NATIONALISM
There are two kinds of nationalism, one of nations, the other of
nationalities. The two terms “nation” and “nationality” do not
coincide. A nation is in most cases a nationality that is unified in
political and economic organization; although there are also nations
that embrace several nationalities, like Czecho-Slovakia and Poland.
A nationality is a group of people alike in speech, culture and in
most cases representing no fundamental racial contrasts. A nationality
may be divided and constitute several nations, like the Spaniards of
Central America, or the Italians before the unification of Italy; or
they may be included in several nations, like the Germans in Germany,
Austria, France, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and Italy.
There is, therefore, a nationalism of nations which feel and act as
a unit regardless of the component nationalities; and a nationalism
of nationalities which strive for unity in political and economic
organization.
There is a curious vagueness in the use of the {79} terms “race”
and “nation.” In the terminology of the U. S. Immigration Commission
English, French, German, and Russian are designated as races. In common
parlance also national groups are identified with racial strains.
The blonde represent the Teutons; the short and dark, Spaniards or
Italians; the heavy built brunette, the Slavs.
On account of the peculiar position of the blond type, it has been
preëminently identified with the so-called Aryan race. As is well
known, most of the languages of Europe are derived from one ancient
form of speech,--the parental Aryan language. Slavic, Teutonic, and
Romance languages are the most important modern divisions of this
group in Europe, to which Greek, Celtic, Lithuanian, and Albanian also
belong. Among European languages, only Finnish and its relatives on the
Baltic; Magyar, Turkish, and Basque, do not belong to this extended
group. Aryan languages are spoken by people of the most diverse racial
types; nevertheless there are scientists who try to identify the blond
North European with the ancient, pure Aryan, and who claim for the race
preëminent hereditary gifts, because the people who at present and in
our concept are the leaders of the world speak Aryan languages.
Scientific proof of these contentions cannot be given. They are rather
fancies of North European dreamers, based on the complaisant love of
{80} the achievements of the blondes. No one has ever proved that all
the Aryans of the earliest times were blondes, or that people speaking
other languages may not have been blonde, too; and nobody would be
able to show that the great achievements of mankind were due to blond
thinkers. On the contrary, the people to whom we are indebted for the
basic advance of civilization belong to the dark-complexioned human
types of the Orient, and not to our blond ancestors.
How deep and emotional a hold this idea has in the minds of some
scientists appears when some investigators try to prove that all the
achievements of Greece and Italy are due to the blond immigrants who
reached these countries before the beginning of the historic era, or
that Christ cannot have been a Jew by descent, but must have been an
Aryan. The presence of a blond element in these countries does not
prove that the cultural achievements were due to it. We might say with
equal justice that the rise of North European civilization did not
begin until South and Central European blood became intermingled with
that of the North European.
The idea of the great blond Aryan, the leader of mankind, is the
result of self-admiration that emotional thinkers have tried to sustain
by imaginative reasoning. It has no foundation in observed fact. {81}
This, however, does not decrease the emotional value of the fiction
that has taken hold of the mind wherever the Teutonic, German, or
Anglo-Saxon type,--however it may be called,--prevails, or where the
Italian “race” glories in its past greatness and virtue.
All over Europe people believe in their racial purity and in the
possession of qualities that make them superior to all others; while
it is assumed that the mixed, “mongrel” races are doomed to permanent
inferiority; and where there is undeniable mixture the ideal type is
admonished to see to it that it is not swamped by so-called inferior
types and that it preserve its purity.
This notion prevails among ourselves with equal force, for we are
haunted by fear of the ominous influx of “inferior” races from eastern
Europe, of the mongrelization of the American people by intermixture
between the Northwest European and other European types.
Inferior by heredity? No. Socially different? Yes, on account of the
environment in which they have lived, and therefore different from
ourselves, and not easily subject to change provided they are allowed
to cluster together indefinitely.
Scientific investigation does not countenance the assumption that in
any one part of Europe a people of pure descent or of a pure racial
type is found, {82} and careful inquiry has failed completely to reveal
any inferiority of mixed European types.
