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 d hy 
 
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 052 295 791 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924052295791 
 
PATRIOTISM AND 
 THE SUPER-STATE 
 
Patriotism and 
 THE Super-State 
 
 By 
 J. L. STOCKS 
 
 
 
 
 5 1920 
 
 
 London: 
 
 
 'New York: 
 
 THE SWARTHMORE 
 
 
 2 HARCOURT BRACE 
 
 PRRSS LTD. 
 
 
 & HOWE 
 
 72, Oxford Street, W.i 
 
 
 ., West 47th Street 
 
FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR 
 
 The object of this series is twofold ; to disseminate 
 knowledge of the facts of international relations, and 
 to inculcate the international rather than the 
 nationalistic way of regarding them. This latter 
 purpose implies no distortion of facts. It is hoped 
 that the books will be found to maintain a high 
 standard of accuracy and fairness. 
 
 But their avowed object is not merely to record 
 facts, but to present them in a certain light, and with 
 a certain object. That light is Internationalism and 
 that object the peace of the world. If the series is 
 successful in its purpose it will contribute to what 
 Wells has called the " international mind." 
 
 The object has been to produce the books at a 
 price that shall not be prohibitive to people of small 
 incomes. For the world cannot be saved by 
 governments and governing classes. It can be saved 
 only by the creation, among the peoples of the world, 
 of such a public opinion as cannot be duped by 
 misrepresentation nor misled by passion. The 
 difficulties of that achievement can hardly be 
 exaggerated, but ought not to daunt. And the 
 editor ventures to hope for support for men of 
 good will in this one attempt, among the many others, 
 to enlighten the intelligence and direct the will. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages are an attempt to investigate 
 the sentiment of patriotism in its relation to the State, 
 the Nation, and to any international organisation by 
 which States and Nations may be grouped into a co- 
 herent whole or wholes. The view is expressed in the 
 last chapter that the reqtiired international organisation 
 must be a real government, if it is to be a success, and 
 that the most elaborate alliance — ^and our present 
 League of Nations is hardly more than that — ^wiU 
 never solve the international problem. But, even if 
 this is true, it does not follow that the League of Nations 
 is not entitled to claim our active support. It needs 
 and deserves all the support it can get ; and the more 
 support it receives, the sooner is it likely to develop 
 into 3 genuine and democratic organ of government. 
 
 J.L.S. 
 St. John's College, Oxford. 
 August, 1920. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I PATRIOTISM 
 
 SECT PAGE 
 
 1 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT - - - II 
 
 2 patriotism as love of country - - 1 4 
 
 3 patriotism as desire for the good of 
 
 one's country ----- 17 
 
 4 patriotism as willing service - - 23 
 
 5 relation of these three elements to one 
 
 ANOTHER ------ 28 
 
 6 ETHICAL VALUE OF THE PATRIOTIC COMPLEX 35 
 
 II NATIONALISM 
 
 7 MEANING OF NATIONALISM, AS FACT AND 
 
 THEORY ----__ 45 
 
 8 THE NATION AS FACT - - - - 48 
 
 9 THE NATION AS THEORY : MAZZINl's CREED - 54 
 
 XO CRITICISMS OF NATIONALISM - - - 6a 
 
 II NATIONAL POLICY : IMPERIALISM AND 
 
 DEMOCRACY - _ _ - . gg 
 
lo CONTENTS 
 
 III THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 
 12 "barbarian" and "foreigner": the 
 
 PROBLEM - - _ - - - 
 
 76 
 
 13 THE BASIS OF GOVERNMENT : TWO ALTER- 
 
 NATIVES FOR THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS - 80 
 
 14 (l) A LEAGUE OF GOVERNMENTS - - 88 
 
 15 (2) A FEDERATION OF PEOPLES " " " 93 
 
 16 RELATION OF PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM 
 
 TO THESE ALTERNATIVES - - - 100 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 Not she, the England I behold, 
 
 My mistress is, nor yet 
 The England beautiful of old. 
 
 Whom Englishmen forget. 
 The England of my heart is she. 
 
 Long hoped and long deferred. 
 That ever promises to be. 
 
