His face is pale and _distingue_, and the black down on his upper lip
has been trained with infinite care. Though his grey mountain suit is
fashioned for great feats of daring, it has the rounded waist and
martial shoulder-lines with which the Parisian tailor pacifies his
conscience when he supplies English fashions. His stockings look
ferocious. His dark eyes sparkle with inquisitiveness behind the
pince-nez. He is vivacity incarnate, he is urbanity on a holiday. Mamma
takes his arm and they trip past me. She is pretty, and would be plump
if the art of the _corsetiere_ had not abolished plumpness. Her hat
conveys a greeting from the Rue Lafayette, her little high-heeled boots
show faultless ankles and the latest way of lacing up superfluous fat
above them. A hole and two uneven stones maliciously intercept the
progress of that little foot. Mamma stumbles, and is promptly and
chivalrously replaced in an upright position by the son. "Mon Dieu!" she
cries; "what a path!" and through my open window there floats the odour
of _poudre-de-riz_ disturbed by nervous excitement. Papa follows. He is
fat. No one can deny it, and I do not think he would like any one to
try. Honesty is writ large on his rotund countenance. Now he is hot and
somewhat weary with the climb. He carries his hat under his arm and
large pearls of moisture shine on the puckered forehead. His hair is
thick and closely cropped, and strives upward with the even aspiration
of a doormat. His cheeks are a little sallow and pendulous. He smiles
under his thin moustache, the contented smile of an honest, hardworking,
successful man. I know him well; I seem to have met him in a hundred
editions in the offices of municipalities and prefectures, behind the
counters of banks and shops. He is generally amiable, but he can lose
his temper, and when he loses it, it is worth your while to help him to
find it.
Here comes the Heidelberg professor, accompanied by two fair daughters.
He is tall, of commanding presence, and walks with patriarchal gravity
under a green umbrella. A large pocket, embroidered and ingeniously
designed with numerous compartments, is strapped to his waist. He
strokes his long, well-trimmed beard as he admonishes the girls to pay
serious attention to the natural beauty of the scenery. He rummages the
pocket for his field-glasses. "This, dear children, is Mont Blanc. I do
not say that our Schwarzwald is not just as lovely in its way. This
mountain was first climbed by Paccard and Balmat. It stretches from the
Col de Balme to the Col du Bonhomme and the Col de la Seigne. [A book is
now extracted from the fourth division of the pocket.] There are the
following passes: the Col d'Argentiere, the Col...." His eye-glasses
slip downwards on his nose. The girls are not listening. Gretchen is
entirely absorbed in the fascinating appearance of an Italian who has
just passed, and who by unmistakable signs conveyed to her that she is
adorable. His flashing eyes, his jet-black hair, his lithe figure, his
pointed toes, the nimble way in which he managed to press her hand
behind the very back of her father, have stirred her imagination. Hedvig
is shocked. The elder daughter is permeated with respect for her
father's professorial dignity. Every gesture betrays the capable
housekeeper. She seems to be made of squares--good, proper, solid
squares. She tells the smiling Gretchen, whose cheeks suggest
strawberries and cream, that she must never encourage dark Italians by
looking at them. She should look at the ground when such men pass. She
should be more attentive to father. The sound of their footsteps dies,
and the green umbrella is but a dream. Hedvig has filled my window with
visions of a well-ordered German home, of sausages and _Sauerkraut_, of
beer and pickled fruit, of embroideries and coffee-parties.
Here comes a hatless representative of young Russia. His clothes are
shabby and neglected; he walks with a shuffling, tired movement. But his
face is startling. It seems to light up the path with some kind of
spiritual fervour. His hair is long and golden, his beard suggests an
aureole of virtue, his large blue eyes are penetrating but mild. A
confused series of faces flash through my mind--Abraham, Tolstoy, Jesus
Christ? Yes, it may seem sacrilegious, but the man is like Jesus Christ.