In our thoughts the local racial types of Europe have been identified
with modern nations, and thus the supposed hereditary characteristics
of the races have been confused with national characteristics. An
identification of racial type, of language, and of nationality has been
made, that has gained an exceedingly strong hold on our imagination.
In vain sober scientific thought has remonstrated against this
identification; the idea is too firmly rooted. Even if it is true that
the blond type is found at present preëminently among Teutonic people,
it is not confined to them alone. Among the Finns, Poles, French, North
Italians, not to speak of the North African Berbers and the Kurds of
western Asia, there are individuals of this type. The heavy-set, darker
East European type is common to many of the Slavic peoples of eastern
Europe, to the Germans of Austria and southern Germany, to the North
Italians, and to the French of the Alps and of central France. The
Mediterranean type is spread widely over Spain, Italy, Greece, and the
coast of Asia Minor, without regard to national boundaries. Other local
types may be readily distinguished, if we take into consideration other
differences in form. These are also confined to definite territories.
In western Europe, types are on the whole distributed {83} in strata
that follow one another from north to south,--in the north the blond,
in the center a darker, short-headed type, in the south the slightly
built Mediterranean.
National boundaries in central Europe, on the other hand, run north and
south: and so we find many individuals in northern France, Belgium,
Holland, Germany and northwestern Russia similar in type and descent;
many of the central French, South Germans, Swiss, North Italians,
Austrians, Servians and central Russians, belonging to similar
varieties of man; and also persons in southern France, closely related
to the types of the eastern and western Mediterranean area.
The relation of German and Slav is instructive. During the period of
Teutonic migrations, in the first few centuries of our era, the Slavs
settled in the region from which Teutonic tribes had moved away. They
occupied the whole of what is now eastern Germany, but the population
seems to have been sparse. In the Middle Ages, with the growth of the
German Empire, a slow backward movement set in. Germans settled as
colonists in Slavic territory, and by degrees German speech prevailed
over the Slavic and a population of mixed descent developed. In Germany
survivals of the gradual process may be found in a remote locality
where Slavic speech still persists.
As by contact with the more advanced Germans {84} the cultural and
economic conditions of the Slavs improved and their numbers and their
wealth increased, their resistance to Germanization became greater
and greater,--earliest among the Czechs and Poles, later in the other
Slavic groups. Later on, through a similar process, a mixed population
of Poles, Lithuanians and Russians originated farther to the east.
This process has led to the present distribution of languages, which
expresses a fossilization of German colonization in the east, and
illustrates in a most striking way the penetration of peoples. Poland
and part of Russia, Slavonic and Magyar territories are interspersed
with small German settlements, which are the more sparse and scattered
the farther east they are located, the more continuous the nearer they
lie to Germany,--at least until the recent systematic persecution of
Germans in Poland.
With the increased economic and cultural strength of the Slav, the
German lost his ability to impose his mode of life upon him, and with
it his power to assimilate the numerically stronger people in its own
home. But by blood all these people, no matter what their speech, are
the same.
A process analogous to the medieval Germanization of Slavic tribes may
at present be observed in Mexico, where Indian speech and culture give
way to the Spanish. Each town forms a center {85} of Spanish speech
which, owing to the economic and cultural strength of the town, spreads
over the surrounding country.
The French Huguenots who escaped from religious persecution and settled
in Germany have been completely assimilated, although the French
school in which their children were educated is still in existence
as a French gymnasium. Alsatians who migrated to Paris have become
French in language and spirit; Germans have been absorbed by Russians;
the Swedish nobility counts in their number many descendants of the
nobility of foreign countries. An analysis of the descent of the
population of every part of Europe proves that intermingling has been
going on for long periods.
