CHAPTER II

THE NATIONAL IDEA IN EUROPE, 1789-1914

Europe, what of the night?--

Ask of heaven, and the sea,

And my babes on the bosom of me,

Nations of mine, but ungrown.

There is one who shall surely requite

All that endure or that err:

She can answer alone:

Ask not of me, but of her.

Liberty, what of the night?--

I feel not the red rains fall,

Hear not the tempest at all,

Nor thunder in heaven any more.

All the distance is white

With the soundless feet of the sun.

Night, with the woes that it wore,

Night is over and done.

A.C. SWINBURNE, _A Watch in the Night._

Sixty-two years ago reaction reigned supreme in Europe after the great

national and social uprisings of 1848, and England looked on passively

while the hopes of freedom were crushed in Bohemia, Hungary, and Italy.

Mazzini, the noblest of Italian patriots, the most prophetic soul among

nineteenth-century nationalists, selected this moment of profound despair

to publish an essay, entitled _Europe, Its Condition and Prospects_, which,

burning with the passion of an inextinguishable faith, pierced the veil of

the future and foreshadowed in an almost miraculous fashion the situation

which faces Europe and England to-day. Nothing printed in this country

since the war broke out expresses more clearly the real issues of the

mighty conflict and the part our country is called to play in it than the

following words, in reference to the unredeemed peoples of Europe, uttered

by the great Italian more than half a century ago:

"They struggled, they still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word

inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live,

think, love, and labour for the benefit of all. They speak the same

language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel

beside the same tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they demand to

associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order

to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the

great pyramid of history. It is something moral which they are seeking;

and this moral something is in fact, even politically speaking, the most

important question in the present state of things. It is the organisation

of the European task. In principle, nationality ought to be to humanity

that which division of labour is in a workshop--the recognised symbol of

association; the assertion of the individuality of a human group called by

its geographical position, its traditions, and its language, to fulfill a

special function in the European work of civilisation.

"The map of Europe has to be re-made. This is the key to the present

movement; herein lies its initiative. Before acting, the instrument for

action must be organised; before building, the ground must be one's own.

The social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever before this

reorganisation of Europe is effected; before the peoples are free to

interrogate themselves, to express their vocation, and to assure its

accomplishment by an alliance capable of substituting itself for the

absolute league which now reigns supreme.

"If England persist in maintaining a neutral, passive, selfish part, she

will have to expiate it. A European transformation is inevitable. When it

shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at

once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, the peoples

will remember that England stood by, an inert, immovable, sceptical witness

of their sufferings and efforts. The nation must rouse herself and shake

off the torpor of her government. She must learn that we have arrived at

one of those supreme moments in which one world is destroyed and another

is to be created; in which, for the sake of others and for her own, it is

necessary to adopt a new policy."

England to-day has adopted this "new policy"; she has responded to

Mazzini's appeal by stepping into the arena and declaring herself ready to

take part in "the organisation of the European task"; her sons are dying on

the Continent in defence of the principle of nationality, in support of

the rights of other nations to that liberty which her insular position has

secured for herself for many centuries, the liberty "to associate freely,

without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and

express their idea." She is fighting, moreover, not only on behalf of the

threatened freedom of Belgium, France, and Serbia, on behalf of the

unborn freedom of Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, and the subject races of the

Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, but also on her own behalf. It is not

merely that she recognises that her Empire is in danger; she recognises

also that she is unable to work out her own salvation, unable to carry on

her industrial development and her schemes for the betterment of her people

in security, while the Continent at her doors remains in constant peril

of change. "The social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever

before this reorganisation of Europe is effected."

§1. _Nation and Nationality_.--The social idea and the national idea have

been for a century past the twin pivots of European development. The

political structure of the Continent has oscillated this way and that

according as these ideas have in turn assumed ascendancy over men's minds;

and when, as in 1848, both claimed attention at the same time, the whole

edifice was shaken to its very foundations. In England, on the other hand,

it is the social idea alone which has been a motive force in the nineteenth

century, although she has always had to reckon with the national idea

across the St. George's Channel. Owing to her fortunate geographical

situation, she acquired national unity many centuries ago and has always

been able to defend it successfully against the danger of external

aggression. The national idea, therefore, has long ceased to be an

aspiration, and consequently a revolutionary force, among us; it has

been realised in actual fact, we have grown as accustomed to it and as

unconscious of it as of the air we breathe. Thus Englishmen, as their

attitude towards Ireland has shown, find it difficult to understand exactly

what the principle of nationality means to those who have never possessed

national freedom or are in constant danger of losing it. This is perhaps

especially true of the English working classes, who grew to the full

stature of political consciousness some fifty years after the last serious

threat to our national existence was made by Napoleon, and upon whom the

burden of the social idea presses with peculiar weight. And yet, unless

the significance of the principle of nationality and the part which it has

played in the history of modern Europe be realised, it is impossible to

enter fully into the true meaning of the present tremendous conflict.

What then is nationality? The question is more difficult to answer than

appears at first sight. A nationality is not quite the same thing as a

nation. For example, there is a German nation, ruled by the Kaiser

Wilhelm II., but this does not include twelve million people of German

nationality who are the subjects of the Emperor of Austria; or again,

there is the Swiss nation, which is made up of no less than three distinct

nationalities. Still less are the terms state and nationality synonymous;

for, if they were, then the natives of India might claim to be of the same

nationality as ourselves, or, _vice versa_, the United States would be

regarded as part of the British Empire because a large proportion of their

inhabitants happen to be of British descent. The word "race" brings us

somewhat nearer to the point, but even this will not satisfy us when we

remember that the Slavonic race, for example, consists of a large number of

nationalities, such as the Russians, the Poles, the Czechs, the Serbs, the

Montenegrins, etc., or that the English (as distinguished from the other

three nations of the United Kingdom) belong to the same Teutonic race as

the Germans. Nevertheless, a belief, whether well grounded or not, in

a common racial origin is one of the root principles of the idea of

nationality.

"What is a nation?" the great Magyar nationalist, Kossuth, asked a Serb

representative at the Hungarian Diet of 1848. The reply was: "A race

which possesses its own language, customs, and culture, and enough

self-consciousness to preserve them." "A nation must also have its own

government," objected Kossuth. "We do not go so far," explained his

interlocutor; "one nation can live under several different governments, and

again several nations can form a single state."[1] Both the Magyar and the

Serb wore right, though the latter was speaking of "nationality" and the

former of "nation." The conversation is in fact instructive in more

ways than one. It would be difficult to find a better definition of

_nationality_ than that given by the Serb speaker. A common language, a

common culture, and common customs: these are the outward and visible signs

which make a people conscious of its common race, which make it, in other

words, a nationality.

[Footnote 1: R.W. Seton-Watson, _The Southern Slav Question_, p. 46.]

The element of "consciousness" is all-important. There are, for example,

members of the Finnish race scattered all over northern Russia, but they

evince no consciousness of any kind that they are allied to the nationality

which inhabits the country of Finland. Again, it is only within recent

years that the Serbs and the Croats in the south-west corner of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire have begun to realise that the only things

which divide them one from the other are a difference of religion and a

difference of alphabet; and now that the realisation of this fact has

spread from the study to the market-place, we see the formation of a new

nationality, that of the Serbo-Croats. The researches of historians and

other learned men have done an immense deal to stimulate the development of

nationalities during the past century, but they are unable of themselves

to create them. The fact of kinship is not enough; community of language,

customs, and culture is not even enough; to be a real nationality a people

must be conscious of all these things, and not merely conscious, but

sufficiently conscious to preserve them and, if need be, to die for them.

Now the interesting thing for us about a nationality is that it is always

striving to become a _nation_. A nation, as we have seen, may be composed

of several nationalities; but such cases are rare, and are due to peculiar

geographical conditions, as for example in Switzerland and Great Britain,

or to external pressure, as in Belgium, which have as it were welded

together the different racial elements into a single whole. In general,

therefore, a nation is simply a nationality which has acquired

self-government; it is nationality _plus_ State. "Ireland a nation," the

warcry of the Irish Nationalist party, is a claim, not a statement of

fact; Ireland will become a nation when its desire for self-government

is satisfied. The case is instructive because it shows that it is not

necessary for a nationality to become a _sovereign_ State in order to be in

the full sense of the word a nation. It is perfectly possible, as our Serb

remarked, for several nations to form a single sovereign state; but as a

general rule all such nations will be allowed to manage their own internal

affairs. The self-governing Dominions of the British Empire and the Magyars

of Hungary are nations, though they are subordinate to their respective

imperial governments in questions of peace and war, treaty obligations,

etc.

The real test of national existence is ultimately a sentimental one. Does

the nationality inhabiting a given country regard the government under

which it lives as a true expression of its peculiar genius and will? Does

the State, of which it forms a part, exist by its consent, or has it been

imposed upon it by some alien authority or nationality? Is it a territorial

unity, or has it been split up into sections by artificial frontiers? All

these questions must be answered before we can say of any nationality that

it is also a nation. The "national idea," therefore, which has been one of

the chief factors in modern history, is essentially an idea of development.

Its root is the conception of nationality, that is of a people consciously

united by race, language, and culture; and from this springs the larger

conception of nationhood, that is of a nationality possessing its own

political institutions, governed by its own consent, and co-extensive with

its natural boundaries. As we shall see later, political development

does not always stop at the Nation-State. Further growth, however, is

extra-national in character; it may either take the parasitical form of one

nation imposing its will and its "culture" upon other nations, or it may

assume the proportions of that highest type of polity yet known to mankind,

a commonwealth of nations freely associating together within the confines

of a single sovereign State.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Chapter IX. for further treatment of this.]

§2. _The Birth of Nationalism: Poland and the French Revolution_.--With

these general principles in mind let us now consider the national idea at

work in the nineteenth century. Nations, in the sense just defined, have

of course long existed in Europe. England, Scotland, and Switzerland are

nations whose life-histories date right back to the Middle Ages. Joan of

Are was a nationalist, and France has been a nation since the end of the

Hundred Years' War in 1453. Spain became a nation a few years later by the

expulsion of the Moors and the union of Castille and Aragon under Ferdinand

and Isabella. Holland, again, acquired her national freedom in her great

struggle against Spain in the sixteenth century. But it was not until the

end of the eighteenth century that nationalism became a real force in

Europe, an idea for which men died and in whose name monarchies were

overthrown. "In the old European system," writes Lord Acton, "the rights of

nationalities were neither recognised by governments nor asserted by the

people. The interest of the reigning families, not those of the nations,

regulated the frontiers, and the administration was conducted generally

without any reference to popular desires. Where all liberties were

suppressed, the claims of national independence were necessarily ignored,

and a princess, in the words of Fénelon, carried a monarchy in her wedding

portion."[1] The State was, in short, regarded as a purely territorial

affair; it was the property, the _landed_ property, of the monarch, who in

his capacity of owner controlled the destinies of the people who happened

to live upon that territory. Conquest or marriage might unite in the hands

of a single monarch the most diverse peoples and countries, the notorious

case of the kind being that of the Emperor Charles V., who in the sixteenth

century managed to hold sway over Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Naples,

and a large part of the New World.