 And ever breaks her word. 
 
 — ^William Watson. 
 
 § I. Historical Development 
 The praise which since the most ancient times has been 
 so freely lavished upon the patriot has seldom failed 
 to provoke some dissentient voices to declare that the 
 attitude so praised is a dangerous and irrational, if not 
 actually an immoral thing. From the earliest times 
 the Greek did not fail to observe that his duties to 
 his fellow men overleapt the walls of the dty and the 
 boundaries of those narrow lands which limited his 
 political obligations. Plato and Aristotle were conscious 
 of certain obligations as Greeks, and even as men. The 
 later Greek philosophers who carried on the tradition 
 of the great masters, were inclined for the most part in 
 describing their ideal — ^the " sage," who was the theme 
 of so much eloquence — to substitute for the service of 
 the city or fatherland the service of humanity, for 
 patriotism cosmopolitanism. So, for instance, in what 
 
13 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 can be deciphered of the works of Diogenes of Oenoanda 
 (a follower of Epicurus), inscribed on stone for the benefit 
 of the inhabitants of his native Lycian town about two 
 hundred years after the birth of Christ, we find the follow- 
 ing typical saying. He writes, he says, for his own 
 people ; but equally for those who are wrongly called 
 strangers or foreigners. " For though the several sections 
 of the earth give different men different countries, yet 
 this world in its whole circumference gives all men one 
 country, all the earth, and one home, the world." 
 
 The cosmopolitanism of the later Greek philoso- 
 phies has its historical explanation in the conquests of 
 Alexander and the rise of the great Roman Empire. The 
 city-state of the Greeks, it may be supposed, had done 
 its work, and had therefore ceased to inspire in its citi- 
 zens that intense and exclusive devotion which in its 
 great days it had shown itself capable of arousing. 
 The serenity of the sage, conscious as citizen of the 
 world of surpassing the limits of his small city, the 
 boast of the early Christian, admitted, with the elect, 
 to the freedom of the city of God, seem to differ rather 
 in kind than in degree from that early civic devotion. 
 Patriotism, in these developments, is not merely extended 
 but rather abolished or superseded. It is probably 
 true that, after the break-up of the Greek system of free 
 cities, the city was never again able to appear as the 
 natural unit of political organisation and devotion for 
 
PATRIOTISM 13 
 
 all civilised mankind. In the Roman Empire the city 
 remained ; but even the greatest of the provincial 
 cities could not totally eclipse Rome, even to its own 
 citizens. During the subsequent centuries there have 
 been places and times when free cities have flourished, 
 as in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and have suc- 
 ceeded in monopolising the political affection of their 
 own people ; but they have not succeeded in imposing 
 the dty organisation, as an ideal for general use, on the 
 thought of practical statesmen, or even of political 
 theorists. The free city was sometimes envied, but it 
 was regarded as an exception ; and Rousseau's rather 
 tentative and parenthetical advocacy of the small state 
 in the Contrat Social appears to have made little 
 impression upon contemporary thought. 
 
 But when Rousseau wrote, the modem nation, the 
 true heir of the dty of the Greeks, though it had not 
 yet completely vanquished its rivals, was already firmly 
 established, and was just about to embark on that strange 
 and chequered career, which, with so much bloodshed 
 and after so many vicissitudes, was finally to establish 
 beyond question its supremacy in the politics of Europe. 
 In the nation men seemed to have found a form of 
 political organisation which might be universal and even 
 (for the illusion of finality is hard to kill) final and 
 ultimate. The new historical development found its 
 prophet and interpreter, in the early middle of the 
 
14 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 nineteenth century, in Giuseppe Mazzini, whose dream of 
 Italy came true, but not precisely as he wished, and whose 
 society of democratic nations is still no more than an 
 aspiration. Whether the years 1914-1918 will seem to 
 the future to have been just one more tragic passage in 
 the development of the national idea, or rather (as many 
 already, perhaps over-hastily, assume) the birth-throes 
 of a new order, cannot at present be certainly determined. 
 But the recent experiences of these years, which, by the 
 very fact that they have left no considerable fraction of 
 the earth's population entirely unmoved, have proved 
 the world to be actually in a sense one society, with a 
 certainty which mere speculation could never have 
 hoped to attain — these recent experiences are bound to 
 provoke everywhere reactions which will seriously affect 
 and modify the forms of political organisation, the 
 conception of the State or nation, and the admitted 
 claim of the State on the loyalty of its citizens which is 
 commonly called patriotism. At this time, therefore, 
 an examination of the notions of patriotism and 
 nationality should have a particular interest and value. 
 