The movements of tribes in prehistoric times and during antiquity also
illustrate the ways in which different strains became mixed: the Doric
migration into Greece, the movements of the Kelts into Spain, Italy
and eastward as far as Asia Minor; the Teutonic migrations which swept
through Europe from the Black Sea into Italy, France, Spain and on
into Africa; the invasion of the Balkan Peninsula by Slavs, and their
extension over eastern Russia and into Siberia; Phœnician, Greek and
Roman colonization; the roving Normans; the expansion of the Arabs; the
Crusades, are a few of the important events that have contributed {86}
to the intermingling of the European population.
In every single nationality of Europe the various elements of
the continental population are represented. Nationality has only
the slightest relation to racial descent. The so-called “racial”
antipathies are feelings that have grown up on another basis and have
been given a fictitious racial interpretation.
This claim may seem to be contradicted by the readiness with which
we recognize individuals, according to their outer appearance, as
members of certain nationalities. These identifications, which are
far from certain, are based only in part on the essential elements
of the form of the body, such as hair and eye color, face form and
stature. We are led much more by the mannerisms of wearing hair and
beard, and by the characteristic expressions and motions of the body,
which are determined not so much by hereditary causes as by habit. The
latter are more impressive than the former; and among the nations of
Europe no fundamental traits of the body occur that belong to one to
the exclusion of the others. It is a common experience that Americans
of European descent, French, Italian or German, are recognized as
Americans, notwithstanding their pure descent and solely on account of
their appearance and habits.
It is clear that the term _race_, as commonly used, {87} is only a
disguise of _nationality_ which has little to do with racial descent;
and that the interracial relations are based on national enmities or
friendships, not on racial antipathies or sympathies.
If community of racial descent is not the basis of nationality, is it
community of language?
When we glance at the national aspirations that have characterized a
large part of the nineteenth century, community of language might seem
to be the background of national life. It touches the most sympathetic
chords in our hearts. Italians worked for the overthrow of the small
local and great foreign interests that were opposed to the national
unity of all Italian-speaking people. German patriots strove and will
strive for the federation of the German-speaking people in one empire.
The struggles in the Balkans are largely due to a desire for national
independence according to the limits of speech. The Poles have for more
than a century longed for a reëstablishment of their state which is to
embrace all those of Polish tongue.
It is, however, not very long that the bonds of language have been
felt so intensely. Language establishes a basis of mutual understanding
on which a community of interests may arise. The pleasure of hearing
one’s own tongue spoken in a foreign country creates at once between
its speakers a feeling of comradeship that is quite real, {88} and
strong in proportion to the smallness of the number of speakers of the
idiom. The necessity of easy communication between the members of one
nation has also led generally to the endeavor to make one language
the ruling language throughout the whole state. When there is a great
difference of languages, as in the former Austria-Hungary, the national
unity is liable to be feeble.
Unity of language is more an idealized concept than a real bond.
Notwithstanding unity of language severe internal conflicts may arise
that overshadow the feeling for national unity. Civil wars that may
lead to the breaking up of nations may arise and the feeling for
national unity may be severely restricted by division into classes, as
in medieval Europe; or in the Greek cities; or by divisions on racial
lines, as between Negroes and Whites in the United States. Politically
Negroes and Whites are members of the same nation, and a similar kind
of nationalism pervades both groups. Still, among many citizens of our
country the claim that Negroes and Whites have the same nationality
might provoke lively protests.
Unity of language is more an ideal than a real bond; not only that
divergence of dialects makes communication difficult, but community of
thought among the members of different social classes is also so slight
that no communication of deeper thought and feeling is possible. The
Provençale {89} and the North French, the Bavarian and the Westphalian
peasant, the Sicilian and the Florentine are hopelessly divided, owing
to differences of language. Unity is found in the educated groups that
share the same language and the same emotional reactions. In many ways
the educated Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians,
Spaniards, and Russians have more in common than each has with the
uneducated classes of his own nation.
Unity of language does not comprise the whole of nationalism, for no
less ardent is the patriotism of trilingual Switzerland. Even here in
America we see that the bond of tongue is not the only one. Else we
should feel that there is no reason for a division between Canada and
the United States, and that the political ties between western Canada
and French Quebec must be artificial.
