Paris, and sought t:> induce his French comrades to oppose the
war credits at Paris.

INTERNATIONALISM 197

or conquests. They and their manifesto were repudiated
by the party, which thus associated itself with the policy
of the Government (June, 191 5). l

As for the French Socialists, though stunned for a moment
by the assassination of their leader, Jaures, they soon took
up the position which, assuredly, he would have taken up.
In face of the unprovoked and treacherous stab of the Ger-
mans at France through Belgium, they rallied as one man to
the defence of la patrie. There was now no talk of a "general
strike" such as might conceivably have stopped the war at
its two sources, Berlin and Vienna. The treason of German
Socialists to the Internationale consigned it for the present
to the limbo of vain hopes; and nothing remained for their
comrades in Belgium, France, Serbia, and Poland but to
fall back on the old principle of duty to their several nations.
The supreme lesson of the crisis of July-August, 1914, is that
Internationalism can succeed only when its votaries stand
firm in every nation; and that treason in one quarter involves
collapse in all quarters.

The genius of the Latin and Slav peoples was quick to
discern the truth that in August, 1914, the patriotic principle,
which many of them had consistently derided, formed the
only possible basis of action during the war; also that, in
fighting for la patrie against its violators, they were taking
the first step towards reaffirming the cosmopolitan ideal.
Very noteworthy was the action of Gustave Herve. He at
once became a flaming patriot, the champion of war to the

1 Destree, pp. 17, 35-46. H. Bourgin, Les Responsabilites du Social-
isme allemand, pp. 14-22. The assertion of Mr. Snowden, M. p., in the
debate of February 23, 1916, that in no country of Europe (except
Hungary and Italy) has Internationalism been so well kept alive as
by the German Socialists, is incorrect. They have made some fine
speeches, but their actions have been timid and far too tardy to influ-
ence events, except in a sense favorable to Germany.

198 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

death against Germany. The Belgian Socialist, Destree,
by his fiery denunciation of the Huns, did much to arouse
Italy from her indecision and range her on the side of national
liberty against an overweening Imperialism. In Great
Britain the action of the workers has in general been marked
by self-sacrificing devotion; but unfortunately one section
of the Labor party has been blind to the wider issues at
stake in this mighty struggle. Consequently there has not
been here that unanimous rally to the nation's call which has
lifted the whole life of France to a higher level. In France,
despite a sharp rise in prices, there has not been a single
strike since the beginning of the war up to mid-February,
1916; but here as many as 698 strikes occurred during the
year 1915 alone. Of these several were due to merely local
and sectional considerations, and many were highly detri-
mental to the public service. The contrast is deeply humiliat-
ing, and is not to be explained away by saying that France
is invaded and we are not; for the same principle, the free-
dom of the smaller peoples, is at stake everywhere. Inability
or refusal to see this truth must discredit a portion of the
British Labor party; and leadership in the international
movement of the future will probably lie with the Latin or
Slav peoples, whose workers have almost unanimously shown
the capacity of taking a wide, generous, and statesmanlike
view of this unexampled crisis in the fortunes of the Euro-
pean peoples.

In Russia the Socialists were at first divided on the ques-
tion of the war, as was natural in view of the despotic nature
of their Government. But their leaders, notably Prince
Kropotkin, soon perceived the seriousness of the German
menace; and the party rallied enthusiastically to the national
cause. At the International Socialist Congress held in London
in February, 1915, all the Russian delegates voted for the
prosecution of the war until the rights of nationalities were

INTERNATIONALISM 199

restored and a federative system could be designed for the
protection of the peace of Europe.

That has become the aim of nearly all Socialists in this
war; but, in spite of the increase of distress in Germany,
her Socialist party continues to support the Government.
In a debate early in January, 1916, Liebknecht's anti-war
group mustered forty-one strong; but the refusal of the
German Chancellor to repudiate aims of annexation on either
frontier failed to alienate the majority of the Socialists. For
their part, the French Socialists demand that the future of
Alsace-Lorraine shall be decided by a plebiscite in those
provinces, a proposal scouted by their German confreres,
who claim that that future is irrevocably bound up with
German rule. On this rock, then, as well as that of Poland,
Internationalism has foundered; and it will be observed that,
while its ideal is championed by French and Russian Social-
ists, those of Germany have in the main taken up the nation-
alist standpoint and hold to the lands seized or conquered
by Frederick the Great and Wilhelm I.1 In January,
1916, the Socialist leader, Scheidemann, spoke strongly
for peace and against annexations; but he uttered the
fatal words: "We refuse any thought of an annexation of
Alsace-Lorraine by France, in whatever form it may be at-
tempted."