[Footnote 1: _History of Freedom_, p. 273.]

The golden age of the dynastic principle was, however, the eighteenth

century, and the long and tedious wars of that period were nearly all

occasioned by the aggrandisement of some royal house. The idea of a nation

as a living organism, as something more than a collection of people

dwelling in the same country, speaking the same language and obeying

the same ruler, had not yet dawned upon the world. Apart from England,

Scotland, Switzerland, and Holland, no European nation had really become

conscious of its personality as distinct from that of its hereditary

monarch. And as we have seen, until nationality becomes keenly

self-conscious, the national idea remains unborn. Only some great internal

cataclysm or an overwhelming disaster inflicted by a foreign power could

evoke this consciousness in a nation; and fate ordained that the two

methods should be tried simultaneously at opposite ends of Europe. France,

"standing on the top of golden hours," and Poland, crushed, dismembered,

downtrodden--it would be difficult to say which of these contributed the

more to the great national awakening in Europe.

Poland was the first and greatest martyr of the nationalist faith. By its

constitution, which was that of an oligarchical republic with an elective

king, Poland was placed beyond the pale of a Europe ruled upon dynastic

principles. Its very existence was an insult to the accepted ideals

of legitimacy and hereditary monarchy, and it was impossible for any

particular house to acquire it in the honest way of marriage. This was

particularly annoying to its immediate neighbours, Prussia, Russia, and

Austria, all of whom had grown into great powers while Poland, torn by

internal dissension, sank lower and lower in the political scale. It is

significant that the earliest suggestion of partition came from Frederick

the Great of Prussia, who was obliged to take Russia and Austria into his

counsels, as he knew that they would never allow him to annex the whole

country himself. Indeed, from first to last, the story of the Polish

partitions is a good example of Prussian _Realpolitik_. At length, after

much hesitation on the part of Russia and Austria, the Powers agreed among

themselves in 1772 to what is known as the First Partition, whereby the

three monarchs enriched their respective territories by peeling, as it

were, the unfortunate republic on all its frontiers. Perhaps the most

remarkable fact about the whole disgraceful concern is that it did not

appear in the least disgraceful, either morally or politically, to the

public opinion of the age. Meanwhile Poland by a heroic effort converted

herself in self-defence into a hereditary constitutional monarchy on the

model of England. Prussia, playing the part of Judas, pretended to welcome

these reforms at first and lent the Poles its encouragement; but when

Russia took up arms on behalf of the Polish reactionary party, and the

country turned to Prussia to aid it in defending the constitution, the

treacherous Frederick William not only declined to do so, but began to

send his troops to occupy Polish territory. The upshot was the further

dismemberment of Poland known as the Second Partition (1793). "No sophistry

in the world," writes Mr. Nisbet Bain, "can extenuate the villainy of the

Second Partition. The theft of territory is its least offensive feature. It

is the forcible suppression of a national movement of reform, the hurling

back into the abyss of anarchy and corruption of a people who, by

incredible efforts and sacrifices, had struggled back to liberty and order,

which makes this great political crime so wholly infamous. Yet here again

the methods of the Russian Empress were less vile than those of the

Prussian King. Catherine openly took the risk of a bandit who attacks an

enemy against whom he has a grudge; Frederick William II. came up, when the

fight was over, to help pillage a victim whom he had sworn to defend."[1]

After this the end came rapidly. The heroic patriot Kosciuszko headed a

popular rising against Russia; but after a remarkable resistance to the

combined forces of the three partitioning powers, the insurrection was

finally suppressed in torrents of blood. The crowned bandits nearly

quarrelled between themselves over the booty, but eventually in 1795

Austria, Russia, and Prussia signed a treaty which left nothing of Poland

on the map at all.

[Footnote 1: _Slavonic Europe_, p. 404.]

The effect upon the subsequent history of the world of this crime against

humanity, carried out by the three most absolute dynasties in Europe, was

incalculable. "The annihilation of the Polish nationality has probably

done more to endanger the monarchies of Europe than any one political act

accomplished since the monarchies of Europe were first founded. To trace

its effects in all their various ramifications would lead us a long way.

It is sufficient here to notice that the destruction of Poland, like the

destruction of Jerusalem, produced a "dispersion," and that as the Jews

of the dispersion have discharged a peculiar office in the economy of the

world as usurers and financiers, so, too, have the Poles of the dispersion

as agents and vectors of revolution. In all the republican movements of the

Continent the Poles have taken a leading part. They are to be found in

the Saxon riots of '48; in the Berlin barricades; in the struggle for the

Republic in Baden; in the Italian and Hungarian wars of liberation; in

the Chartist movement, and in the French Commune. Homeless and fearless,

schooled in war and made reckless by calamity, they have been the nerve

of revolution wherever they have been scattered by the winds of

misfortune."[1] And what Mr. Fisher, in this passage, puts in a concrete

fashion, Lord Acton has expressed with equal emphasis, if more abstractly.

"This famous measure," he writes of the final partition, "the most

revolutionary act of the old absolutism, awakened the theory of nationality

in Europe, converting a dormant right into an aspiration, and a sentiment

into a political claim. 'No wise or honest man,' wrote Edmund Burke, 'can

approve of that partition, or can contemplate it without prognosticating

great mischief from it to all countries at some future date.' Thenceforward

there was a nation demanding to be united in a State--a soul, as it were,

wandering in search of a body in which to begin life over again; and

for the first time a cry was heard that the arrangement of States was

unjust--that their limits were unnatural, and that a whole people was

deprived of its right to constitute an independent community. Before that

claim could be efficiently asserted against the overwhelming power of its

opponents--before it gained energy, after the last partition, to overcome

the influence of long habits of submission, and of the contempt which

previous disorders had brought upon Poland--the ancient European system was

in ruins, and a new world was rising in its place."[2]

[Footnote 1: _The Republican Tradition in Europe_, pp. 212-213.]

[Footnote 2: _History of Freedom_, p. 276.]

[Illustration: _Present State Boundaries_--THE PARTITION OF POLAND.]

The last sentence reminds us that, while in the East the dynastic principle

was displaying with cynical indifference its true character to the world,

events were occurring in the West which threatened to shake its very

foundations. If Poland was the first martyr of the national idea,

Revolutionary France was its first evangelist, for the new gospel which

France preached was the gospel of Liberty, and nationalism is an extension,

a variant of this gospel. In France itself, at the time of the

Revolution, the doctrine of Liberty was interpreted in its individual and

constitutional sense, which involved the abolition of class privileges

and of political institutions that conflicted with or did not adequately

express what Rousseau called the "general will." There was no national

question to be settled in France, and she could therefore devote herself

exclusively to the development of the "social idea," the establishment of

democratic government, the foundation of a republic, and in general the

determination of what should be the relations between the individual and

the State, a question which in course of time led on to the problem of

Socialism.

But indirectly the French Revolution did an enormous deal to promote the

national idea in Europe. In the first place, the execution of Louis XVI.

and the proclamation of the Republic administered a blow to the theory of

legitimacy upon which the dynastic principle rested, from which it never

recovered. If the French nation could rise and abolish its native dynasty,

was there not hope that some day the Italian, Hungarian, and Polish nations

might also rise and throw off the still more objectionable yoke of their

foreign rulers? In the second place, the Revolution in and for itself

produced a tremendous effect upon the rest of Europe, and in every country

men awoke from the long sleep of feudalism to the desire of sweeping away

antiquated constitutions and rebuilding them upon a democratic basis.

It is, however, sufficient to glance at a map of Europe at the end of the

eighteenth century to see why these dreams could not be at once realised.

Of what real value were ideals of democratic reform to the peoples dwelling

in Italy, Germany, or the Austrian Empire? Look, for example, at Germany,

split up like a jig-saw puzzle into over three hundred different States,

each with its petty prince or grand-duke. Her poets and philosophers might

sing of liberty and dream Utopian dreams, and here and there an experiment

in popular government might be tried by some princeling who had caught

the liberal fashion; but her political fabric, together with the rivalry

between Prussia and Austria, kept her disunited and strangled all real

hopes of reform. In short, the first and most crying need of Europe was not

the abolition of antiquated constitutions, but the redrawing of anomalous

frontiers.

The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people proclaimed in France

presupposed the doctrine of the solidarity of the people proclaimed by the

dismembered nations of Europe. France could set its house in order; but

Belgium, Germany, Italy, Bohemia, Hungary, etc., had as yet no house of

their own. The house had to be built before it could be furnished on the

latest democratic lines; and before it could be even built, the ground had

to be wrested from the hands of absentee landlords or cleared of the little

dynastic State-shanties which cumbered it. The Polish nationalists became

the backbone of the republican movement in Europe; the French republicans

proclaimed the independence of nations as one of their cardinal principles.

Thus the social idea and the national idea were originally intimately

connected. They were the twin children of Poland and the French Revolution,

and in their cradle it was hard to tell them apart, so strongly were the

features of each stamped with the likeness of Liberty.

For a time it seemed that the new ideas would carry all before them. Even

before France had herself abolished the monarchy, Belgium threw off the

Austrian rule and declared for a republic. And when in 1792 France found

herself at war with the Austrian and Prussian governments, and in the

following year with practically all the governments of Europe, her

victorious armies were everywhere greeted as saviours by the subject

peoples. But the old dynastic states proved to be of tougher material than

was expected. Moreover, it was not long before France found herself in

conflict with the national aspirations which she had called into existence.

The various republics which France set up all over Europe soon discovered

that they were nothing but tributary states of their "deliverer"; and when

Napoleon began his career of undisguised conquest, he unwittingly did even

more than the Revolution to strengthen the national idea in Europe, for the

nationalities had now become thoroughly hostile to France and fought in

alliance with their old dynasties to throw off the yoke of the hated

foreign tyrant.

This strange change in France from liberator to despot is worthy of some

attention. It is not good for a nation, any more than for an individual,

to be too successful. Moreover, the doctrine of liberty, whether in the

individualist or nationalist sense, if carried to extreme, is liable to

abuse. All to-day are aware that sheer individualism in the economic sphere

is an almost unmitigated evil; sheer individualism in the political sphere

and sheer nationalism are equally evil. France at the beginning of last

century was suffering from too much success, too much political liberty,

too much nationalism. Having overthrown the old _régime_ within the State

quickly and easily, she began to think she could do without the State

altogether: the result was anarchy, for which the only remedy is despotism.