Neither the bonds of blood nor those of language alone make a nation.
It is rather the community of emotional life that rises from our
everyday habits, from the forms of thoughts, feelings, and actions,
which constitute the medium in which every individual can unfold freely
his activities.
An interesting phase of national life is developing in Russia.
While the policy of the Czarist government consisted in the forcible
suppression of all non-Russian speech, even of local dialects, the
Soviet Republic has adopted the policy of protecting {90} the right of
every group to their own language, trusting in the bond of a great,
radical economic experiment to unite all the people.
Language and nation are so often identified, because we feel that among
a people that uses the same language every one can find the widest
field for unrestricted activity.
Added to this is the consciousness that political unity gives increased
power which makes it possible to emphasize the interests of the citizen
as opposed to those of the foreigner.
These feelings combine to create the feeling for the existence of a
national unity. Nevertheless it is perfectly clear that there is no
individual, nor any group of individuals, that represents the national
ideal. It is rather an abstraction based on the current forms of
thought, feeling, and action,--an abstraction of high emotional value,
enhanced by the consciousness of political power.
It is well to bear in mind that nationality is not necessarily based
on unity of speech; for when the same type of cultural ideals prevails
in a polyglottal area, in which each group is too weak to give to the
individual a free field of action, this can be attained only by the
development of a union of the independent groups.
For the full development of his faculties, the individual needs
the widest possible field in which to live and act according to his
modes of thought {91} and inner feeling. Since, in most cases, the
opportunity is given among a group that possesses unity of speech, we
feel full sympathy with the intense desire to throw down the artificial
barriers of small political units. This process has characterized the
development of modern nations.
When, however, these limits are overstepped, and a fictitious racial
or alleged national unit is set up that has no existence in actual
conditions, the free unfolding of the mind, for which we are striving,
is liable to become an excuse for ambitious lust for power. When
France dreamed of a union of all Latin people in a Pan-Latin union
under her leadership, the legitimate limits of natural development
were lost sight of for the sake of national ambition. When Russia
promoted a Pan-Slavistic propaganda among the diverse peoples, solely
on the ground that the Slavs are linguistically related, and assumed a
fictitious common culture and racial origin, the actual usefulness of
the nationalistic idea was lost sight of, and it was made the cover for
the desire of imperialistic expansion.
There is no doubt that the idea of nationality has been a creative
force, making possible the fuller development of powers by widening
the field of individual activity, and by setting definite ideals to
large coöperating masses; but we feel with Fichte and Mazzini that the
political power of a nation {92} is important only when the national
unit is the carrier of ideals that are of value to mankind.
Together with the positive, creative side of nationalism there has
developed everywhere an aggressive intolerance of foreign forms of
thought that can be satisfied only by the strongest emphasis laid upon
the value and interest of one national unit against all others.
On a larger scale the conditions are repeated now that less than a
century ago prevented the ready formation of modern nations. The
narrow-minded local interests of cities and other small political
units resisted unification or federation on account of the supposed
conflicts between their interests and ideals and those of other
units of comparable size. Governmental organization strengthened
the tendency to isolation, and the unavoidable, ever-present desire
of self-preservation of the existing order stood in the way of
amalgamation. It was only after long years of agitation and of bloody
struggle that the larger idea prevailed.
Those of us who recognize in the realization of national ideals a
definite advance that has benefited mankind cannot fail to see that the
task before us at the present time is a repetition of the process of
nationalization on a larger scale; not with a view to leveling down all
local differences, {93} but with the avowed purpose of making them all
subserve the same end.
The federation of nations is the next necessary step in the evolution
of mankind.
It is the expansion of the fundamental idea underlying the organization
of the United States of Switzerland, and of Germany. The weakness of
the League of Nations and of the modern peace movements lies in this,
that they are not sufficiently clear and radical in their demands, for
their logical aim cannot be arbitration of disagreement, or formal
outlawing of war. It must be the recognition of common aims of all the
nations.