I see now that the likeness is studied, cultivated, impressive. This is
one of the _intelligentsia_ who has lingered for a while in Geneva or
Lausanne _en route_ for the haunts of spiritual revolution. A din of
dear familiar voices now fills the path and seems to shake the tops of
the pines. "I guess you won't try that again. I did Munich in one day,
Dresden in one and a half, Berlin in two, and Europe in twenty." Three
women and a man stop opposite the chalet. The ladies are charmingly
dressed in summer frocks of white and pink and blue, and carry nothing
heavier than a parasol. The man is laden with cloaks, rugs, and bags.
They peer into my window and try to catch a glimpse of the interior. I
hastily draw the curtains and leave one peep-hole for myself. "Quaint
houses these Swiss live in," says one. "It isn't a bad shanty," says the
man. "Let's have a glass of milk," says another.
"Dew lait," they shout through the window. I callously observe them
through my peep-hole. The man is of a fine American type, sinewy,
resolute, hawk-eyed. The mountain sunshine provides me with Roentgen
rays, and I see Wall Street inside his brow. "Dew lait," they yell. As
there is no answer, they hammer at the door. The door is adamant. They
leave reluctantly. "I think I saw the face of one of those Swiss idiots
through the curtains," says the lady in pink; "of course he would not
understand what we said."
There is a delightful readiness to jump to conclusions on the part of
visitors. Sometimes they are the reverse of flattering, but they are
always a source of delighted interest to me. I remember one day, years
ago, when I had gone to draw water at the source, which emerges as a
thousand diamonds from the rock and then descends into the hollow trunk
of a tree and becomes tame and inclined to domesticity. The cows had
come for a drink at the same hour, and we had just exchanged a few
polite remarks when I found myself observed by an English clergyman.
Yes, unmistakably English. His face was prim and clean-shaven, his
collar straight and stiff, upon his lips there played a sweet and devout
smile. He lifted up the tail of his coat ceremoniously and, selecting a
clean stone, seated himself upon it. He radiated condescending kindness.
"Lor a bun," said he. I asked the cows to excuse me for a moment and
turned to him. "Lor a bun," he repeated, this time with a query. I
stared uncomprehendingly. The sweet smile became sweeter. "Lor a bun, ma
pettit fille, eh?" At last I understood. "Oh, yes, the water is
excellent here," I replied, "and freezingly cold if you put your
fingers in it." He departed in unceremonious haste.
For some years I have watched the procession of nations on my path.
French, German, English, Russian, Austrian, American, Italian--they all
brought me a picture of their tribal characteristics, trivial, thumbnail
sketches, but nevertheless true to life. It may be urged that
holiday-makers do not constitute reliable material for the observation
of national peculiarities. I am not so sure. A man on a holiday
generally takes his goodwill with him, and endeavours, at least, to
restrain his temper and his prejudices. He may fail in the attempt, and
be a peevish thing at play, but the attempt will show him at his best.
From the hotels below, where the crowds of cosmopolis stayed _en
pension_ at reasonable and unreasonable terms, the sound of music and
songs visited me in the evening. The nations were waltzing.
International peace reigned under the auspices of the Swiss hotel
keeper. Forgotten were the ancient feuds of dynasty and religion. Common
humanity was uppermost.
And now the nations are at war. The concourse of friendly strangers who
used to meet in the hotels is sharply divided into hostile groups.
Travel is suspended or severely restricted. The Frenchman who a short
time ago raised his glass in friendly salute to the German at the
opposite table, who had guided him across the moraine, is now convulsed
at the thought that he could ever forget the essentially brutal and
inhuman character of all Germans. The German wishes he had dropped the
Frenchman into the crevasse. There would then, he argues, have been one
less of these treacherous, mean people, whose love of military conquest
is only checked by impotence. He remembers Napoleon and the fact that
any insignificant-looking chip of the Latin block may one day threaten
the heart of Germany. The easy and good-humoured internationalism of
tourist-life is at an end.
