nations have met like partners at a ball and danced to the tune of the
dynastic or religious quarrel which happened to be paramount at the
time. The grouping of nations in alliances has simply been a means of
more effective prosecution of military campaigns, a temporary
convenience to be discarded when no longer needed. If the example of the
past is to be followed, then Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and
America, though holding hands now, will separate when the war is over,
and may find it necessary to use the same hands for chastizing each
other. Alliances have been political games and devices, useful or
useless according to the shrewdness of their instigators, but of no
value in promoting love between nations. Old-time enemies become
friends, and old-time friends become enemies at the command of the
political drill-sergeant. England was the hereditary enemy of France.
Prussia was the ally of England. In the war of the Austrian succession,
France in alliance with Prussia fought England and Austria. During the
Seven Years War Prussia, allied to England, fought Austria allied to
France. England, allied to France and Turkey, fought Russia in the
Crimea. Turn the kaleidoscope of history and you see the English driven
out of Normandy, Napoleon defiling Moscow, the Russians attacking
Montmartre. Any schoolboy, can trace the changing partners in the grand
alliances of the past, or refuse to commit them to memory on account of
the bewildering fluctuations in international friendship.
A fiery common hate, though acting as a powerful cement for a time, is
no guarantee of durability. Napoleon and the French were hated by the
nations, as Wilhelm and the Germans are hated to-day. Rapacious designs
for hegemony have always brought about a corresponding amount of
defensive unity on the part of those whose independence was threatened.
Whether it is Spain or France or Germany that dreams of world-supremacy,
the result is international combination. Richelieu and Bismarck rouse
the same resentment. A great hatred cannot by itself create a lasting
unity, for hatred is apt to grow out of bonds, and, having settled its
legitimate prey outside the circle, generally ends by turning on its
neighbours within it.
Who can deny that nations have been made by conquest? Heroic
self-defence, anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are
of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable to
amalgamation. A few decades, a few centuries, and there is fusion
between oppressor and oppressed. Hence the loyalty of conquered nations
to their foreign masters, at times, when rivals vainly hope for trouble.
Hence the indisputable fact that many a nation which but a short time
ago fought valiantly for liberty now manifests not only passive
resignation, but positive contentment. If, on the other hand, the
psychological factors do not favour amalgamation, the legacy of
resentment and opposition is handed on from generation to generation and
the injury is never forgiven. Cases of contented acceptance are quoted
as evidence of the ultimate blessings of war by the adherents of the
theory that efficient military measures constitute right. To me they are
rather evidence of the strength and endurance of the pacifying forces in
human life, and of the sovereignty of the greater unities which draw
nations together. If, in spite of the injuries and devastations of war,
it is possible for men to forgive and to labour for the same social
ends, that is surely proof that the peoples erect no barrier to
brotherhood. The truth is, war sometimes achieves that which pacific
settlement and free intercourse always achieve.
History has a cavalier way of recording the benefits of conquest. The
feelings of the great conquered receive scant consideration. It is
enough that after the passage of some centuries we contemplate the
matter and declare the conquest to have been beneficial. Was not France
invigorated by the wild Northmen who overran her territories and settled
wherever they found settlement advantageous? The Normans, originally
pirates and plunderers, intermingled with the gentler inhabitants of
France. When they turned their eyes to England they were already
guardians of civilization. And we blandly record the Norman conquest of
England as an unqualified benefit, as an impetus to social amenity, art,
learning, architecture, and religion. Protests are useless. The earth
abounds in instances of the spread of knowledge, inventions, culture,
through war and subjugation. The "rude" peoples who cried out at the
outrage, and who fain would have kept their rudeness, receive no
sympathy from posterity.
This, I repeat, is no argument for the perpetuation of the old
ways of aggression. We have reached a new consciousness and a new
responsibility. We see better ways of spreading the fruits of
civilization. In the past ambition and brute force, hatred and
suspicion, fear and deceit, have had full play. In spite of barbaric
warfare and Machiavellian politics the human desire for unity and
co-operation has not been uprooted.