Such federation of nations is not an Utopian idea, any more than
nationalism was a century ago. In fact, the whole development of
mankind shows that this condition is destined to come.
Fundamentally, the nation must be considered a closed society like
those previously discussed. The differentiation between citizen and
alien is not so intense as in the closed primitive horde, but it exists.
It would be instructive to follow in detail the development of modern
nations from tribal units that considered every alien an enemy who must
be slain, but we can only imagine the course of the gradual changes
that have taken place.
Human inventions improved. The herd of hunters and food-gatherers
learned the art of better {94} providing for their needs. They
stored up food and thus provided for the future. With the greater
regularity of the food supply and a decreased frequency of periods of
starvation the number of members of the community increased. Weaker
hordes, which still followed the older methods of hunting and food
gathering, were exterminated or, profiting by the experience of their
neighbors, acquired new arts and also increased in numbers. Thus the
groups that felt a solidarity among themselves became larger and by
the extermination of small, isolated hordes, that remained in more
primitive conditions, the total number of groups that stood opposed to
one another became gradually less.
It is impossible to trace with any degree of certainty the steps
by which the homogeneous groups became diversified and lost their
unity, or by which the opposing groups came into closer contact. We
may imagine that the widows and daughters of the slain, who became a
welcome prey of the victors, established in time kindlier relations
between their new masters and their kin; we may imagine that the
economic advantages of peacefully acquiring the coveted property
of neighbors rather than taking it by main force added their share
to establishing kindlier relations; we may attribute an important
influence to the weakening of old bonds of unity due to the gradual
dispersion {95} of the increasing number of members of the community.
No matter how the next steps in political development happened, we see
that, with increasing economic complexity, the hostility between the
groups becomes less. If it was right before to slay every one outside
of the small horde, we find now tribes that have a limited community
of interests, that under normal conditions live at peace, although
enmities may spring up at slight provocation. The group that lives
normally at peace has much increased in size, and, while the feeling of
solidarity may have decreased, its scope has become immensely wider.
A few examples of these conditions among the primitive members of
mankind will illustrate the course of events. The Bushmen of South
Africa are a people that is being exterminated, because everybody’s
hand is raised against them, and theirs against everybody. Between the
people of more advanced type of culture that surround them their small
bands are being annihilated. They feel themselves a group different
from the rest of the world, and for them there is no place in the life
of their neighbors. So a bitter war has been waged against them for
centuries and is on the point of ending with their extinction. Similar
conditions prevail in parts of South America where the hunting Indian
is outlawed like the wild South African. {96}
Not so in more advanced types of society. Notwithstanding the cruel
wars between the natives of our northern continent, there had been
laid the germs of larger political units among which peace normally
reigned. The fierce Iroquois created a desert around themselves, but in
their midst developed a large industrious community. The Zulu of South
Africa, the terror of the country, formed a unit infinitely larger than
any of those that existed before in that region.
This process of enlargement of political units and the reduction of
the number of those that were naturally at war with one another began
in the earliest times, and has continued without interruption, almost
always in the same direction. Even though hostilities have broken out
frequently between parts of what had come to be a large political unit,
the tendency for unification has in the long run been more powerful
than that of disintegration. We see the powers at work in antiquity,
when the urban states of Greece and of Italy were gradually welded into
larger wholes; we see it again at work after the breaking up of ancient
society in the development of new states from the fragments of the old
ones; and later on in the disappearance of the small feudal states.
In the nations of our days in which law rules supreme we find the
greatest numbers of people united in political units that the world has
seen. {97} In these war is excluded, because all members are subject
to the same law, and excessive strains in the community, that lead to
internal bloodshed, have decreased in frequency, although perhaps not
in violence, as long as the whole masses of the people in a nation
enjoy somewhat equal advantages.
From this point of view the breaking up of the old empire of
Austria-Hungary must be regretted. Notwithstanding the stupid
resistance of the governing class to the development of a confederation
rather than of a centralized empire, the force of circumstances
was operating in this direction. Hungary had attained a status of
independence and the recognition of the rights of the South-Slavs was
coming. How much better would the peacemakers have served humanity
if they had created a confederacy of language groups of equal rights
rather than a number of rival nations each of which is bent only upon
the attainment of its own selfish ends!