I do not know to what extent modern facilities for inexpensive travel
have helped to establish friendship and understanding between the
nations. But I do know that a person who claims to be educated, and who
has never travelled abroad, is insufferably boresome. I prefer the
society of a mole. The mole does not lecture me on the incalculable
advantages of remaining in one's dark passages. I do not shut my eyes
to the fact that some people go abroad and come home with their
stupidity unmodified by experience. But they have been made
uncomfortable, and that is something. A series of pricks of discomfort
might dislodge the obstacles to mental circulation. A Swiss hotel may
serve to check the contempt which the Philistines of all nations (there
is a truly international bond between them) feel at the thought of a
foreigner, though the shock of finding oneself amongst such
peculiarities of clothes, or frisure, or table-manners may be almost
unbearable. "Can you tell me," said a charming but agitated old lady
from Bath one day, "of a hotel where there are no foreigners?" "I am
afraid I cannot," I answered. "The hotel you have in mind would be full
of foreigners in Switzerland, and you would but add to their number."
Even the most cosmopolitan habitues of Nice, or Monte Carlo, or Homburg
feel the mildly stimulating effect of being in the presence of
foreigners. You are interested or disgusted, you are attracted or
repelled; your curiosity is aroused; you guess, you weave romances, you
make conscious use of the rich material for comparison which lies
before you. In Europe, apparently, the nations meet but do not merge.
America achieves the miracle. I remember one evening in New York. I had
addressed a meeting of good Americans and was coming home in the train.
I was tired and unobservant and kept my eyes closed. Suddenly a loud
remark in Danish attracted my attention. I looked up at the row of
humanity in the long carriage. Sitting opposite me, standing at my side,
hanging by the straps, were the nations of the world. The racial types
were there: Slavonic, Latin, Teutonic; the skull dolichocephalic and the
skull brachycephalic rested side by side without any attempt at mutual
evacuation. I could distinguish the faces of Frenchmen, Jews,
Englishmen, Japanese, Germans, Poles, negroes, Italians. They did not
study one another. They were journeying home from the day's work. A
strange homogeneity brooded over the company. America had put her
super-stamp on their brows. They were citizens of an all-human country.
What, then, is this mysterious power which seems to master the Old
World, whilst it is mastered by the New World? Nationality is clearly a
mundane thing. It is not generally suggested that heaven is mapped out
into national frontiers; the Christian religion and other faiths are
bent on roping in all the nations. The missionaries who are sent out to
Africa and China go with the conviction that there is room in heaven for
the black and the yellow sinner. True, the black and the yellow man will
first have to shed their somewhat irregular appearance and come forth
white and radiant, but the belief in the possibility of such a feat is
proof positive that we regard the nationality of a man as a transient
business. Nationality is local, spirituality universal. Nationality is a
form, a mould, a means; spirituality is the essence, the force, the
object. The problems of nationality are wrapped up in the problems of
personality. A personality is an amalgam of likes and dislikes, of habit
and prejudice, the product of circumstances and a will. There is such a
thing as multiple personality, and there is also multiple nationality.
But the simple measure of nationality is severely natural and elemental.
It is rooted in the need of understanding and being understood. It
begins with love of self (we do love ourselves, in spite of all
assurances to the contrary), family, and tribe. In a world of diversity
and uncertainty it envelops us with a comforting assurance that there
are creatures who feel and think as we do. It endows us with a
group-soul, without which we, like ants and bees, cannot face life. The
sense of nationality is but an enlarged sense of personality.
It is a realization of unity which comprises many lesser units. Our
household, our village, our country, our constituency, are all
independent unities which we deliberately (though not always
successfully) press into the service of the greater unity. The lesser
unities always run the danger of being superseded by the greater
unities. The conditions of soil and climate in a hamlet produce a crop
of personalities similar in content and range, a type which we may
distinguish by the shape of the nose or the trend of the remarks. Ten
neighbouring little hamlets may have their little ways of distinction
which separate one from the other, and yet one day--to their
dismay--discover that they have greater generalities in common. Once the
discovery is made, prudence and common sense demand co-operation. The
great nations are built up on the discovery. Italy, Germany, and Great
Britain have taken it to heart after endless trials of the smaller
unities. America had one severe trial, and then settled down to
circumvent and undo the curse of Babel. The sense of separateness, once
so precious to Florence, Genoa, and Pisa, could not resist the larger
conception of Italy.