The principle of nationality is emerging from the tortuous confusion of
the ages. We see that it follows no arbitrary rules of state or empire.
It is a law unto itself: the law of mental attraction and community. The
centres of passionate nationhood--Poland, Finland, Ireland--withstand
all attempts at suppression. You cannot break a strong will to national
independence by sledge-hammer blows. In all the wars of the past nations
have been treated with contemptuous indifference to the wishes of the
people. They were there to be seized and used, invaded and evacuated
at a price, to be bought and sold for some empirical or commercial
consideration. In the treaties of peace, princes and statesmen tossed
countries and populations to each other as if they had been balls in a
game of chance.
A new conception of human dignity and of the inviolability of natural
rights now demands a revaluation of all the motives and objects for
which governments send subjects to battle. Democracy is finding her
international unity. A great many wars of the past are recognized as
having been, not only unnecessary, but positively foolish. The force of
an idea is threatening to dispel the force of arms. The idea which rises
dominant out of the European war is the conviction that nations have a
right to choose their own allegiance or independence; that there must be
freedom instead of compulsion; that real nationality is a psychological
state, a tribute of sympathy, a voluntary service to which the mind is
drawn by affection. To some who lightly praised the idea, treating it as
an admirable prop to war, the consequences and application will bring
dismay. For here you have the pivot of a social revolution such as the
world has never yet seen. It cannot only remain a question of Belgium,
or Serbia, or Alsace-Lorraine. It will inevitably be retrospective and
prospective. It cannot be limited to the possessions of Germany or
Austria or Turkey. It will not pass over India, South Africa, and Egypt.
All empires have been extended by conquest of unwilling nationalities.
Bitter wars have been fought in Europe for colonial supremacy in other
continents. The unwilling tribes of Africa, Asia, and America who have
been suppressed or exterminated to make room for the expanding nations
of Europe knew little of the liberty of choice which has now become the
beacon of militant morality. The principle--if triumphant--will be
destructive of empire based on military force. It will be destructive of
war, for war is national compulsion in its most logical and
uncompromising form. If there is nothing and nobody to conquer, if you
may not use armies to widen your national frontiers, or to procure
valuable land for economical exploitation, the incentive to war will be
removed. The principle will be constructive of a commonwealth of
nations, and empires which have achieved a spiritual unity will survive
the change of form.
Nationality may be merely instinctive. It is characterized by the
my-country-right-or-wrong attitude, and knows not the difference between
Beelzebub and Michael. It is primitive and unreasoning. Nationality may
be compulsory--a sore grievance and a bitter reproach to existence. It
may be a matter of choice, free and deliberate, a source of joy and
social energy. Such nationality--whether inborn or acquired--is the best
and safest asset which a State can possess. It is generally supposed
that the naturalized subject must be disloyal in a case of conflict
between his country of adoption and his country of birth. Such a view
assumes that all sense of nationality is of the primitive and
unreasoning kind. It precludes all the psychological factors of
attraction, education, friendship, adoption, amalgamation. It is
ignorant of the fact that some of the bitterest enemies of Germany are
Germans, who have left Germany because they could stand her no longer.
These men have a much keener knowledge of her weak spots than the
visitors who give romantic accounts in newspapers of her internal state.
The whole process of naturalization may be rendered unnecessary and
undesirable by future developments in international co-operation. As
things are, it is a formal and legal confirmation of an allegiance which
must exist before the certificate of citizenship is sought. Once given,
the certificate should be honoured and the oath respected. To treat it
as a scrap of paper is unworthy of a State which upholds constitutional
rights. There are doubtless scoundrels amongst naturalized people. It
would be strange if there were not. But to proclaim that a naturalized
subject cannot love the country of his choice as much as the country of
his birth is as rational as the statement that a man cannot love his
wife as much as he loves his mother. Now I have touched on a delicate
point. He may love his wife, but he must repudiate his mother, curse
her, abuse her, disown her. In time of war some do, and some do not. I
am not sure that the deepest loyalty is accompanied by the loudest
curses.