Having, again, suddenly become conscious of her power and mission as a

nation, she began to send her armies across her frontiers to carry the

gospel of her peculiar "culture" to other and more benighted nations: the

result was occupation, which degenerated into conquest. Despotism within

and conquest without, both being summed up in the one word Napoleon--such

was the fate of the Mother of Liberty, who had loved her child "not

wisely but too well." Yet Napoleonism was a very necessary stage in the

development of modern Europe. It was the tramp of the invader which

did more than anything else to awake sleeping nationalism all over the

Continent; it was before the roar of Napoleon's cannon that the artificial

boundaries which had divided peoples crumbled to dust. Napoleon cleared the

ground, and even did something toward laying the foundations of the great

modern Nation-States, Germany and Italy. What Napoleon did for Europe at

the beginning of the nineteenth century, Germany, the Napoleon-State among

nations to-day, is doing for Europe at the beginning of the twentieth

century.

§3. _The Congress of Vienna and the International Idea_.--The overthrow of

Napoleon was due in a large measure to the spirit of nationalism which his

conquests had evoked against him among the various peoples of Europe; the

rewards of that overthrow, however, were reaped not by the peoples, but by

the dynasties and State-systems of the old _régime_. The Congress of the

Powers which met at Vienna in 1814 to resettle the map of Europe, after

the upheavals and wars of the previous twenty-five years, was a terrible

disappointment; and we, who are now hopefully looking forward to a similar

Congress at the end of the present war, cannot do better than study the

great failure of 1814, and take warning from it. The phrases which heralded

the approaching Congress were curiously and disquietingly similar to those

on the lips of our public men and journalists to-day when they speak of

the "settlement" before us. "The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the

World," which had become a remote dream when Tennyson first coined the

expression in 1842, seemed in 1814 on the eve of accomplishment. The work

of the Congress was to be no less than "the reconstruction of the moral

order," "the regeneration of the political system of Europe," the

establishment of "an enduring peace founded on a just redistribution

of political forces," the institution of an effective and a permanent

international tribunal, the encouragement of the growth of representative

institutions, and, last but not least, an arrangement between the Powers

for a gradual and systematic disarmament. "It seemed," writes Sir A.W.

Ward, "as if the states composing the European family, free once more to

take counsel together on terms of independence, were also free to determine

their own destinies."[1] The Congress of Vienna was to inaugurate a

New Era. Such of these views, however, as pointed in a democratic or

nationalistic direction represented the expectations of the peoples,

not the intentions of the crowned heads and diplomatists who met at the

Austrian capital. Among the members of the Congress the only man who at

first voiced these aspirations of the world at large was the Russian Tsar,

Alexander I., and such concessions to popular opinion as were made were due

to what the English plenipotentiary, Lord Castlereagh, described as the

"sublime mysticism and nonsense" of the Emperor.

[Footnote 1: _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. ix. p. 577.]

Instead, therefore, of establishing a new era, the Congress did its utmost

to restore the old one. Everything which had happened in Europe since

the outbreak of the French Revolution was regarded as a bad dream, the

principles of popular freedom and national liberty were completely ignored,

and an attempt was made to rivet again on the limbs of Europe the shackles

of the antiquated frontiers which had been struck off by the hammer of

Napoleon. Everywhere the "national idea" was trampled upon. Germany and

Italy were put back again into the eighteenth century, Austria's territory

in the latter country being largely increased; Norway was unwillingly yoked

with Sweden, and Belgium with Holland; Switzerland was made to surrender

her democratic constitution and to return to the aristocratic cantonal

system of the past; and, lastly, Poland remained dismembered.

The Allies, while fighting Napoleon, had issued the following proclamation

to the world, couched in language almost identical with that used by the

Allies who are now fighting Germany: "Nations will henceforth respect their

mutual independence; no political edifices shall henceforth be erected on

the ruins of formerly independent States; the object of the war, and of the

peace, is to secure the rights, the freedom, and the independence of

all nations."[1] The Congress of Vienna failed to redeem these pledges:

firstly, because its members had not grasped the principle of nationality,

and used "nation" and "State" as if they were synonymous terms; secondly,

because they did not represent the peoples whose destinies they took it

upon them to determine, and made no attempt whatever to consult the

views of the various masses of population which they parcelled out among

themselves like so much butter. They honestly tried to lay the foundations

of a permanent peace; but their method of doing so was not to satisfy the

natural aspirations of the European nations and so leave them nothing to

fight about, but to establish such an exact equipoise among the great

States, by a nice distribution of the aforesaid butter in their respective

scales, that they would be afraid to go to war with each other, lest they

might upset the so-called "balance of power." The "settlement" of 1814,

therefore, left a heritage of future trouble behind it which has kept

Europe disturbed throughout the nineteenth century, and is directly

responsible for the present war. The real settlement is yet to come; and if

we of this generation are to make it a final one we must avoid the errors

committed by the Congress of a hundred years ago.

[Footnote 1: Alison Phillips, _Modern Europe_, p. 8.]

Yet, when all is said, the Congress of Vienna represents an important

milestone along the road of progress. It is a great precedent. As a

disillusioned contemporary admitted, it "prepared the world for a more

complete political structure; if ever the powers should meet again to

establish a political system by which wars of conquest would be rendered

impossible and the rights of all guaranteed, the Congress of Vienna, as

a preparatory assembly, will not have been without use."[1] There is a

prophetic ring about this, very welcome to us of the twentieth century.

We cannot think altogether unkindly of our great-grandfathers' ill-judged

attempt to avert the calamity which has now broken over us.

[Footnote 1: Friedrich von Gentz, quoted in _Camb. Mod. Hist._ vol. x. p.

2.]

Nor was the Congress altogether barren of positive result; for it gave

birth to that conception of a "Confederation of Europe," which, though

never realised, has been one of the guiding ideas of nineteenth-century

politics. As this solution of the world's problems is likely to be urged

upon us with great insistency at the conclusion of the present war, it will

be well to look a little more closely into it and to see why it failed to

secure the allegiance of Europe a hundred years ago. The Congress had met

at Vienna and settled all outstanding questions, to the satisfaction of

its members; why should it not meet periodically, and constitute itself

a supreme international tribunal? The question had only to be asked to

receive the approbation of all concerned. The dreamer, Alexander I., at

once saw the destinies of the world entrusted to a Holy Alliance, which

would rule according to "the sacred principles of the Christian religion";

and even the more practical mind of Castlereagh conceived that a council of

the great powers, "endowed with the efficiency and almost the simplicity of

a single State," was a possibility.

Yet, it is quite clear to-day that, at that time and under those

conditions, the establishment of a permanent and effective Confederation of

Europe would have proved disastrous to the world. The Congress of Vienna

was followed by further congresses in 1818, 1819, 1820, and 1822; and each

succeeding conference revealed to Europe more clearly the true character

of the new authority into whose hands the power was slipping. Certain very

dangerous tendencies became, for example, apparent. The first conference

had assembled to confer the blessings of order upon a continent ravaged by

the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars of France. Hence the Confederation of

Europe started life as a kind of anti-Jacobin society, whose main business

it was to suppress revolution, whether it took the nationalistic or

democratic form. Furthermore, the interference with the internal affairs of

France in 1814 and 1815 tended to establish a precedent for interference

with the internal affairs of any country. The Holy Alliance, therefore,

soon assumed the character of a "Trust" of absolute monarchs, determined

to aid each other when threatened by risings or agitations among their

peoples, and to crush liberal aspirations wherever they were to be found in

other parts of Europe. The popular desire for peace was exploited in the

interests of unpopular government; settlement by conference in regard

to international matters was extended to settlement by a cabal of

irresponsible crowned heads in regard to internal constitutional and

national questions; a clique of despots threatened the liberties of the

world and proposed to back up their decisions by using their armies as

police. One government, however, even in that period of reaction, refused

to lend its countenance to such proceedings. England at first protested and

at length took up an attitude of complete opposition, and it is due to her

that the Confederation never became really effective. She had to choose

between peace and liberty, and she chose the latter.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Alison Phillips, _The Confederation of Europe_, together

with his chapter on "The Congresses, 1815-1822" in vol. x. of the

_Cambridge Modern History_. The whole subject of the Concert of Europe,

which can only be touched upon here, is of great importance. It is again

referred to in Chap. VIII.; see pp. 374 ff.]

The truth is that there were three ideas in the air at the beginning of the

nineteenth century, all excellent in themselves, but quite impossible to be

realised at one and the same period. Two of these, the social or democratic

idea and the national idea, were made, as we have seen, living issues by

the French Revolution; the third, which may be called the international

idea, was raised by the Congress of Vienna. It was an old idea, of course,

for it had been embodied in that shadowy "Holy Roman Empire" which was the

medieval dream of Rome the Great; but its form was new, and now for the

first time it became a dream of the future rather than a dream of the past.

What men did not see then, and still for the most part fail to see, is that

the human race can only work out these three ideas properly in a certain

order. Democracy and nationhood may, as in the case of Italy, be acquired

by a people at the same moment; but without the realisation of the national

idea it is hardly possible to conceive of democratic government for any

country. The national idea, therefore, precedes the social idea, as Mazzini

rightly insists. Still more must it precede the international idea. By

this it is not meant that every nation in the world must have grown to

self-consciousness and have possessed itself of freedom before we come

within sight of a world-concert and world-peace. But certainly in Europe

itself the national question had to be settled before there could be any

chance of establishing an international tribunal. It is equally certain

that the social idea also claims preference of the international idea. The

great danger of setting up "an effective machine for regulating the affairs

of Europe" is that the machine may get into the wrong hands. The Holy

Alliance is a warning, which should not be forgotten. It became an

obstruction to progress, a strait-waistcoat which threatened to strangle

the liberties of Europe, because it got into the hands of a "vested

interest," the dynastic interest, which was hostile both to nationalism and

democracy.

Since 1814, however, there have been great strides along the paths both of

democracy and of nationalism. And if Germany loses this war, the congress

of the settlement will meet in a very different atmosphere from that in

which its predecessor assembled at Vienna. It will be a conference of

powers victorious over Reaction not Revolution, and pledged to the support

of a liberal programme. And yet if such a conference became a permanent

feature of European life, if, in other words, a new attempt were made to

set up an international tribunal, it might easily become as dangerous to

the liberties of the people as ever was the Holy Alliance. The dynastic

principle it is to be hoped, will never again threaten the world's peace or

progress; but there are other vested interests besides the dynastic one.

During the nineteenth century economic development has given an enormous

impetus to international movements and cosmopolitanism generally.

Unfortunately political development, though great, has not by any means

kept pace with the economic; in other words, it is still possible in most

countries, and in some more possible than in others, for a small oligarchy

to gain control of the political machine.