There is no reason, historical or logical, why this expansion of the
consciousness of unity should not proceed until there is nothing further
to include. The recognition of an all-human brotherhood is followed by
the realization of an all-animal brotherhood in which the essential
likeness of all that breathes and feels is paramount. Personally, I have
never found the slightest difficulty in accepting our near relationship
to the apes. On the contrary, every monkey I meet--and I have specially
cultivated their acquaintance--reminds me sharply of the simian origin
of our dearest traditions.
The consciousness of unity and the consequent sense of separateness from
some other body or bodies are subject to constant change and
surprisingly erratic in their application. A bare hint to the Welshman,
the Scotsman, the Breton, the Provencal, or the Bavarian that his
national idiosyncrasies do not exist, and you will speedily see a
demonstration of them. And yet, a moment ago, they felt entirely British
or French or German. Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians have each a keen
sense of national separateness (and superiority), but let the tongue of
slander touch their common nature, and Scandinavia rises in indignant
unity. I have attended many International Congresses, and have observed
how easily the party is on the verge of grave national crises. Each
alliance musters a good-humoured tolerance of the deficiencies of
others. But let an opponent of the whole scheme, for which they have
assembled, attack the principle which is sacred to all, and there is an
immediate truce and concerted action against the intruder. Russian and
German troops have found it necessary to suspend their fighting in order
to defend themselves against the attacks of wolves. The hungry pack of
wolves, waiting by the trenches at night, presented a force which called
for united opposition, and the European war had to wait whilst the men
of the opposite armies joined in killing them. When the slaughter of
wolves was happily over, the human battle was resumed. Supposing,
instead of wolves, an airship of super-terrestrial proportions had
brought an army of ten-armed, four-headed, and six-legged creatures,
bent on dealing out death to the occupants of the trenches, what would
have happened? Supposing the inhabitants of a more cruel and vicious
planet than ours (cosmological specialists assure us such exist)
developed powers of warfare before which the exploits of Hannibal or
Attila paled into insignificance, and learnt the art of destroying life
not only in their own world but in others as well? They might come armed
with new atmospheric weapons, trailing clouds of suffocating fumes to
which resistance with guns and bombs would be utterly ineffectual. The
horror of the unknown danger would paralyse the war, batteries would be
deserted and the trenches would quickly be internationalized. The sense
of our common humanity, outraged at the sight and the smell of the
monsters, would assert itself. Generals and statesmen of the belligerent
peoples--if any were left to direct the defensive--would hold
subterranean meetings, and, forgetting the cause for which they sent men
to die nobly but a few days ago, would discuss how they could save the
united remnants of humanity by strategy and simulation.
The sense of unity is, after all, dependent on innumerable conditions
and circumstances over which we have little control. There is the unity
of tradition and education, of Eton and Harrow, of Oxford and Cambridge.
It moulds opinion and imposes certain restrictions of conduct and
prejudices in outlook. Rivalry is an indispensable and normal adjunct of
such unity. Races and the honour and glory of one's school and team can
stir the group-soul to incredible heights of enthusiasm and effort.
There is the instinctive unity of seafarers. Who has not, when crossing
the ocean, felt that he was part of a small world independent and
isolated from others, but bound together by special ties of adventure?
An encounter with an iceberg will bring the common responsibilities and
dangers to the notice of the most inveterate individualist, but even
while the ship moves uneventfully forward, he, perforce, shares the
feeling of oneness. There is the humorous unity which will seize the
opposing parties in a court of law and make them join in laughter at
some feeble judicial joke just to experience the relief of forgetting
that they are there to be contentious.
The advocates of the theory that nations and nationalities are eternally
distinct and separate can see no analogy of unity in the simple examples
of everyday life. They tell us conclusively that England is England and
France is France, and our humble retort that we know as much and
something besides is silenced by the further information that each
nation has a soul that will tolerate no interference from other souls.
They forget, our apostles of the creed of separateness, that the States
of to-day are built up on a vast mixture of races and nationalities.