There is a class of people--I have met them in every country--who are
devotees of the simple creed that you should stay at home and not
interfere in the affairs of others. Travel you may, with a Baedeker or a
Cook's guide, and stay you may in hotels provided for the purpose, but
you must do it in a proper way and at proper times, and preserve a
strict regard for your national prerogatives. But you should not go and
live in countries which are not your own. To such people there is
something almost indecent in the thought that any one should
deliberately wish to shed his own nationality and clothe himself in
another. They form the unintelligent background against which the wild
and lurid nationalists of every tribe disport themselves in frenzied
movements of hate and antagonism. An irate old colonel (very gouty) said
to me the other day: "A man who forgets his duties to his own country
and settles in another is a damnable cur. So much for these dirty
foreigners who overrun England."
I ventured to remind him that the English have settled in a good many
places: in America, in Australia, in spots fair and foul, friendly and
unfriendly; that they have brought afternoon tea and sport and Anglican
services to the pleasure resorts of Europe and the deserts of Africa.
Meeting with no response, I embarked on a short account of the past
travels and achievements of the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the French in
the art of settlement in foreign lands. I ended up by prophesying that
the aeroplane of the future will transport us swiftly from continent to
continent and make mincemeat of the last remnants of our national
exclusiveness. He was not in the least perturbed. "That is all rubbish,"
he said; "people ought to stick to their own country."
I am afraid neither he nor anybody else can check the wanderings of
individuals and peoples which have gone on ever since man discovered
that he has two legs with which he can move about. And naturalization,
after all, is an easy way of acquiring new and possibly useful citizens.
The subjects come willingly, whilst the millions who are made subjects
by war and subjugation are sometimes exceedingly troublesome. After all,
the aim of all the great kingdoms has been to increase and strengthen
the population, and differences of nationality have been treated as but
trifling obstacles in the way. If the principle of free nationality
which is now stirring the world and inspiring a war of liberation is to
triumph, then the liberty won must include the individuals who prefer a
chosen to a compulsory political allegiance.
Sometimes the forces of attraction and repulsion create strong ties of
sympathy or lead to acts of repudiation which cross frontiers
irrespectively of the indications on the barometer of foreign politics.
A man may find his spiritual home in the most unexpected place. He may
irresistibly be drawn by the currents of philosophy and art to a foreign
country. The customs in his own may drive him to bitter denunciation.
No one has said harder things of Germany than Nietzsche. Schopenhauer
wished it to be known that he despised the German nation on account of
its infinite stupidity, and that he blushed to belong to it. Heine fled
from Germany in intellectual despair. "If I were a German," he wrote,
"and I am no German...." His heart was captured by the French. Goethe
and Frederick the Great were both profoundly influenced by the French
spirit. Voltaire was most useful at the Prussian Court, for he corrected
the voluminous literary and political output which his Prussian majesty
penned--in French. But there was something more than mere utility in the
tie between the philosopher and the monarch. Frederick was not only
trying to handle heavy German artillery with light French esprit; his
mind craved for the spices of Gallic wit, his thought was ever striving
to clothe itself in the form of France. Another "great" German,
Catherine II of Russia, also moved within the orbit of the French
philosophers.
Admiration of Germany and German ways has found the strongest expression
in foreigners, and the megalomania from which her sons suffer to-day
may be traced to such outbursts of adulation. Carlyle, the most
representative of pro-German men of letters in the Victorian era, wrote
in 1870:
Alone of nations, Prussia seems still to understand something
of the art of governing, and of fighting enemies to said art.
Germany from of old, has been the peaceablest, most pious, and in
the end most valiant and terriblest of nations. Germany ought to
be the President of Europe, and will again, it seems, be tried
with that office for another five centuries or so.... This is her
_first_ lesson poor France is getting. It is probable she will
require many such.