Again, if there is one thing in the world more international than Labour,

it is Capital; and, as Mr. Norman Angell has shown, it is the capitalist

who is hardest hit by international war and who stands to gain most from

its abolition. European capital is almost certain to have a large say in

the settlement, and considerable influence in the counsels of any new

Concert of Europe that might come into existence. Now suppose--a not

impossible contingency--that a ring of capitalists gained complete control

of some politically backward country like Russia, and suppose a grave

crisis arose in the Labour world in England or France, what would be easier

than for arrangements to be made at the international conference for the

transference of Russian troops to the west, "to preserve the sacred rights

of property and the peace of Europe"? This may seem a somewhat fantastic

supposition, yet it was precisely in this way and on grounds like these

that the Holy Alliance interfered with the internal affairs of European

countries during the second and third decade of last century, and even as

late as 1849 we have Russia, still faithful to the principles of thirty

years before, coming to the assistance of Austria in her suppression of the

liberties of Hungary. It was a healthy instinct in the English people that

led them to break up the Concert of Europe in 1818--"a system which not

only threatened the liberties of others, but might, in the language of

the orators of the Opposition, in time present the spectacle of Cossacks

encamped in Hyde Park to overawe the House of Commons";[1] and, if the

prevailing "internationalism" has not quite blinded their eyes to-day,

they will scrutinise with the greatest possible care any new proposals to

re-erect the Concert of Europe as a permanent and authoritative tribunal.

What the world needs at present is more nationalism and more democracy. And

it is only after these two great nineteenth-century movements have worked

themselves out to the full, at least on the continent of Europe, that

mankind will be able safely to make experiments towards the realisation of

the third and crowning principle, the principle of a European Commonwealth.

[Footnote 1: _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. x. p. 16.]

[Illustration: EUROPE IN 1815]

The national problems which the Congress of Vienna bequeathed to posterity

may be seen at a glance by looking at a political map of Europe in 1815.

The entire centre of the Continent from Ostend to Palermo, and from

Königsberg to Constantinople, was left a political chaos. And it is not too

much to say that the history of Europe from 1814 to 1914 is the history of

the settlement of this vast area. The only State whose frontiers have not

altered during this period is Switzerland, and even that country seized the

opportunity which a disturbed Europe offered her in 1848, to substitute a

unified federal system for the constitution imposed upon her in 1815.

The rest of the area falls into six sections: (1) The kingdom of the

Netherlands, containing the two distinct and often antagonistic nations,

Belgium and Holland; (2) the German nationality split up into no less

than thirty-eight[2] sovereign States, loosely held together in a

"confederation"; (3) the Italian nationality, distributed under eight

independent governments, including four duchies, two kingdoms, the Papal

States, and the provinces under Austrian rule; (4) the Polish nationality,

divided up between the three Powers, Prussia, Russia, and Austria; (5) the

Austrian Empire, comprising a dozen distinct nationalities; and (6) the

Ottoman Empire, in which at least five different Christian peoples groaned

beneath the sway of the Mohammedan Turk. Thus, if we may regard the

inhabitants of the southern Netherland provinces, for the moment, as of one

nationality, there were roughly ten great nationalities, the Germans, the

Italians, the Belgians, the Poles, the Bohemians, the Hungarians, the

Southern Slavs, the Rumanians, the Bulgarians, and the Greeks, all left

with national aspirations unsatisfied, all hampered by State frontiers

which had no correspondence with their natural boundaries. Can we wonder

that there have been wars in the nineteenth century? Should we not rather

wonder that those wars have not been greater and more numerous? For the

Congress of the Powers in 1814 having failed to give the nationalities what

they wanted, nothing remained for them but to seize it for themselves. The

only alternative to settlement by conference is "blood and iron," and it

is with "blood and iron" that nearly every nationality which has attained

nationhood in the last hundred years has cemented the structure of its

State.

[Footnote 2: Napoleon had succeeded in reducing the number from 360 to 38.]

It is not our purpose in the present chapter to deal with the whole of this

vast area; the three eastern sections, Poland, the Austrian Empire, and

Turkey, present special problems of their own, and therefore need special

treatment. Still less do we intend to write a history of the nineteenth

century, or even to adhere to a chronological treatment. Rather our object

is to exemplify the principle of nationality by watching it at work in

the three western sections of the central European area; to show how the

national idea has been moulded in Belgium, Italy, and Germany, by the

various problems which the nationalities in these countries have had to

face, and the forces which they have overcome; and, lastly, to indicate the

part which an over-developed nationalism in Germany has played in bringing

about the war of 1914.

§4. _The National Idea in Belgium and the Problem of Small Nations_.--The

problem of the Netherlands, which it will be convenient to deal with first,

introduces us to an aspect of nationhood which we have hitherto not touched

upon. "The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it

to constitute one state," wrote Sir John Seeley, "are three,--common

nationality, common religion, and common interest. These may act in various

degrees of intensity, and they may also act singly or in combination."[1]

In the Low Countries religion has up to the present been a stronger

nation-making force than nationality. Three nationalities, each with its

own language, live there side by side,--the Dutch, the Flemings, and the

Walloons; but of these the Dutch and the Flemings are very closely allied

racially, Flemish being only a slight variant of the Dutch language. It

would therefore seem natural on the face of it that these two sections

would amalgamate together, leaving the Walloons to attach themselves

to their French cousins. That it is not so is due to the fact that the

Flemings and the Dutch are adherents of two different and mutually hostile

creeds, and that this distinction in their faith has been stamped upon

the national memories by the whole history of their past. Holland, the

stronghold of Calvinism, had at the end of the sixteenth century thrown off

the yoke of Catholic Spain and asserted its independence, while the Belgic

provinces, after Alva had cruelly crushed out such Protestantism as existed

among their peoples, returned to the faith and the allegiance of their

fathers, and remained part of the Hapsburg inheritance until the Congress

of Vienna. Thus the cleavage between Protestantism and Catholicism has made

two nations out of one Low German nationality in the Netherlands, as it

threatens to do with one Celtic nationality in Ireland. On the other hand,

their common Catholic faith has welded Flemings and Walloons together,

making one nation out of two nationalities far more racially distinct than

the Flemings and the Dutch, and this amalgamation has acquired a certain

flavour of common nationality from the fact that the language of the upper

classes is French.

[Footnote 1: _Expansion of England_, p. 59.]

It is obvious therefore that the attempt of the diplomatists in 1814 to

ignore both historical and religious differences and to combine Holland

and Belgium into a single State was doomed at the outset. Fifteen years of

constant friction were followed in 1830 by a rising in Brussels against

"Dutch supremacy," which quickly spread to the rest of Belgium. The Great

Powers, recognising the inevitable, interfered on behalf of Belgium, she

was declared a neutral State, separate from Holland, and took to herself a

king in the person of Leopold I. It is, however, highly significant that

directly the Dutch menace was removed from Belgium the internal cleavage of

nationality began to be felt. "In 1815 the differences between Flemish and

Walloon were to a large extent concealed beneath a veneer of French culture

and French manners. Among the upper and commercial classes no language but

French was ever spoken; and in their dislike of Dutch supremacy the Flemish

Belgians took a sort of patriotic pride in their borrowed speech, and for a

time relegated their native tongue to the level of a rustic _patois_."[1]

And yet, on the other hand, "the separation of Belgium from Holland had no

sooner taken place than the newly aroused national spirit began to show

itself among the Flemish-speaking part of the people by a revival of

interest in their ancestral Teutonic language.... King William I.'s attempt

to make Dutch the official language had met with universal opposition; but

as early as 1840 a demand was put forward for the use of the Flemish tongue

(which is closely akin to the Dutch) on equal terms with French in the

Legislature, the Law Courts, and the Army. As the years passed by, the

movement gathered ever-increasing numbers of adherents, and the demand was

repeated with growing insistence."[2] In 1897 the Flemish party attained

its ambition, and Flemish became the official language of the country, side

by side with French. The remarkable thing about this Teutonising movement

is that its mainstay has always been the extreme Catholic party, which

on religious grounds had been the most violent opponent of the attempted

Teutonification by the Dutch. The opposition between Flemish and Walloon,

indeed, became so marked in recent years that many feared that the Belgian

nation was about to split into two. Germany has, however, postponed this

national calamity for generations if not for ever, and the Belgium

which arises like a phoenix from the ashes of this third attempt at

Teutonification will, we cannot doubt, be a Belgium indissolubly knit

together by common memories of a glorious struggle for freedom and cemented

by the blood and tears of the whole population. Germany, like Napoleon a

century ago, will call many nations into being; the first and not the least

of her creations is a transfigured and united Belgium.

[Footnote 1: _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. x. p. 521.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. vol. xi. p. 693.]

As a frontier State, a link between the Latin and Teutonic races to both of

which her peoples are akin, Belgium offers an extremely interesting study

of the national idea at work. The peoples of Germany and France, which have

been perpetually at war with each other since the times of Julius Caesar,

have almost always met on her fair and prosperous plains to fight their

battles, since she is geographically the gateway from one to the other.

Neither could afford to let the other occupy her territory, and so she

has won her independence as a State; both have constantly threatened her

existence in times past, and so have forced upon her bi-lingual population

that consciousness of common interests which if strong enough may become as

firm a basis for national unity as actual community of nationality.

It should be noticed further that it has become the practice in recent

times to guarantee the neutrality of small frontier States like Belgium

which lie at the mercy of their greater neighbours, a practice intended

not only to preserve the integrity of such States but also to prevent

the frequent occurrence of war by closing, as it were, the military gate

between the hostile countries.[1] It remains to be seen whether the

violation of these principles by Germany has the effect of strengthening

them in the future, rather than the reverse. In any case, we may expect to

see attempts to apply the same principles to other parts of Europe. Already

the northern and southern ends of the frontier between Germany and France

are neutralised by the existence of Belgium and Switzerland; why, it may

be asked, should not the whole frontier be treated in the same way by

neutralising the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine? Perhaps, too, a

neutral Poland would form a useful buffer between Germany and Russia. Such

neutralisation, it should be noted, need not necessarily carry with it

independence. Poland and Alsace-Lorraine might form part of Russia and

France respectively, and still be neutralised by a guarantee of other

powers. A precedent exists for this in the terms of the cession of the

Ionian Islands to Greece in 1864, while Savoy, though a province of France,

is technically neutralised territory.[2] Cases like these, however, it must

be admitted, are extremely anomalous and could hardly stand the strain of

a serious war. But, then, as recent experience has shown us, not even

independent neutralised States are safe when all Europe is aflame. The

truth is that the whole conception of neutrality implies the existence of

some power above and beyond the State, it may be simply a group of powerful

States who are able to impose their will upon the rest of Europe, it may

be a general Congress, like the Congress of Vienna. Since the Concert of

Europe disappeared and gradually gave place to the two opposing alliances

of great powers, there has been no such authority in the civilised world.

The results are before us in the ruined cities and starving population of

violated Belgium.

[Footnote 1: The neutralisation of sovereign States is very recent in

origin. Switzerland and Luxembourg are the only other instances. The former

was neutralised in 1815, the latter in 1867.]

[Footnote 2: _Cambridge Modern History_, xi. 642. See for the whole

question of neutralised States, Lawrence, _Principles of International

Law_, §§ 246-248.]