 § 3. Patriotism as Love of Country. 
 
 The disposition which is commonly called patriotism 
 appears to contain three distinct, but closely related, 
 elements — ^the love of country, the desire for its good, 
 and the willingness to serve it. 
 
PATRIOTISM 15 
 
 The love of country finds its expression in content- 
 ment with the familiar physical features of the land, 
 though other lands may be admitted to surpass it in 
 beauty, and in a like complacency towards its people 
 and their characteristic speech, manners, and institutions. 
 It is apt to cherish particularly whatever is peculiar in 
 these things, not because it is thought better than the 
 ways of other countries, but simply because it is peculiar 
 and unlike theirs. It will even claim a special quality 
 and merit in things done at home which seem to an 
 impartial observer to be done in the same way or with 
 precisely similar variations in every country under 
 heaven. It therefore uses with a special relish the 
 national adjective, not merely of things distinctive, like 
 English roast beef or German beer, but also of English 
 good-sense and British courage, of German thoroughness 
 and German honesty.* 
 
 * The following, from Alfred Austin's poem " Is Life Worth 
 Living ? " is a goMl instance of the use (and abuse) of the national 
 adjective : 
 
 Not care to live, while English homes 
 
 Nestle in English trees. 
 And England's trident-sceptre roams 
 
 Her territorial seas I 
 Not Uve, while English songs are sung 
 
 Wherever blows the wind. 
 And England's laws and England's tongue 
 Enfranchise half mankind I 
 
 So long as flashes English steel 
 
 And English trumpets shrill. 
 He is dead already who doth not feel 
 
 Life is worth living still. 
 
i6 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 Now love is apt to express itself in praise, and praisi 
 commonly asserts that a thing is good of its kind oi 
 superior at least to the average of its peers. Hence thf 
 patriot, as lover of his country, is expected to say anc 
 believe that his is a good country, or even the best oi 
 countries, and that many or most of its peculiarities are 
 so many proofs of its superiority to others. So long as he 
 maintains this general attitude, he is granted the lover's 
 privilege of occasional critidsm. Radical and persistent 
 criticism, however, will, it seems, prove a man no 
 patriot. Fichte, writing in the days when Germany 
 (as distinct from Prussia) was a mere possibility, tells 
 us of an acquaintance who made a habit of devoting 
 half-an-hour every afternoon to what he called the 
 practice of patriotism. Being asked by Fichte how he 
 employed it, he explained that he searched the news 
 sheet until he found some act of the government which 
 he could praise ; and on this he fastened his mind in 
 joyful contemplation for the remainder of the allotted 
 time. If none of its acts were quite satisfactory, he chose 
 the best he could find. " For a patriot," he said, " must 
 praise" The incident is intended to be farcical ; but 
 the test of patriotism suggested by it is still widely 
 accepted. A man is expected to believe that his 
 wife and his country are the best of wives and 
 countries, as the platoon commanders of the British 
 Army in France were repeatedly told during the war 
 
PATRIOTISM 17 
 
 that each must consider his platoon the best in 
 the Army. 
 
 However much one may sympathise with the attitude 
 of which such phrases are the expression, when it is 
 genuine and not mere aflfectation, it is evident that it is 
 open to the charge of irrational partiality, and it is not 
 surprising that the critics of patriotism have pressed the 
 point. " It is clear," says Tolstoy,* " that if each people 
 and each State considers itself the best of peoples and 
 States, they all dwell in a gross and harmful delusion." 
 It is also clear that it is not good manners to go about 
 boasting of the excellence of one's wife, family, or 
 country. Tedious at home, it becomes offensive abroad. 
 On the other side may be cited the instructive, but no 
 doubt apocryphal, saying — " I do not like my mother, 
 but of course I love her." If love and liking are not 
 inseparable companions, there is hope that patriotism, 
 considered as love of country, may be found to be 
 separable from praise. 
 