Thus the history of mankind shows us the spectacle of the grouping of
man in units of ever-increasing size that live together in peace, and
that are ready to go to war only with other groups outside of their own
limits. Notwithstanding all temporary revolutions and the shattering
of larger units for the time being, the progress in the direction of
unification has been so regular and so {98} marked that we must needs
conclude that the tendencies which have swayed this development in the
past will govern our history in the future. The concept of thoroughly
integrated nations of the size to which we are now accustomed would
have been just as inconceivable in earlier times of the history of
mankind as appears now the concept of unity of interests of all the
peoples of the world, or at least of all those who share the same
type of civilization and are subject to the same economic conditions.
The historical development shows, however, that such a feeling of
opposition of one group towards another is solely an expression
of existing conditions, and does not by any means indicate their
permanence.
The forces that have kept political units apart are manifold, but none
of them has resisted the attacks of changing culture. In modern times
the abhorrence of members of a strange horde which sprang from the idea
that they are specifically different is on the point of vanishing. We
still find it in the so-called race instincts of the Whites, as opposed
to the Negro and Asiatic, and in the anti-Semitic movement, but in most
of these cases rather as an element of internal strife than as one that
leads to war. It is still active in the wars of extermination that are
waged against primitive tribes, but these are nearly at an end, owing
to the approaching extinction of the weakest tribes. {99}
In course of time differences in customs and beliefs, differences in
form of government and social structure, devotion to feudal lords or
ruling dynasties, opposing economic interests, diversity of language,
have been causes that separated distinct communities and impelled them
to take hostile attitudes towards one another.
Thus it appears that it is not any rational cause that forms opposing
groups, but solely the emotional appeal of an idea that holds together
the members of each group and exalts their feeling of solidarity and
greatness to such an extent that compromises with other groups become
impossible. In this mental attitude we may readily recognize the
survival of the feeling of specific differences between the hordes,
transferred in part from the feeling of physical differences to that of
mental differences. The modern enthusiasm for race superiority must be
understood in this light. It is the old feeling of specific differences
between social groups in a new guise.
Progress has been slow and halting in the direction of expanding the
political units from hordes to tribes, from tribes to small states,
confederations, and nations. The concept of the foreigner as a
specifically distinct being has been so modified that we are beginning
to see in him a member of mankind.
Enlargement of circles of association, and {100} equalization of
rights of distinct local communities have been so consistently the
_general_ tendency of human development that we may look forward
confidently to their consummation.
It is obvious that the standards of ethical conduct must be quite
distinct between those who have grasped this ideal and those who still
believe in the preservation of the isolated nationality in opposition
to all others.
Once we recognize this truth we are brought clearly face to face
with those forces that will ultimately abolish warfare as well as
legislative conflicts between nations; that will put an end not only to
the wholesale slaughter of those representing distinct ideals, but also
prevent the passage of laws that favor the members of one nation at the
expense of all other members of mankind.
In order to form a fair judgment of the motives of action of the
leaders of nations at the present time we should bear in mind that in
all countries the standards of national ethics, as cultivated by means
of national education, are opposed to this wider view. Devotion to the
nation is taught as the paramount duty and is instilled into the minds
of the young in such a form that with it grows up and is perpetuated
the feeling of rivalry and of hostility against all other nations.
Conditions in modern states are intelligible only when we remember
that by education patriotism is {101} surrounded by a halo of sanctity
and that national self-preservation is considered the first duty.
Often the demands of national and international duty are hopelessly at
variance.
The interests of mankind are, therefore, ill served if we try to
instill into the minds of the young a passionate desire for national
power; if we teach the preponderance of national interest over human
interest, aggressive nationalism rather than national idealism,
expansion rather than inner development, admiration of warlike, heroic
deeds rather than of the object for which they are performed.