As independent States, therefore, small nations can only survive, in

the long run, if their neutrality is permanently guaranteed by some

international authority, which is itself permanently capable of enforcing

its decrees upon recalcitrant States. Sovereignty and independence,

however, are not, as we have seen, essential to full nationhood, provided

the nation possesses a certain amount of "home-rule" and regards the

government under which it lives as a true expression of its genius and

will. For example, from 1809 till the setting in of Russian reaction in

1899, the Finnish nation enjoyed all the privileges of complete nationhood

except actual sovereignty. There is, therefore, a future for small nations,

either as autonomous protégés of great powers, like Russia, or as partners

in some commonwealth of nations, like the British Empire.

But there is yet another consideration to be faced. Why, it is asked,

should we trouble ourselves about the preservation of small nationalities

at all? "The State is power," and it is only the really powerful State,

therefore, that can and ought to survive. There is something laughable in

the idea of a small State; it is weakness trying to pose as strength. And

as for nations which have lost their independence and have bowed to the

yoke of the conqueror, their fate is incorporation. How can they hope or

expect to retain their separate existence and their peculiar culture when

they have surrendered the power upon which these privileges depend? "No

nation can permit the Jews to have a double nationality"; and the same

applies to Poles, Finns, Alsatians, Irishmen, and Belgians.[1] This is the

point of view of Bernhardi, Treitschke, and the German Government. This

is the theory which is said to justify the practice of Prussianisation,

Russianisation, Magyarisation, and so on. It raises the whole question

of the value and significance to civilisation of the existence of small

nations. Treitschke, of course, and his school are convinced that they

possess neither value nor significance. In small States there is developed

that beggarly frame of mind which judges the State by the taxes that it

raises; there is completely lacking in small States the ability of the

great State to be just; all real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon

the soil of great nationalities--such are a few of Treitschke's dogmatic

utterances on this subject.[2] But it is not merely the Germans who think

small beer of small nationalities. Listen to Sir John Seeley: "The question

whether large states or small states are best is not one which can be

answered or ought to be discussed absolutely. We often hear abstract

panegyrics upon the happiness of small states. But observe that a small

state among small states is one thing, and a small state among large states

quite another. Nothing is more delightful to read of than the bright days

of Athens and Florence, but those bright days lasted only so long as the

states with which Athens and Florence had to do were states on a similar

scale of magnitude. Both states sank at once as soon as large country

states of consolidated strength grew up in their neighbourhood. The lustre

of Athens grew pale as soon as Macedonia arose, and Charles V. speedily

brought to an end the great days of Florence. Now if it be true that a

larger type of state than any hitherto known is springing up in the world,

is not this a serious consideration for those states which rise only to the

old level of magnitude?"[3] The answer to which is, "Yes, indeed, if

the good old plan

That he should take who has the power,

And he should keep who can

is to be the guiding principle in European politics of the future." But

surely Sir John Seeley's argument, though undoubtedly telling as regards

the sovereign independence of small _States_, tells for and not against the

preservation of small _nations_. Was it to the interest of the world as a

whole that Athens and Florence should be crushed? Is it not true, in spite

of Treitschke, that the great things of earth have been the product of

small peoples? We owe our conceptions of law to a city called Rome, our

finest output of literature and art to small communities like Athens,

Florence, Holland, and Elizabethan England, our religion to an

insignificant people who inhabited a narrow strip of land in the Eastern

Mediterranean. And small nations are as valuable to the world to-day as

they have ever been. Denmark has enriched our educational experience by the

establishment of her famous high schools, which we can hardly imagine her

doing had she been a province of Prussia; Norway has given us the greatest

of modern dramatists, Henrik Ibsen; and Belgium has not only produced

Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, but is industrially the most highly developed

country on the continent. The world cannot afford to do without her small

peoples, who must be either independent or autonomous if they are to find

adequate expression for their national genius, if they are to obtain proper

conditions in which "to live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of

all." Can we guarantee to them this freedom? That is one of the great

questions which this war will settle.[4]

[Footnote 1: See _Selections from Treitschke_, translated by A.L. Gowans,

pp. 17-20, 58-61.]

[Footnote 2: See _Selections from Treitschke_, pp. 17-20, 58-61.]

[Footnote 3: _The Expansion of England_, p. 349. See also p. 1, "Some

countries, such as Holland and Sweden, might pardonably regard their

history as in a manner wound up."]

[Footnote 4: See J.M. Robertson, _Introduction to English Politics_, pp.

251-390; Mr. H.A.L. Fisher's pamphlet on _The Value of Small States_, in

which, however, the distinction between _states_ and _nations_ is not

made clear; and the article on "Nationalism and Liberalism" in _The Round

Table_, December 1914.]

§5. _The National Idea in Italy: The Ideal Type_.--Let us now turn to

Italy, a country which has in the past been as much of a European Tom

Tiddler's ground as Belgium, though for rather different reasons. Italy

is inhabited by a race speaking a common language and observing a common

religion, she has historical memories as glorious as those of any other

country in the world, and her natural boundaries are almost as well-defined

as those of Great Britain; yet it was not until the latter half of the

nineteenth century that she managed to become a nation. The chief reason

why she remained a "geographical expression" long after England, France,

and Spain had acquired national unity was the fact that she was until

comparatively recent times an example of the less containing the greater.

Throughout the Middle Ages she was a suburb, not a country. Rome was the

capital of the world, Italy only its environs. Moreover, since all roads

lead to Rome, and the lord of Rome was the master of Europe, the roads

Romeward were worn by the tramp of the armies of all nations. Thus Italy

was constantly subject to invasion, and the state-systems with which the

Congress of Vienna resaddled her in 1814 were little more than relics of

past military occupations of her soil by foreign armies. The main problem,

therefore, in the making of modern Italy was how to get rid of the heavy

burden of the past, how to deal with Rome and all that Rome stood for.

The problem would have been insoluble had not the prestige of Rome declined

considerably since the Middle Ages, a prestige which sprang from the fact

that she was the capital of two Empires--the spiritual Empire of the

Papacy, and the secular Empire founded by Charles the Great. The former had

suffered from the Reformation and the rise of the great Protestant nations,

the latter had been growing feebler and feebler for centuries, until it

was abolished as an institution by Napoleon. Yet Italy in 1814 still lay

helpless and divided at the feet of Rome. The Pope held under his immediate

sway a large zigzag-shaped territory running across the centre from sea to

sea, and, as spiritual leader of half Europe, he could at any moment summon

to his assistance the Catholic chivalry of the world. "The Roman emperor"

no longer existed, but "the Austrian emperor" was another title for the

same man, holding much the same territory; and the fact that he had

renounced his vague suzerainty over the rest of Europe did not prevent him

exercising a very real suzerainty in Italy, not merely over the eastern

half of the Lombard Plain which definitely belonged to Austria, but also

over the other States of the peninsula which were, in theory at least,

independent. The kingdom of the two Sicilies in the South, the grand duchy

of Tuscany on the West, and the smaller duchies of Parma, Modena, and

Lucca were only stable in so far as Austria bolstered up their corrupt and

unpopular governments. Even the Papal States themselves, equally undermined

with corruption and unpopularity, ultimately rested upon the same support.

Thus Austria represented for Italy all that evil past of which she wanted

to be rid: the foreign yoke against which her newly conscious spirit of

nationality revolted, the dynastic frontiers which were abhorrent to her

desire for unity, the absolute _régime_ under which her soul, after feeding

on the principles of the French Revolution, lay gagged and bound. The first

step to be taken towards the creation of Italy was the expulsion of the

Austrians.

This fact in itself purified the struggle for Italian freedom and raised

Italian nationalism to heights of nobility and heroism almost unparalleled

in history. The nation had not merely to be unified, but _delivered_, and

delivered from the oppression of that power which was the mainstay of

reaction in Europe. Nor was it simply a question of national freedom;

Austria had declared war upon individual and constitutional liberty also,

and used all her power to suppress them wherever they dared to raise their

head. From beginning to end of her fight for national existence, Italy

never forgot that she was also fighting for individual liberty, or ceased

to be conscious that the downfall of Austria in Italy would mean the

downfall of reaction in Europe. The banner which Mazzini raised in 1831 had

the words "Unity and Independence" on the one side and "Liberty, Equality,

and Humanity" on the other. Italy was indeed greatly blessed, inasmuch as

in seeking her own deliverance she could not help bursting the bands of

brass which bound the whole world in captivity.

It is not possible here to tell the glorious story of the resurrection

of Italy, or even to say anything of the three heroes at whose hands she

received her freedom--Cavour who gave her the service of his brain, Mazzini

who devoted to her the love and passion of his great heart, and Garibaldi

who fought for her with the strength of his own right arm. It must suffice

to indicate very briefly the various stages in the development of her

national idea, and the manner in which she finally realised it. Liberal

principles took root in Italy at the time of the French Revolution, and

the first glimmerings of nationalism were due to Napoleon, who bundled the

princes out of the peninsula and even for a time exiled the Pope himself.

But it was constitutional rather than national freedom which seemed most

urgent to the generation which succeeded Napoleon. The Carbonari, as the

early Italian revolutionaries were called, confined themselves almost

entirely to the demand for a constitution in the various existing States,

and though they eagerly desired the expulsion of Austria, they did so not

because she prevented Italian unity, but because she forbade political

reform. Their risings, therefore, local and disunited in character, were

bound to fail; the first fifteen years after the Congress of Vienna were

occupied by a series of attempts to substitute a constitutional for an

absolute _régime_ in different parts of Italy, attempts which Austria

crushed with a heavy hand.

The period which followed, 1830-1848, belongs to Mazzini and his "Young

Italy" party. His task was to fire Italy for the first time with the ideal

of national unity and independence. The conception of unity was a difficult

one for Italians to grasp; all history seemed to fight against it. There

were, for example, not only the traditions connected with Rome to be

reckoned with, but there was also the difference between north and south,

and, perhaps most important of all, the local spirit of independence

associated with the great cities like Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples, etc.

Thus, over against Mazzini's ideal of a single unified State there arose

the counter-ideal of a federal system. In this, however, later events

proved Mazzini to be right. Where he failed in foresight was in regard to

the constitutional character of the State he dreamed of. He wished not

only to abolish all existing frontiers in Italy, but to do away with all

existing state-systems. The only Italy he could conceive was a republic,

and Italy was not ripe for a republic, which was, for the rest, a form

of government too much bound up with the disruptive traditions of the

City-States to be acceptable.[1] But if Italy was not to be a republic, she

must be a monarchy, and where could she find a prince to put at the head of

her united State? Clearly, she would accept no one who was not the declared

enemy of Austria and the declared friend of constitutional reform. For a

month or so in 1846 it seemed that the Pope himself might be prevailed upon

to undertake the rôle; and the elevation of Pius IX. to the Chair of St.

Peter was greeted with wild enthusiasm in Italy because he was believed to

be a Liberal. These hopes proved illusory, however, and so the eyes of all

patriots turned more and more in the direction of Piedmont.