 § 3. Patriotism as Desire for the Good of one's 
 
 Country 
 
 The second element recognised in patriotism was 
 
 the desire for the good of one's country. Here, of course, 
 
 all the old quarreb as to the meaning of the word " good " 
 
 break out and threaten to confuse the issue. It may 
 
 * Patriotism and Government, tr. by Aylmer Maude. The other 
 quotations from Tolstoy in this chapter are from the same essay. 
 
i8 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 be true that all men in every action in some sense seek 
 their own good : it may also be true that a good man in 
 his most characteristic act follows what is in a sense 
 another's good. It may be doubtful whether " good " 
 can be distinguished from " useful " or whether it has 
 any definite meaning at all apart from an accompanying 
 will to pursue it. But we shall do well to evade these 
 problems in this place. Let us therefore say that the 
 patriot desires that his country shall be wealthy, powerful, 
 civilised and just. Everything, probably, which a 
 patriot commonly desires for his country, and rejoices 
 that it should obtain, can be grouped under one of these 
 four heads, and each term seems to have a de^te and 
 distinct meaning. There is however, a difficulty in the 
 application of these terms to countries or nations, which 
 must be here noted. It is not at all certain what is meant 
 when a country is said to deserve any of these epithets. 
 If the aggregate income of its individual citizens makes 
 a country rich, then one fabulously rich man might make 
 a community of miserably poor people the richest in 
 the world. If, again, the test is the amount of money 
 raised annually, per head of population, in taxes, then 
 the country which spends most lavishly on armaments 
 of war will almost certainly appear to be the richest. 
 Similar difficulties may be raised concerning the 
 attributes of power and civilisation, turning mainly on 
 the question whether each is thought to belong to the 
 
PATRIOTISM 19 
 
 State, to the community as politically organised, or to 
 its individual members, and if the latter, whether an 
 average may be struck, or whether a test should not 
 rather be found in the state of the least prosperous 
 section of the country's population. These are real 
 difficulties, and their solution cannot here be attempted. 
 They are, however, answered sufficiently for our present 
 purpose, if we remark, first, that common opinion in 
 these matters is uncritical, not to say confused. The 
 patriotic press will boast of the colossal size of private 
 fortunes as disclosed by the Death Duties, and the 
 unprecedented magnitude of receipts and expenditure 
 in the latest Budget, or of the increased value of the 
 exports from British ports ; it will rejoice in the successes 
 of British rowing or boxing, in the discoveries of a British 
 chemist or engineer, and in a triumph of British diplo- 
 macy or an extension of the British Empire. All that 
 will bear the epithet British is fuel to its patriotism, 
 whether the State has a hand in it or not. And, secondly, 
 it is plain that to the patriot his country is personified 
 as a kind of paterfamilias, who enjoys, and in a sense 
 owns, the achievements of any of his children. My 
 country's good is therefore not to be distinguished from 
 the good of its citizens ; and the founder of a flourishing 
 manufacturing business can be regarded as the benefactor 
 of his town and country, on the one hand as making a 
 fortune for himself, thus increasing his country's wealth,^ 
 
30 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 on the other hand as providing regular and well-paid 
 employment for a number of its citizens, thus adding 
 to his country's power, and in virtue of both facts as 
 enhancing the dignity and importance of the town in 
 which he elected to establish his business. No direct 
 profit to town or country as politically organised need 
 be implied. 
 
 Of the four attributes above enumerated, power 
 seems to be that most commonly claimed and desired 
 by the patriot for his country. Increases of wealth, of 
 territory, or of population seem to be welcomed in the 
 main more or less uncritically, as evidence of increased 
 power. Quantities of patriotic poetry of all dates 
 could be cited as evidence of this. 
 
 Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, 
 How can we extol thee, who were bom of thee ? 
 Wider still and wider, shall thy bounds be set, 
 God, Who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet. 
 — A. C. Benson. 
 