This is blasphemy indeed at the present time. Charles Kingsley was no
less emphatic in his admiration of Germany. Writing on the
Franco-Prussian War to Professor Max Mueller, he said:
Accept my loving congratulations, my dear Max, to you and your
people. The day which dear Bunsen used to pray, with tears in his
eyes, might not come till the German people were ready, has come,
and the German people are ready. Verily God is just and rules
too; whatever the Press may think to the contrary. My only fear
is lest the Germans should think of Paris, which cannot concern
them, and turn their eyes away from that which does concern
them, the retaking of Alsace (which is their own), and leaving
the Frenchman no foot of the Rhine-bank. To make the Rhine a word
not to be mentioned by the French henceforth ought to be the one
object of wise Germans, and that alone.... I am full of delight
and hope for Germany.
And to Sir Charles Bunbury:
I confess to you that were I a German I should feel it my duty to
my country to send my last son, my last shilling, and after all
my own self, to the war, to get that done which must be done,
done so that it will never need doing again. I trust that I
should be able to put vengeance out of my heart, to forget all
that Germany has suffered for two hundred years past from that
vain, greedy, restless nation, all even which she suffered, women
as well as men, in the late French war.
The attraction of Germany is not only paramount in literature, in Walter
Scott and Mill and Matthew Arnold; the superiority of German blood and
constitution was an article of faith of the Victorians. The sins of
Prussia were forgiven with amazing alacrity. The base attacks on Austria
and Denmark evoked no moral indignation. German influence on English
life was not only welcomed; historians went so far as to proclaim the
identity of England and Germany. Thus Freeman, in a lecture in 1872,
stated that "what is Teutonic in us is not merely one element among
others, but that it is the very life and essence of our national
being...." Houston Chamberlain, in his reverent unravelling of the
greatness of the Germanic peoples, is merely carrying on the tradition
of the Victorian age. In the application of theories he is a disciple of
Gobineau, a Frenchman, who after a profound study of the inequality of
the human race became convinced of the superiority and high destiny of
Germany. Gobineau and Chamberlain have told the Germans that they are
mighty and unconquerable, and the Germans have listened with undisguised
pleasure.
Gobineau may be set aside as a professor of a fixed idea. There are
other Frenchmen who have paid glowing tribute to Germany. Taine excelled
in praise of her intellectual vigour and productivity. Victor Hugo
expressed his love and admiration for her people, and confessed to an
almost filial feeling for the noble and holy fatherland of thinkers. If
he had not been French he would have liked to have been German. Ernest
Renan studied Germany, and found her like a temple--so pure, so moral,
so touching in her beauty. This reminds us of the many who during the
present war, though ostensibly enemies of Germany, spend half their time
in proclaiming her perfection and the necessity for immediate imitation
of all her ways. Madame de Stael and Michelet expressed high regard for
German character and institutions. There are degrees and qualities of
attraction and absorption, varying from the amorous surrender with which
Lafcadio Hearn took on Japanese form to the bootlicking flattery which
Sven Hedin heaps on the Germans. (It is quite futile to seek for an
explanation of Hedin's conduct in his Jewish-Prussian descent. He would
lackey anywhere. Strindberg dealt faithfully with Hedin's pretensions.
Strindberg, alas! is dead, but his exposure of Hedin has been strangely
justified.)
Heine is an example of the curious and insistent fascination with which
the mind may be drawn to one nationality whilst it is repelled by
another. His judgment on England is painful in the extreme:
"It is eight years since I went to London," he writes in the Memoirs,
"to make the acquaintance of the language and the people. The devil
take the people and their language! They take a dozen words of one
syllable into their mouth, chew them, gnaw them, spit them out again,
and they call that talking. Fortunately they are by nature rather
silent, and although they look at us with gaping mouths, yet they spare
us long conversations."
Can anything be more sweeping? Can anything be more untrue? "Fortunately
they are by nature rather silent"--imagine the reversed verdict had
Heine attended a general election campaign! The unattractiveness of
England is softened by the women. "If I can leave England alive, it will
not be the fault of the women; they do their best." This is praise
indeed, when placed side by side with his dismissal of the women of
Hamburg. They are plump, we are told, "but the little god Cupid is to
blame, who often sets the sharpest of love's darts to his bow, but from
naughtiness or clumsiness shoots too low, and hits the women of Hamburg
not in the heart but in the stomach."