[Footnote 1: It is noticeable that Greece also played with the idea of a

republic at first and eventually selected a monarchical form of government.

As a matter of fact, not a single nation-State, formed in Europe since the

Congress of Vienna, has adopted the republican principle.]

This principality, which was part of the kingdom of Sardinia, ruled over

by the semi-French house of Savoy, shared the northern plain of Italy

with Austria, and at first showed neither anti-Austrian nor Liberal

proclivities. Victor Emmanuel came back smiling in 1814, saying that he had

been asleep for fifteen years; the old _régime_ was restored as though

the Revolution had never been; and a rising of the Carbonari in 1821 was

suppressed with the aid of Austrian troops. But in 1831 a king, Charles

Albert, came to the throne, who realised that it was the mission of his

house to drive the Austrians from Italy, and who was enlightened enough to

begin to institute reforms, as unostentatiously as possible, so as not to

attract the unwelcome attention of Vienna. Then came the great outburst

of 1848, which was the culmination of Mazzini's propaganda for the past

sixteen years. At first all went well. The Austrian army was almost

expelled from the peninsula; constitutions were granted in Rome, Naples,

Tuscany, and Piedmont; Venice and Rome declared themselves republics.

But no real scheme for all Italy emerged; the Mazzinians were heroic but

unpractical; and next year Austria returned once more, dealt as before

piecemeal with the revolted provinces, and finally crushed the hopes of

Italy again at the battle of Novara. Yet all was not lost. The republican

dreams of Mazzini were, it is true, at an end. But Piedmont had stepped

into Mazzini's shoes; she had championed the cause of freedom against

Austria; and, when the latter reasserted her sway, she alone of the various

States refused to abrogate the newly-acquired constitution.

Thus began the third period in the emancipation of Italy, the period of

Cavour, who became head of the Piedmontese cabinet in 1850. His aim was

first to make Piedmont the model State and champion of all Italy. He

believed fervently in liberty--"Italy," he said, "must make herself by

means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her"--and he was at

the same time one of the ablest and most practical statesmen who have ever

guided the destinies of a nation. In ten years he made the State of the

north-west an oasis of freedom and good government which attracted the best

intellects of Italy to its service, and henceforth Piedmont became the

centre of Italian aspirations. A new propaganda movement was set on

foot, called the National Society, which rejected both federalism and

republicanism and declared in favour of a united Italy under the crown of

Victor Emmanuel of Savoy; and when the chance of French support came in

1858, Cavour felt it was time to act. This time the end crowned the work.

Austria was deprived of everything but Venice; Tuscany and Romagna declared

for incorporation by plebiscite; Garibaldi conquered Sicily and the south;

and by the end of 1860 the King of Sardinia was king of practically the

whole of Italy. All that still remained to be won was Venice, which Austria

ceded in 1866; Rome, which the French had occupied in the name of the Pope,

and were forced to evacuate in 1870; and the Italia Irredenta of to-day,

viz. the Trentino, Trieste, and Istria, which may be recovered as a result

of the present war. It is worthy of note also that the trans-Alpine

provinces, Savoy and Nice, which had been part of the dominions of the

Sardinian kingdom, were ceded to France in 1858-1859 as a return for her

aid, thus rounding off the western frontier of the new kingdom of Italy so

as to correspond fairly closely with the boundary of nationality.

The foundation of modern Italy shows us the "national idea" at its best;

it was accomplished by noble means and by noble minds; and the latter, in

their perpetual struggle against the forces of reaction, were never allowed

to forget the claims of individual as well as of national freedom. Three

tests of true nationhood, it will be remembered, were suggested at

the beginning of this chapter: a state-frontier co-extensive with the

nationality-frontier, a unitary state-system, and a form of government

recognised by the inhabitants as an expression of their general will.

Italy fulfils all these conditions; for, though the first has not yet been

perfectly realised as regards Italia Irredenta, the exception is after

all a trifling one. Thus the development of the national idea in Italy is

almost a model of what such a development should be, and we have dwelt

somewhat at length upon it for that very reason. The work of Mazzini and

Cavour provides us with a standard of comparison which should be found very

useful in dealing with the national idea in other countries.

§6. _The National Idea in Germany: a Case of Arrested

Development_.[1]--Nothing, for example, could be more instructive, both as

a study in nationalism and as an aid to the understanding of the present

situation in Europe, than a comparison between the making of modern Italy

and the making of modern Germany. At first sight the German Empire, with

its marvellous progress, its vast resources, and its world-wide ambitions,

would appear to be an even more successful example of national development

than the kingdom of Italy. Its demand for "a place in the sun," its

hustling diplomacy, its military spirit, its obvious intention to expand

territorially, if not in Europe itself then in Asia or Africa, are all

taken as symptoms of this success. No doubt there is a certain amount of

truth in this view. The truculence of German foreign policy is to be partly

attributed to that form of swollen self-consciousness and self-complacency

to which all nations are subject more or less, and which is most likely,

one would suppose, to be found in countries where a nationality had

recently succeeded in making itself into a nation. The natural instinct to

regard one's own nation as the peculiar people of God and to look down on

other nations as "lesser breeds without the law" is a phenomenon which must

be constantly reckoned with in any comprehensive treatment of nationalism.

Every nation has its own variety of it; in England it is Jingoism, in

France Chauvinism, in Italy Irredentism, in Russia Pan-Slavism, and so on.

These are instances of over-development of the national idea, due either

to some confusion between race and nationality, or to simple national

megalomania, which usually subsides after a healthy humiliation, such as we

suffered in England, for example, in the Boer War or as Russia suffered in

her struggle with the Japanese.

[Footnote 1: The student is advised to read the chapter on Germany before

beginning this section.]

Yet a careful examination of the German body-politic will reveal symptoms

unlike those to be found in any other nation. German nationalism is

over-developed in one direction because it is under-developed and imperfect

in other directions. Apply our three tests to the German nation, and it

will be found to fail in them all. National boundary and State frontier do

not coincide because there are still some twelve million Germans living

outside Germany, in Austria-Hungary;[1] Germany is a State, but not a

unitary State, for she still retains the obsolete "particularism" of the

eighteenth century, with its petty princes and dynastic frontiers; and

lastly, the government of Germany cannot claim to express the general will,

while more than a third of the voters in the empire are sworn to overthrow

the whole system at the earliest opportunity. The German nation, in

fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested

development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably

accompanied by morbid psychology. That Germany at the present moment, and

for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few

impartial observers will deny. It has, however, not been so generally

recognised that this disease--for it is nothing less--is due not to any

national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects, which are

themselves the result of an unfortunate series of historical accidents. Let

us look a little closer into this matter, considering the three defects in

German nationalism one by one, and using the story of Italy as an aid to

our investigation.

[Footnote 1: There are also Germans living in Switzerland, the Baltic

Provinces of Russia, and the United States of America; but these may be

regarded as lost to the German nation as the French Canadians are lost to

France.]

First, then, why was it that, while the unification of Italy led to the

inclusion of the whole Italian nationality within the State frontiers, with

the trifling exceptions above referred to, the unification of Germany was

only brought about, or even made possible, by the _exclusion_ of a large

section of the nationality? Germany, like Italy, was hampered by traditions

inherited from the mediaeval Roman Empire, represented by an ancient

capital which stood in the path of unity. Why was it that, while Italy

could not and would not do without Rome, Germany was compelled to surrender

Vienna and to exclude Austria? The answer is: because the unification of

Germany was only possible through the instrumentality of Prussia, which

would not brook the rivalry of Austria, and therefore the latter had to go.

The problem of the making of Germany as it presented itself to the mind

of Bismarck was first of all a problem as to which should be _supreme_ in

Germany, Prussia or Austria; in other words Bismarck cared more for the

aggrandisement of Prussia than for the unity of Germany.[1] To the mind

of Cavour the problem of the unification of Italy presented itself in

a totally different light. For him there was no question of the

aggrandisement of Piedmont, though he no doubt felt pride in the thought

that the House of Savoy was to possess the throne of Italy. Austria was

expelled from Italy in 1860, not that Piedmont might take her place as

ruler of the peninsula, but that Piedmont might disappear in the larger

whole of an emancipated Italy. Austria was expelled from Germany in 1866 in

order that Prussia might rule undisturbed. Thus, though the Austro-Prussian

War of 1866 was an essential step in the foundation of the modern German

State, its motives and results were not in the least comparable to those

which inspired and followed the Italian War of Liberation in 1859-60. In

the first place the Austrians were not foreigners but Germans, whom it was

necessary for reasons of State not of nationality to place outside the rest

of Germany. Germany had, in fact, to choose between national unity and

State unity; and she chose the latter, partly because Prussia really

decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the

establishment of a strong German State was the essential prelude to the

creation of a strong united nation. Austria had to be shut out in 1866 in

order that she might be received back again at some later date on Germany's

own terms. In the second place Austria was in no sense the oppressor of

Germany as she had been of Italy. She was simply the presiding member of

the German Confederation who, as the rival of Prussia, as the inheritor of

the mediaeval imperial tradition, as the ruler of millions of non-Germanic

people, would have rendered the problem of German unification almost

insoluble. It was therefore necessary to get rid of her as gently and as

politely as possible. After the crushing victory at Königgrätz, Bismarck

treated Prussia's ancient foe with extraordinary leniency; for he had

already planned the Dual Alliance in his mind; knowing as he did that,

though in Germany Austria might be an inconvenient rival to Prussia, in

Europe she was the indispensable ally of Germany. And so, though the

ramshackle old German imperial castle was divided in two, and the northern

portion, at any rate, brought thoroughly up to date, the neighbours still

lived side by side in a "semi-detached" kind of way. It would be a mistake

then to call the war of 1866 a war of deliverance. Indeed, since the defeat

of Napoleon at Leipzig, Germany has had no such war. That is in a great

measure her national tragedy. Italian nationalism was spiritualised by the

very fact that it had to struggle for decades against a foreign oppressor,

and the foundations of her unity were laid on the heroic memories of her

efforts to expel the intruder. This spiritualisation, these heroic memories

were Germany's also in 1813-14, but the opportunity of unification was

allowed to slip by, and when the task was performed fifty years later it

was through quite other means and in a very different spirit. And yet,

though there was no one to expel, Germany could only hope to attain unity

by fighting. In 1848 she made an attempt to do so by peaceable means, and a

national Parliament actually assembled at Frankfurt to frame a constitution

for the whole country. But the attempt, noble as it was in conception,

proved a dismal failure, and it became clear that national unity in Germany

was to be won "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and

iron." The words are Bismarck's, and the task was his also. Set them beside

the words of Cavour about Italy and liberty, quoted above, or compare the

harsh unscrupulous spirit of the great German master-builder with the

spirit of Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi, and you get a measure of the

difference between the developments of the national idea in Germany and in

Italy. Yet Bismarck's famous sentence expressed the truth of the matter for

Germany. Austria had been put outside the German pale, and Germany north of

the Main had accepted unity under the hegemony of Prussia, but there still

remained the four great States of South Germany to bring in. They had been

the allies of Austria in 1866, and Prussia, had she willed it, might

have incorporated them by conquest. But Bismarck saw that they must put

themselves willingly under Prussia if the German Empire was to be a stable

concern; he therefore left them alone to think it over for a while. Sooner

or later they would have to come in, since now that Austria had been

excluded there remained only the choice between dependence on France and

union with Prussia. Bismarck deliberately played upon South Germany's fear

of France, and Napoleon III's restless foreign policy admirably seconded

his efforts. But a war was necessary to bring matters to a head. The

opportunity came in 1870, and Bismarck was able to make it appear a war not

of his own choosing. The Southern States threw themselves into the arms of

Prussia; France was crushed, and Alsace-Lorraine annexed; the German Empire

was proclaimed, and modern Germany came into being. There had been no

foreigner to expel from German soil, but Bismarck found that an attack upon

France served his purpose equally well.