 Power, however, is not generally accepted as its own 
 justification. Strength divorced from wisdom and un- 
 accompanied by virtue is a temptation to its possessor 
 and a danger to others. The praise of power, therefore, 
 is commonly accompanied by the assumption that the 
 power is and will be wisely used. The patriot feels 
 bound to credit his country with a civilisation superior 
 to any other and a morality which is beyond reproach. 
 Sometimes the claim is explicitly made. Englishmen 
 
PATRIOTISM 21 
 
 will laugh at the German's praise of German Kultur ; 
 but though the boast may be commoner in their mouths, 
 the belief is not peculiar to them. French and English 
 imperialists no less are forced to make the claim, but 
 often only by way of tacit assumption — a form in which 
 perhaps, it is not less, but more, offensive to foreigners, 
 who feel that the very absence of direct assertion indicates 
 a higher degree of certainty. Of the German others 
 may well reflect — " methinks he doth protest too much." 
 Civilisation and justice, then, if justice may be used 
 as a summary term for national morality, are claimed by 
 the patriot for his country as a title to wealth and power. 
 They are spiritual goods, and to desire them for one's 
 country is to involve oneself in no direct antagonism to 
 the patriotic citizens of other countries. The desire 
 for wealth and power on the other hand, in the forms 
 which it most frequently assumes of militarism and 
 economic imperialism, necessarily involves rivalry 
 between nations j and the claim to superior civilisation 
 and justice is used, as we have seen, to justify the wealth 
 and power sought and obtained. This claim is, of 
 course, offensive to others, alike in an individual and in 
 a community, and in reinforcing the desire for aggrandise- 
 ment it leads indirectly to national conflicts and rivalries. 
 But it is beyond question that the wish to secure these 
 goods of the spirit for their country is active in many 
 who make no such claim, and who think, rightly or 
 
33 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 wrongly, that power and wealth, less crudely conceived, 
 and given the second place instead of the first, become 
 innocent objects of national ambition. 
 
 The critic of patriotism makes short work of all this. 
 " Patriotism," says Tolstoy, " is not the wish for 
 spiritual benefits for one's own people (it is impossible 
 to desire spiritual benefits for one's own people only) ; 
 but it is a very definite feeling of preference for one's 
 own people or State above all other peoples and States, 
 and therefore it is the wish to get for that people or 
 State the greatest advantage and power that can be got ; 
 and these are always obtainable only at the expense of 
 the advantages and power of other peoples or States. 
 It would therefore seem obvious that patriotism, as a 
 feeling, is a bad and harmful feeling, and as a 
 doctrine is a stupid doctrine." The answer to 
 this is that moral and other spiritual attributes are 
 certainly credited to peoples or States, and that those 
 who credit them writh these are able to desire these for 
 their own people (not necessarily for it only, but for it 
 specially, since nearly all men are specially concerned 
 with the actions of a single State) ; and secondly, that 
 certainly the greater part of the power and wealth of 
 any people is not in fact obtained at the cost of others. 
 Thus neither of the two principles upon which Tolstoy 
 relies is clearly valid, and his conclusion remains 
 unproved. 
 
PATRIOTISM 23 
 
 § 4. Patriotism as Willing Service 
 
 The third clement in patriotism was the willingness 
 to serve one's country. It is generally agreed that the best 
 proof and test of love is willing service ; and this is 
 clearly right. For a mere liking which finds expression 
 in word but not in act, an empty desire which is entirely 
 without influence upon the will, seem to be unreal or 
 at least very unsubstantial abstractions. Even the 
 jingoism of music-hall songs expects a man to do some- 
 thing to prove his patriotism. When he has " finished 
 killing Kruger with his mouth," he should at least " put 
 a penny in the little tambourine, for a gentleman in 
 khaki ordered south." And, at the other end of the 
 scale, the memorials of those who have died in battle 
 for their country, written on stone or, less perishable, 
 in undying verse, are full of touching tributes to the ideal 
 of service. Lowell's fine Commemoration Ode, recited 
 at Harvard in memory of those who lost their lives in 
 the American Civil War, ends on this note : 
 
 O Beautiful I my Country I ours once more ! 
 Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevell'd hair 
 O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 
 
 And letting thy set lips. 
 