Another blow to the cosmopolitan movement is the utter
failure of neutrals to give effect to their obligations, con-
tracted at the Hague Conferences, for assuring the sanctity
of neutral territory and the rights due to non-combatants.
Though Germany's weaker neighbors were obviously ter-
rorized into silence, yet the United States could safely have
protested in the case of outrages so notorious as those com-
mitted in Belgium and Poland. No protest has come from

1 See the Temps for Nov. 6, 1915, and the Nation (London) or Jan. 15,
1916.

200 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

Washington; l and this dereliction of duty has rendered futile
all the labor expended at the Hague Conferences, at least
during this war. Here again, then, experience has proved
the extreme fragility of the cosmopolitan ideals. At the
first contact with a brutal and overweening Nationalism
they vanished; and Germany has plunged the world back
into a state of lawlessness and bestiality comparable with
that of the Thirty Years' War.

Men are asking everywhere: Can International Law and
morality ever be re-established in such a way as to restore
confidence? Pessimists and cynics deny it. On historical
grounds, I dissent from this sombre estimate. For, as has
appeared in these studies, Nationalism shows signs of having
exhausted its strength except among the most backward
peoples. This war is the reductio ad absurdum of the move-
ment in its recent narrow and intolerant form. The persistent
attempt of one nation to overbear its weaker neighbors in
order to achieve world-supremacy has sufficed to unite against
it nearly all the world; and the frightful exhaustion which
failure must entail will be a warning to would-be world-
conquerors for centuries to come. Further, as we have seen,
the more brutal and perfidious the violation of International
Law, the stronger is the demand for the re-establishment of
that law, with adequate guarantees for the future. In the
domains of politics, finance, and law violent action always
begets a strong reaction; and we may be sure that, when the
base Nationalism of recent years has brought its protagonist
to ruin, there will be a potent revulsion in favor of interna-
tional ideals. In 1871 those ideals were foolishly championed

1 In his Allocution of January 22, 1915, the Pope reprobated all acts
of injustice, but in terms so general as to render the protest useless.
Equally disappointing is the letter of Cardinal Gasparri, of July 6, 1915,
to the Belgian Minister (L'Allemagne et les Allies devant la Conscience
chrttienne, ad fin., Paris, 1915).

INTERNATIONALISM 201

by the fanatics of Paris; in 1914 they were foully betrayed
by turncoats at Berlin. Let us hope that in the future good
sense and good faith will work hand in hand for their realiza-
tion. Already in the Hague Tribunal there exists the means
for assuring the triumph of reason in place of force. If in
due course all the European Powers consent to substitute
the will to reconcile for the will to conquer, the task is half
accomplished.

Why should not the new Europe will to reconcile its in-
terests? Every leading thinker now admits that the saner
of the national aspirations (that is, those which prompt
the political union of men of like sentiments) must receive
due satisfaction. Belgium will be reconstituted, more glo-
rious than before. France must recover Alsace-Lorraine.
But the French and Belgian peoples, if they are wise, will
not covet the Rhine boundary. Poland (the Poland of 1771)
ought to emerge once more, free in civic affairs, though
under the suzerainty of the Tsars. Italy will gather in her
people of the Trentino and Trieste, but, if she is wise, will
annex no Slovene or Slav lands further east. The Austrian
and Eastern Questions are more difficult, but can be settled
on a federative system based on Nationality and equality
of rights. The Macedonian tangle should be settled by a
commission appointed by the Great Powers, not by wrang-
ling delegates of the peoples concerned. On the questions
concerning Albania, Bulgaria, and Constantinople no pru-
dent person will at present dogmatize; for they must be
settled largely according to the course of events. This much
is certain: the enormous importance of the issues now at
stake ought to nerve every Briton to do his utmost so that
the solution shall be thorough and shall not end in the
ghastly fiasco of a stale-mate. Better five years of war than
that.

The new Europe which I have outlined ought to be a far

202 NATIONALITY IN MODERN HISTORY

happier Europe than ever before. For the first time prac-
tically all the great peoples will have sorted themselves
out, like to like; and it may be assumed that all dynasties
hostile to that healthy process will have disappeared. Then,
after the attainment of civic freedom and national solidarity,
the national instinct, which strengthens with opposition and
weakens after due satisfaction, ought to merge in the wider
and nobler sentiment of human brotherhood in the attain-
ment of which it is only a preparatory phase.

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