[Footnote 1: Perhaps it would be fairer to say that he was incapable of

distinguishing between them. See his _Reflections_, i. pp. 315, 316.]

Germany was made by a war of aggression, resulting in territorial expansion

at the expense of another nation; Italy by a war of liberation, driving

the alien from her soil. And the subsequent history of the two nations is

eloquent of this difference in their origins. Since 1860 Italy has in the

main occupied herself with domestic reforms, with the working out of the

"social idea" which had had to wait upon the realisation of the "national

idea." She has had, it is true, her "adventures," more especially in

Africa, and her Jingoism, which has taken the natural form of Irredentism

or the demand for the recovery of Italian provinces still left in Austrian

hands; but she has never threatened the peace of Europe, or sought power at

the expense of other nationalities. Since 1870, on the other hand, Germany

has had to sit armed to defend the booty taken from France. "We have earned

in the late war respect, but hardly love," said General von Moltke soon

after the conclusion of peace. "What we have gained by arms in six months

we shall have to defend by arms for fifty years." At the beginning of 1914

more than forty out of the fifty years named by Moltke had passed by and

the situation had undergone no material change. "The irreconcilability of

France," writes the late Imperial Chancellor of Germany, "is a factor that

we must reckon with in our political calculations. It seems to me weakness

to entertain the hope of a real and sincere reconciliation with France, so

long as we have no intention of giving up Alsace-Lorraine. And there is no

such intention in Germany."[1] The annexation of two small provinces has

thus made a permanent breach between two great nations, a breach which has

poisoned the whole of European policy during the past half century, which

has widened until it has split Europe into two huge armed camps, and

which has at last involved the entire world in one of the most terrible

calamities that mankind has ever known.

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, von Bülow, p. 69.]

Why did Bismarck annex Alsace-Lorraine? To strengthen, he said, the German

frontier against France. But there was another reason. Fear of France had

brought the Southern States into the Empire; fear of France should keep

them there. The permanent hostility of France was necessary to assure the

continuance of Prussia's position as the supreme military power in Germany.

And so the plundered provinces became the very corner-stone of the German

imperial system. There is surely something very strange about all this. Why

should it be necessary to retain the loyalty of nearly half Germany by what

practically amounts to terrorisation? The answer is that Germany is not a

single national State but a number of _dynastic_ States, federated together

under the control of one predominant partner. In other words, the problem

of Alsace-Lorraine has led us to the consideration of the second flaw in

the development of the national idea in Germany.

The union of Italy meant a clean sweep of all the old dynastic frontiers

and States which had strangled the country for so long; the union of

Germany, on the contrary, riveted these obsolete chains still more firmly

than ever on the country's limbs. Bismarck claimed that this was necessary,

inasmuch as the Germans, unlike all other nations, were more alive to

dynastic than to national loyalty; that, in short, Germany was not really

ready in 1870 for true unity.[1] The chief reason, however, for the

retention of the old frontiers was that they suited the aims of Prussia.

The reformers of 1848, as Professor Erich Marcks somewhat naïvely says,

"had wanted to place Prussia at the head, but only as the servant of the

nation; Prussia was also to cease to be a State by itself, a power on its

own account. She was to create the nation's ideal--complete unity--and then

to merge herself in the nation. But Prussia would not and could not do

this. She was far too great a power herself; _she could very well rule

Germany, but not serve_."[2] Both Germany and Italy at first played with

the idea of a Confederation, but each was eventually forced to look to one

of its existing States to give it the unity it desired. There was only one

possible choice for each: for Germany, Prussia; for Italy, Piedmont; but

while Piedmont was content to serve, Prussia was too proud to do anything

but rule. The dynastic State frontiers were therefore retained because

Prussia refused to sacrifice her own State frontiers. The "unification of

Germany," in short, was an episode in the gradual expansion of the Prussian

dynastic State, which had begun far away back in the thirteenth century.[3]

It assumed the air of a national movement, because Prussia cleverly availed

herself of the prevailing nationalistic sentiment for her own ends. The

German Empire is therefore something unique in the annals of the world; it

is at once a nation-State, like Italy, France, and Great Britain, and also

a military Empire, like Rome under Augustus, Europe under Napoleon, Austria

under Joseph II., _i.e._ a State in which the territory that commands the

army holds political sway over the rest of the country. It is not mere

accident of geographical proximity, or even the kinship between Austrians

and Germans, which has led to the long and unshakable alliance of Germany

with the Hapsburg dominions. They are associated by common political

interests and by similarity of political structure. Each stands for the

supremacy of one dynastic State over a number of subordinate States or

nationalities.

[Footnote 1: The chapter entitled "Dynasties and Stocks" in the

_Reflections_ should be carefully studied on this point. Bismarck was

obviously uncomfortable about the old frontiers.]

[Footnote 2: _Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 104.]

[Footnote 3: See Chap. III. p. 95.]

Her common nationality leads us to forget that the German Empire should

more rightly be called the Prussian Empire.[1] Nor is there any reason at

all why the Empire of Prussia should stop its process of expansion at the

national boundaries; it has indeed already stepped beyond them, into Poland

in the east, into Denmark in the north, into France in the west. Why should

not the process be carried farther still and Germany become in Europe, nay,

in the world, what Prussia is in Germany? By preserving her identity as

a State, and by establishing her hegemony, Prussia, in the name of the

national idea of Germany, has been able to spread her own ideals throughout

the Empire, in other words to undertake that Prussianisation of Germany

which is the most striking fact in her history since 1870. Piedmont was

swallowed up in Italy, Germany has been swallowed up in Prussia; she has

become the sharer of her victories and the accomplice of her crimes. And so

under the tutelage of the spirit of Bismarck the docile German people have

adopted the Prussian faith; and the policy of aggression and conquest once

entered upon, there was no drawing back. Bismarck fed the youthful nation

upon a diet of blood and iron, and its appetite has grown by what it

fed on. The success of 1870 turned the nation's head; the annexation of

Alsace-Lorraine gave it the first taste of conquest. Germany began to

imagine that German character and German culture possessed some magical

and unique quality which would alone account for this success. Dreams of a

European Empire, of infinite expansion, of world-power, floated before the

national consciousness. The German people were no longer content, to use

Mazzini's words, "to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their

stone also to the pyramid of history"; they now craved to impose their

idea upon the world at large, and to place their stone on the top of the

pyramid. Modern Germany is an example of nationalism "gone wrong," just as

Napoleon was an example of democratic individualism "gone wrong." The Man

of Destiny has been followed by the Nation of Destiny, the "super-man" by

the "super-nation." Both have had to face a world in arms arrayed against

them.

[Footnote 1: German writers are fond of calling it "Prussia-Germany"

(_Preussen-Deutschland_), a phrase of Treitschke's.]

Thus the national idea in Germany has been cramped, contorted, and

perverted by the Prussian system and the dynastic frontiers. Had the dreams

of 1848 been realised, there might have been no Franco-German War, no

Alsace-Lorraine question, no war of 1914. And what of our third test of

nationhood? Do the people of Germany feel that their government adequately

expresses their general will, that it is truly representative, by which is

not necessarily meant that it is democratic in form?[1] There is no

doubt that in 1848 the educated classes of Germany did actually desire a

democratic form of polity. In that year Germany was as liberal as Italy;

she also had risings in almost every State, not excluding Prussia itself,

which were everywhere answered with promises of a "constitution." But when

reaction came in Germany, as in Italy, Prussia did not, like Piedmont,

stand out for freedom and make itself the model State of Germany; on

the contrary she reverted to her old military absolutism at the first

opportunity. And so the dreams of German liberty, like the dreams of

complete German unity, disappeared before the stern necessity of accepting

the supremacy of a politically reactionary State; and the Prussianisation

which followed did much to neutralise altogether the liberalising

influences of the south. It is therefore possible to maintain that the

political institutions of Germany have come to represent more and more the

genius and will of the population. "The Germany of the twentieth century,"

maintains a recent writer, "is not two but one. The currents have mingled

their waters, and the Prussian torrent now has the depth and volume of the

whole main-stream of German thought."[2]

[Footnote 1: _e.g._ Russia has a representative government in this sense,

though she is without "representative institutions" in the democratic

sense.]

[Footnote 2: _Round Table_, Sept. 1914, p. 628.]

It may be so; it may be that the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven

has been absorbed by the Germany of Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon; but it

must not be forgotten at the same time that, since their day, yet another

Germany has come into being, the Germany of Marx, Engels, and Bebel, a

Germany which is represented by more than a third of the voters in the

Empire. The old line of cleavage had barely closed up when a new and much

more fundamental schism appeared in the State, that between imperialism and

social democracy. The existence of this tremendous revolutionary force in

Germany, determined to overthrow the militarist _régime_ of Prussia and to

re-establish the State on a democratic basis, is an unanswerable proof

that the government of the Empire is not in any true sense representative.

Prussia has in this direction also impeded the development of the national

idea and given mechanical unity at the expense of spiritual unity. It has

created a vast political party of irreconcilables in the country, men

who have been led to feel that they have neither part nor promise in the

national life, and who therefore elect to stand outside it. "Our Social

Democratic party," writes von Bülow, "lacks a national basis. It will have

nothing to do with German patriotic memories which bear a monarchical

and military character. It is not like the French and Italian parties, a

precipitate of the process of national historical development, but since

its beginning it has been in determined opposition to our past history as a

nation. It has placed itself outside our national life."[1] And again: "In

the German Empire, Prussia is the leading State. The Social Democratic

party is the antithesis of the Prussian state."[2] Nevertheless, the

Imperial Government, not finding it possible to suppress the social

democrats, does its best to employ them for its own ends. It uses them

in fact as it uses irreconcilable France, namely, for the purpose of

terrorisation, since it has discovered that the spectre of socialism is as

effective to keep the middle classes loyal as the spectre of French

revenge is to keep the Southern States loyal. But it also hopes in time to

eradicate socialism from the State. "A vigorous national policy" Prince

von Bülow declares to be "the true remedy against the Social Democratic

Movement"; and though he makes no specific mention of war, it is obvious

that a war like that in which Germany is at present engaged is the most

vigorous form a national policy could possibly take. Was the outbreak of

war last August in part occasioned by the desire on the side of the German

Government to win over the workers of Germany? If so, it had yet another

spectre ready to its hand for the purpose--the spectre of Russia.