 Freed from wrath's pale eclipse. 
 The rosy edges of their smile lay bare — 
 What words divine of lover or of poet 
 Could tell our love and make thee know it. 
 Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 
 
34 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 What were our lives without thee ? 
 What all our lives to save thee ? 
 We reck not what we gave thee; 
 We will not dare to doubt thee. 
 But ask whatever else, and we will dare I 
 
 A cooler and more calculating service is suggested 
 by Browning's " Home-Thought " — " Here and here 
 did England help me ; how can I help England ? " 
 On the other hand the rhetoric of Frederick the Great 
 hardly rings true. " I love my country ardently. It is 
 to her I owe my education, my fortune, my existence, 
 my all. Had I a thousand lives, I should with pleasure 
 sacrifice them all, if I could thereby render her any 
 service and show her my gratitude."* 
 
 The idea underlying patriotism in this aspect is quite 
 simple. It seems to spring from the fact of association 
 itself, and to involve no proposition that is easily chal- 
 lenged. It requires no personification of country, and 
 no comparison with others. In every association, 
 however limited in scope, there is a certain amount of 
 work to be done, which can only or can best be done 
 by the voluntary efforts of its members. In any large 
 society any one member can refuse to take his part in 
 this work, in complete confidence that it will neverthe- 
 less be done. And the reason why his confidence is 
 justified is that so many men are patriotic, i.e., feel in 
 greater or less degree the obligation to such service. 
 
 * Letters on Patriotism, Translated from the French original, 
 printed at Berlin. London : 1780. 
 
PATRIOTISM 25 
 
 The Abb6 Lamennais once illustrated the nature of 
 association, for the benefit of the working men of 
 France, by a parable to the following effect. A traveller 
 was walking along a narrow mountain path, and at a 
 certain point he found it blocked by a large rock. After 
 a number of unavailing attempts to climb over it or find 
 a practicable detour, he sat down beside it and wondered 
 what he should do. Other travellers arrived, one by 
 one, each failing similarly, and a sort of council of war 
 was held. During the discussion, which promised to 
 be fruitless, the numbers gradually increased, and at 
 last it occurred to someone that if they all pushed 
 together they might possibly succeed in dislodging the 
 rock. They pushed, and it gave, leaving the way clear, 
 and the travellers were able to continue their journey. 
 
 In such a case it is unlikely that all pushed equally 
 hard. It is very possible that one or two ridiculed the 
 suggestion, and declined altogether to assist. But the 
 abstention of some and the slackness of others might not 
 affect the result. The obstacle was an obstacle to all, 
 and its removal would benefit each, whether he contri- 
 buted much or nothing to it. In any association of any 
 size there are likely to be some who will take what they 
 can get and give only what they must. These are apt 
 to complain that the profits are small and the contri- 
 butions vexatious. There are others who will give all 
 they can. These seem to find satisfaction in the mere 
 
36 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 association, the fact o£ common effort, apart from any 
 results which it may bring. This is the spirit of patriotism 
 in this respect. 
 
 The critic has not found it quite easy to dispose of 
 this side of the partiotic spirit. Let us quote Tolstoy 
 again. " Patriotism is an immoral feeling, because, 
 instead of confessing oneself a son of God, as Christianity 
 teaches us, or even a free man guided by his own reason, 
 each man under the influence of partiotism confesses 
 himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his 
 government, and commits actions contrary to his reason 
 and conscience." Its inevitable results, he says, are 
 externally, wars, and, internally, the strengthening of 
 " the terrible bond called government." The quotation 
 implies a double line of attack. First, it is urged that 
 patriotism may lead a man to do what is wrong, just 
 because his country sanctions or commands it. Secondly, 
 it is suggested that the institution to which patriotism 
 is an attachment, the State or Government, is a bad and 
 un-Christian institution, which, therefore, no man is 
 under any obligation to serve. The first point is suffici- 
 ently answered by the reflection that the same criticism 
 can be made of any personal affection. The love of 
 husband and wife has no doubt been the excuse for many 
 crimes ; but it is not therefore condemned as immoral. 
 The second point is much more difficult. It is true 
 that the attack on the State in the interest of anarchism 
 