They forget, also, that nationality is not a fixed and immovable
quantity. Like personality, it is alive and changing, susceptible to
influence and experience, liable to psychic contagion from the thoughts
and emotions of others. There is no pure nationality. Hybrids are
regarded as inferior creatures, as biological outlaws. The truth is, we
are all hybrids. Our bluest blood has all the shades of common colour in
it when examined ethnically. Great Britain--and Ireland--contains a
mixture of Romans, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and Celts.
To-day, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish are mixtures within mixtures. And what
is the British Empire? A conglomeration of races and languages, a
pan-national product of conquest and colonization, in which the forces
of racial modification are always at work obliterating old divisions and
creating new claims to national recognition.
The Russian Empire, sown by Vikings, Slavs, and Mongols, has a rich
racial flora, including Germans, Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Letts,
Roumanians, Afghans, Tartars, Finns, and scores of others. The Great
Russians, the White Russians, and the Little Russians may each claim to
have sprung from the purest Russian stock, but no one has as yet been
able to settle satisfactorily the meaning of that claim. The Russians
have successively been proved to be of Mongol, Slav, Teutonic, Aryan,
Tartar, Celto-Slav, and Slav-Norman origin. Italy, believed to be the
home of pure Latin blood, has sheltered and mingled a great number of
races, such as Egyptians, Greeks, Spaniards, Slavs, Germans, Jews, and
Normans. The Republics of Central and South America are to a large
extent peopled by half-breeds. Here the commingling is flagrant and
offensive to the partisan of the superiority of the white race. Spain
in Mexico and Portugal in Brazil have produced a wild-garden crop which
is the despair of the custodian of racial law and order. The search for
national purity brings many unexpected discoveries and destroys various
theories. It reveals the fact that America has no monopoly of racial
amalgamation.
France and Germany appear to us as opposites and irreconcilables. Yet,
if you pursue Germany to the hour of her birth you will find that her
mother was France. Examine France physiologically and you will find that
her muscles and arteries have a German consistency. A thorough
investigation of the origins of Germany may prove that she is more
Gaulish than Gaul. The Germanic invasions of France are matters of
elementary history. Originally a mixture of Ligurians, Celts,
Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, she is only Latin in part. Caesar
conquered Gaul, but the Roman mixture has not obliterated previous or
subsequent additions. The Latin blood of France was thoroughly diluted
by Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Vandals, Normans, and other peoples
of Germanic stamp. When Gaul was partitioned into the Burgundian
kingdom, Austrasia, and Neustria, there were already present the
selective processes which, centuries later, shaped the French and the
German souls. Neustria clung to Roman culture, whilst Austrasia nurtured
the seeds of the specific _Kultur_ which attained its full bloom in the
twentieth century. Through rivalry and war the two types persisted.
Charlemagne crushed the rebellious Saxon spirit and conquered Bavaria.
He unified the divergent tendencies, but only for a time. In 843 his
empire was partitioned. France grew out of the western portion, Germany
out of the eastern. Lotharingia or Lorraine was established as a middle
kingdom. Did kind Fates design it as a guarantee of peace and stability?
The Germans are apt to claim for themselves a pure and Valhallic origin,
an exceptionally unmixed descent of the highest attributes. The
primogenial origin may be hidden in obscurity, but the German people
have absorbed Gauls, Serbs, Poles, Wends, and a medley of Slav and
Celtic races which confound all claims to racial purity. Slavs settled
in Teutonic countries and Teutons settled in Slavonic countries. The
German colonists who invaded Russia at the invitation of Catherine II
were imported to strengthen Russia, just as the Great Elector helped
thousands of Huguenots fleeing from France to settle in Brandenburg, and
gave them the rights of citizenship for the sake of the vitality which
they would impart to his depopulated country.
The belief in the unalloyed purity of races and the consequent battles
for national exclusiveness seem to be founded on one of those gigantic
illusions which hold humanity captive for centuries. Here, as elsewhere,
knowledge will spell freedom. When we realize that here and now nations
are in course of transformation, that the divisions of the past are not
the divisions of to-day, and that we, despite conservatism and
resistance, are made to serve as ingredients in some great mixture of
to-morrow, momentous questions arise. Are nations made by war and
conquest? Are peoples amalgamated by oppressive legislation? Do
political alliances between States create international unities?