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, p. 184.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 186.]

In any case, with Germany in this condition, Europe could hardly have

avoided a great war at some time or other; and 1914 follows naturally,

almost inevitably, from 1870. The unification of 1870 was far from

complete. The German national idea still awaits development in the

direction of racial unity, political unity, and constitutional freedom. It

is Prussia that bars the way in all these directions, Prussia, which, in

itself not a nation but a military bureaucracy, a survival of the old

territorial dynastic principle which the world has largely outgrown, has

stamped its character and system upon the German people. "Prussia," says

one of its apologists, "has put an iron girdle round the whole of German

life."[1] But in the end life proves itself stronger than iron bands.

Germany was bound to make another attempt to reach complete nationhood. She

is doing so now. Prussia fights for conquest, for world-power, and makes

docile Germany imagine that she is fighting for these also; but what

Germany is really fighting for, blindly and gropingly, is freedom and

unity. She has indeed "to hack her way through." But it is not, as she

supposes, hostile Europe which hems her in and keeps her from her "place in

the sun"; it is the Prussian girdle and the Prussian chains which hamper

the free movements of her limbs and hold her close prisoner in the shadow

of the Hohenzollern castle. The overthrow of Prussia means the release of

Germany; and France, who gave Germany greatness in 1870, may with the help

of the Allies be able in the near future to give her an even greater gift,

the gift of liberty.

[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 106.]

§7. _The Map of Europe, 1814-1914_.--We have now watched the national idea

at work in the three western countries of that Central European area which

the Congress of Vienna left unsettled in 1814, and in a later chapter

we shall see the same principle acting in the two great divisions of

South-East Europe, Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula. Let us, then,

use this opportunity to pause for a moment, take a general survey of the

map, and consider in broad outline what has actually been accomplished

during the past century and what still remains to do.

From 1814 to 1848, exhausted by the effort of the Revolutionary and

Napoleonic Wars and disillusioned by reactionary statesmanship, the larger

nations slumbered: but Belgium and Greece secured their present liberties,

and outside Europe the national movement spread throughout the South

American Continent. Then came 1848, the "wonderful year" of modern history.

"There is no more remarkable example in history of the contagious quality

of ideas than the sudden spread of revolutionary excitement through

Europe in 1848. In the course of a few weeks the established order seemed

everywhere to be crumbling to pieces. The Revolution began in Palermo,

crossed the Straits of Messina, and passed in successive waves of

convulsion through Central Italy to Paris, Vienna, Milan, and Berlin. It

has often been remarked that the Latin races are of all the peoples of

Europe most prone to revolution; but this proposition did not hold good

in 1848. The Czechs in Bohemia, the Magyars in Hungary, the Germans in

Austria, rose against the paralysing encumbrance of the Hapsburg autocracy.

The Southern Slavs dreamed of an Illyrian kingdom; the Germans of a united

Germany; the Bohemians of a union of all the Slavonic peoples of Europe.

The authority of the Austrian Empire, the pivot of the European autocracy,

had never been so rudely challenged, and if the Crown succeeded in

recovering its shattered authority it was due to the dumb and unintelligent

loyalty of its Slavonic troops."[1]

[Footnote 1: H.A.L. Fisher, _The Republican Tradition in Europe_, p. 193.]

Many of these risings were doomed to failure, but between 1848 and 1871 the

alien governments in the Italian peninsula were abolished, making way for

a unitary government, in the form of a constitutional monarchy, which

embraces with small exceptions the whole of the Italian population of

Europe. In 1871, after three successful wars in seven years against

Denmark, Austria, and France, a Federal Government was established in

Germany, with the kingdom of Prussia as its leading State and the King of

Prussia as its monarch, with the title of German Emperor. This was a step

forward, though the new Germany was neither a unitary nor a constitutional

State. The Austrian territories have also come in for their share of the

general ferment, and Francis Joseph came to the throne in 1848 amid the

uprisings of his subject peoples; but these were successfully tided over,

though the Hungarian portion of the Austrian dominion achieved national

recognition and institutions in 1867.

After 1871 the national movement moved farther east. In 1878 Roumania and

Serbia, both national States, were declared sovereign powers independent

of Turkey; Bulgaria achieved its recognition as a principality; and

Montenegro, a small mountain community, which had never submitted to the

Turks, increased its territory and became a recognised European State.

In 1908 and 1910 Bulgaria and Montenegro became kingdoms like their

neighbours; and in 1913, after the two Balkan Wars, all the five Balkan

States--Roumania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro--obtained

accession of territory, and the principality of Albania was constituted

out of the Albanian portion of the old Turkish dominion. Finally, in quite

another region of Europe, Norway, which had been joined in an anomalous

union with Sweden since 1814, satisfied her national aspirations unopposed

by becoming an independent Constitutional Monarchy in 1905.

All this represents a considerable clearing up of the Central European

problem. Nevertheless, much still remains to be done. Poland is as she was

in 1814, a dismembered nation. The Czechs of Bohemia, the Roumanians of

Transylvania, and the Southern Slavs, not to mention other and smaller

subject races, continue to demand their freedom from the joint tyranny of

Vienna and Budapest. Russia has not yet solved the problem of Finland, nor

England the problem of Ireland. The Turk still occupies Constantinople. And

finally, the Prussianised nationalism of Germany has created new questions

of nationality in Alsace-Lorraine and Schleswig. All these problems

together were as so much tinder ready to take fire directly the spark fell.

They were the cause of the "armed peace" of the past forty-three years;

they are the cause of the war to-day. The conflagration of 1914 is a proof

of a profound dissatisfaction among civilised nations with the existing

political structure of the Continent. Alsatians, Poles, Czechs, Finns,

Serbo-Croats, Roumanians, and the rest "still struggle for country and

liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world

that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all." The

framework of society does not fit the facts of nationality, and so the

framework has gone to pieces. "The map of Europe has to be re-made. That is

the key to the present movement."

BOOKS

I. NATIONALITY

MAZZINI. _Essays_. The Scott Library. 1s.

MAZZINI. _Duties of Man_, etc. Everyman Library. 1s.

Anything written by Mazzini, the prophet of the national idea, can be

recommended.

LORD ACTON. _History of Freedom and other Essays_. 1907. 10s. net.

Contains an acute historical analysis of nationality in the nineteenth

century. The conclusion reached is that "the theory of nationality is more

absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism," but though the

summing up is unfavourable, the whole essay is a masterly exposition of the

national idea by one of the greatest of historical students. It forms a

very useful foil to Mazzini.

HENRY SIDGWICK. _The Elements of Politics_. 1897. 14s. net.

Chapter xiv., on "The Area of Government," contains useful paragraphs

on the distinction between Nation, State, and Nationality; see esp. pp.

222-225.

SIR JOHN SEELEY. _The Expansion of England_. First published in 1883. 4s.

net.

SIR JOHN SEELEY. _Introduction to Political Science_. 1896. 4s. net.

Both these books, the first in particular, are important in this

connection. There is no one chapter or section devoted exclusively to the

consideration of nationality, but there are constant references to the

subject. The point of view is, moreover, instructive. Seeley is, perhaps,

the nearest English approach to Treitschke.

J.M. ROBERTSON. _Introduction to English Politics_. 1900. 10s. 6d. net.

Critical from the Rationalistic as Acton is from the Catholic point of

view. See esp. Part V., "The Fortunes of the Lesser European States," which

after a preliminary essay on Nationality, which the author declares to be

"essentially a metaphysical dream," while "the motive spirit in it partakes

much of the nature of superstition," goes on to give a valuable account of

the development of the "small nations," Holland, Switzerland, Portugal,

etc., by way of showing their value to civilisation as a whole.

P. MILYOUKOV. _Russia and its Crisis_. 1905. 13s. 6d.

Chap. ii. contains some interesting matter on Nationalism, especially of

course as it has been developed in Russia.

J.S. MILL. _On Representative Government_. 2s.

Chap, xvi., "Of Nationality as connected with Representative Government."

II. GENERAL HISTORICAL WORKS, ETC.

ALISON PHILLIPS. _Modern Europe. 1815-1899_. 1903. 6s. net.

An excellent general history of Europe, 1815-1899.

SEIGNOBOS. _A Political History of Contemporary Europe since 1814_. 2 vols.

1901. 5s. net each.

One of the best general histories of this scope available. It is a

translation from the French, with good bibliographies.

_Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_. Cambridge. 1902. 4s.

6d. net.

A series of studies, by recognised authorities, of various aspects of

modern European history. Chap. ii., on "The International History of

Europe during the Nineteenth Century," by the late Professor Westlake, is

suggestive on the topic of nationality; chaps. v. and vi., on Germany, by a

German professor, are interesting as giving the German view of unification

by Bismarck; and chaps. ix. and x., on "The Struggle for Italian Unity,"

and "Mazzini," by Mr. Bolton King, are especially valuable.

H.A.L. FISHER. _The Republican Tradition in Europe_. 1911. 6s. net.

Traces the development of the republican, as distinct from the nationalist

tradition, in modern Europe, and therefore forms a useful complement

to other writers. Chap. ix., on "Italy," and chap. x., on "The German

Revolution," are excellent accounts of "1848" in those two countries.

H.A.L. FISHER. _The Value of Small States_. Oxford Pamphlets. 2d.

E. LEVETT. _Europe since Napoleon_. 1913. Blackie. 3s. 6d.

A useful little text-book.

_The Cambridge Modern History_. Vols. ix., x., xi., xii. 16s. net per vol.

Indispensable for knowledge of the facts of the period.

R. NISBET BAIN. _Slavonic Europe, 1447-1796_. 1908. 5s. 6d. net.

Chap. xviii. gives a good account of the partitions of Poland.

BOLTON KING. _A History of Italian Unity_. 2 vols. 1899. 24s. net.

BOLTON KING. _Mazzini_. 1903. Dent, Temple Biographies. 4s. 6d. net.

BISMARCK. _Reflections and Reminiscences_. 2 vols. 1898. Smith Elder.

Out of print. To be bought second-hand.

BÜLOW. _Imperial Germany_. 1914. Cassell. 2s. net.

The last two are indispensable for a true understanding of the principles

which underlie the German Empire.

T.J. LAWRENCE. _Principles of International Law_. 1910. 12s. 6d. net.

A useful text-book. See also _Cambridge Mod. Hist_. vol. xii. chap. xxii.