PATRIOTISM 37 
 
 makes no wide appeal at the present time. Government, 
 as such, is not regarded by many as an evil. But other 
 hostile influences, less academic, have for some time been 
 at work, which threaten to rob the State of its pre-eminent 
 and over-riding claim upon the citizen's service, or even 
 to destroy the State-organisation, as we know it, alto- 
 gether. The battle-cry of 1848, expressed in the famous 
 phrase of the Communist Manifesto, " Proletarians of 
 all Lands, Unite," claimed that the oppressed workers 
 of the world had a truer community of interest with one 
 another than with the capitalist oppressors of their own 
 countries, and thus directly challenged the claims of 
 the nations. And though the unity of Labour in the 
 sense desired has not yet been realised, many still think 
 it will be realised, and that its realisation will mean the 
 extinction of Patriotism. There are others who think 
 that the idea underlying the recently founded League 
 of Nations is necessarily hostile to patriotism, presumably 
 because it postulates community of interests where the 
 patriot sees only diversity or opposition, and because it 
 threatens to establish an authority superior to the nation 
 which the patriot is supposed to be unable to accept. 
 Lastly, there are the advocates of a number of ingenious 
 but still rather tentative proposals for what may be called 
 the break-up of the State. It is evident that each of 
 these lines of criticism leads into deep waters, into which 
 we are not at present in a position to follow. 
 
38 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 § 5. Relation of these Three Elements to 
 One Another 
 
 We have distinguished in patriotism three elements, 
 an affection, a wish, and the act of service. It remains 
 to consider the relation of these three constituents to 
 one another, and their joint application to political life. 
 
 In favourable circumstances all three elements are 
 present, mutually reinforcing each other. The school- 
 boy, for example, is expected to be fond of his school, 
 to wish it success in any of its undertakings, and to be 
 ready to help it in any way he can. The more he can 
 do for it, the fonder of it he becomes and the more 
 strongly he wishes it success. The school's recognition 
 of his value to it reinforces his conviction of its value to 
 him. No alteration in the terms seems to be required 
 if (again supposing favourable circumstances) we think 
 of our schoolboy in later years, as a citizen, in his 
 relation to the State or nation. The beliefs, customs, 
 and practices of the community are suited to him and he 
 to them. He is fond of it, wishes it success, and is glad 
 to serve it ; and both its successes and his own will tend 
 to strengthen the whole complex called patriotism. 
 The crude and arrogant expressions of patriotism, with 
 which we are only too familiar, should not blind us to 
 the essential rightness of this attitude in the happy 
 conditions imagined. For it is easy to see that these 
 
PATRIOTISM 39 
 
 are not necessarily involved, and that they are not 
 justified by the facts. Affection, certainly, will express 
 itself in praise; but praise need not and cannot justi- 
 fiably become a claim that its object is the best of its 
 kind in the world. The conditions required for 
 comparison cannot be satisfied, since the relation of a 
 schoolboy to his school or of a citizen to his country is 
 necessarily unique. A man, or a boy, can only be a 
 member of one at a time, and in all his life only, in any 
 real sense, of a very few. To the schoolboy or citizen 
 his school or country is, as his, differentiated from all 
 others, and of special interest to him. If it satisfies 
 him, he may call it good j but " best " is rhetorical 
 hyperbole, not comparison. The wish for its success 
 in competition with other schools or countries is a natural 
 consequence ; and this wish, with the acts in which it 
 finds expression, only turns to the general disadvantage 
 when competition is allowed to take forms which are 
 necessarily harmful, or so far as the desire for the first 
 place tends to predominate over finer forms of self- 
 assertion. Some teachers hold that competition between 
 boys and schools for University scholarships is a bad 
 thing ; but, while it continues, they consent to assist 
 their schools in the competition, and wish them success 
 in it. Similarly, nearly all men agree that war is a 
 disastrous and avoidable form of competition between 
 nations ; yet, when war is joined, they wish for their 
 
30 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 country's success, and are very ready to help it. In any 
 sphere in which competition is recognised the patriotic 
 citizen or schoolboy will back his own school or country, 
 and do his best to help it. Such an attitude, further, 
 in the ideal case imagined, is right and reasonable, and 
 need involve none of the crudities commonly associated 
 with patriotism. 
 