France was as delightful as England was doleful:
"My poor sensitive soul," he cries, "that often recoiled in shyness from
German coarseness, opened out to the flattering sounds of French
urbanity. God gave us our tongues so that we might say pleasant things
to our fellow-men.... Sorrows are strangely softened. In the air of
Paris wounds are healed quicker than anywhere else; there is something
so noble, so gentle, so sweet in the air as in the people themselves."
I suppose the only analogy to such superlative contentment is provided
by the phenomenon known as falling in love. Happily we do not all choose
the same object of affection. England has a curious way of inspiring
either great and lasting love or irritation and positive dislike. There
seems to be little or no indifference. I believe love predominates.
From exiled kings to humble refugees, from peripatetic philosophers to
indolent aborigines, the testimony of her charm can be gathered. I speak
as a victim. I love England with a fervour born of admiration (without
admiration no one ever falls in love). I love her ways and her mind, I
love her chilly dampness and her hot, glowing fires (attempts to analyse
and classify love are always silly). In her thinkers and workers, in her
schemes and efforts for social improvement, in her freedom of thought
and speech I found my mental _milieu_.
To me England is inexpressibly dear, not because a whole conspiracy of
influences--educational, conventional, patriotic--were at work
persuading me that she is worthy of affection. I myself discovered her
lovableness. Your Chauvinist is always a mere repeater. He is but a
member of the Bandar-Log, shouting greatness of which he knows nothing.
True love does not need the trumpets of Jingoism. I have no room for
lies about England: the truth is sufficient for me. Though I love
England, I have affection to spare for other countries. I feel at home
in France, in Sweden, in America, in Switzerland. Your Chauvinist will
excuse the former affections on account of "blood." Swedish-French by
ties of ancestry, such a sense of familiarity is natural when set
against my preternatural love of England.
Chauvinism flourishes exceedingly on the soil of national conceit. That
conceit is prodigious and universal. The Germans are past-masters in the
art of self-glorification, and their pan-German literature is certainly
not only bold but ingenious in this respect. Is any one great outside
Germany? Very well, let us trace his German origin. It may be remote, it
may be hidden by centuries of illusory nationality, but it must be
there. France has her apostles of superiority. Their style is more
flexible, their pretensions less clumsy, but they neglect no opportunity
of seducing us into a belief that France, and France only, is mistress
of the human mind. Russia has her fervid declaimers of holy excellence
and the superior quality of the Slav character. It does not matter
whether the country is great or small, whether it be Montenegro or
Cambodia, it always contains souls who feel constrained to give the
world a demonstration of their overflowing superiority. Pan-Germanism,
pan-Slavism, pan-Magyarism, pan-Anglosaxism, pan-Americanism grow out of
such conceit, systematized by professors and sanctified by bishops.
The conceit of nationality often fosters great deeds, and generally
finds expression that is more aggressive than intelligent. It takes hold
of the most unlikely subjects. It is a potent destroyer of balanced
judgment, and will pitilessly make the most solemn men ridiculous. The
outbursts of Emerson when under its influence are truly amazing. "If a
temperate wise man should look over our American society," he said in a
lecture, "I think the first danger which would excite his alarm would be
the European influences on this country.... See the secondariness and
aping of foreign and English life that runs through this country, in
building, in dress, in eating, in books."
This rejection savours of the contempt with which some young men turn
their backs on the fathers who fashioned them. "Let the passion for
America," he cried, "cast out the passion for Europe. Here let there be
what the earth waits for--exalted manhood." He gives a picture of the
finished man, the gentleman who will be born in America. He defines the
superiority of such a man to the Englishman:
Freer swing his arms; farther pierce his eyes, more forward and
forthright his whole build and rig than the Englishman's, who,
we see, is much imprisoned in his backbone.