 But the ideal situation is of course seldom or never 
 realised in this imperfect world. No school is quite 
 satisfactory, even in retrospect ; and no State, either in 
 its internal or in its external relations, can be expected 
 consistently to behave in a way which will appear to a 
 particular citizen wise, prudent, or just. And when 
 in the eyes of any citizen the State seems to act wrongly 
 or unwisely, the full realisation of patriotism is for him 
 impossible. The more genuinely patriotic he is, the 
 more wholeheartedly he has been accustomed to accept 
 as his own his country's acts and purposes, the more 
 difficult will it be for him in such a case to give assistance. 
 Men of weaker and less energetic faith, less prominent 
 and influential in the community, being less interested 
 and less responsible, will be disposed to follow the 
 majority without serious hesitation. For them little is 
 at stake and compliance is cheap. It is precisely the 
 keenness of his patriotism that makes the stake greater 
 for him, and forces him to more vigilant criticism. 
 Where he profoundly disapproves, he will be driven to 
 
PATRIOTISM 31 
 
 decisive action. If he is a Minister of State, he will 
 resign his office, and, in a private station, he will withhold 
 his customary service. He will not have lost his affection 
 for his country ; for it is this which inspires his action : 
 but he will certainly be accused of having lost it, and 
 those who disagree with him will describe his action as 
 unpatriotic. 
 
 What happens in such cases is that the patriotic 
 complex is, for the time at least, more or less completely 
 disintegrated. Affection becomes disaffection, success 
 and failure acquire a fatal ambiguity, and any form 
 of service open to the disaffected member is generally 
 held to be disservice. Further, such disaffection may 
 be no mere temporary incident, soon past and forgotten. 
 It may be based on opposition of principle, and question 
 the whole plan and structure of the community. Such 
 fundamental criticism, persisting in spite of obloquy 
 and failure, must surely spring from a genuine devotion, 
 to which it is impossible to refuse the name of patriotism ; 
 yet it will involve opposition to the Society in all its 
 main activities, and a personal isolation and unpopularity 
 which are at first sight the antithesis of the proper 
 consequences of the patriotic spirit. When the associa- 
 tion is limited and voluntary in character, as in private 
 organisations for pleasure or profit, a social club, a 
 debating society, a trading company, the opposition 
 cannot become very acute, since a point is reached 
 
33 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 sooner or later at which the disaffected member will 
 resign membership. But there are associations in 
 regard to which this course is practically impossible. 
 The crucial case is that of the State ; for though at 
 most times a man is free to transfer his allegiance to 
 another State, not only are the practical difficulties 
 great, but by the time he is mature enough to make the 
 decision his habits are so formed and fixed that he will 
 be irrevocably marked in his new country a stranger and 
 a foreigner. It will never be to him what his own 
 country might have been, and he will never be to it more 
 than a friend. For this reason, when the community 
 is the State, the opposition of the members to the com- 
 munity acquires a peculiar degree of bitterness and 
 intensity. But the contrast in this respect between the 
 State and other associations cannot be pressed far. 
 The difference is only one of degree. Every associa- 
 tion, in proportion to the range and importance of its 
 activities and to the length of its duration, tends to 
 assume for the individual member a quasi-compulsory 
 character. It is only in their initiation that some are 
 voluntary, others not. It is only in few and unimportant 
 cases that membership can be resigned without some 
 irretrievable loss. 
 
 Affection is expected to show itself in acquiescence 
 and assistance, and the paradox that it is equally shown 
 in resistance and criticism, though familiar in every-day 
 
PATRIOTISM 33 
 
 life, is apt, when stated, to look like one of those subtle 
 theoretical evasions which most arouse popular indigna- 
 tion and distrust. A patriot, we are told, like a lover, 
 will praise, and a persistent critic is no patriot. But in 
 truth mere acquiescence is incompatible with love, and 
 criticism is more characteristic of it than praise. 
 Affection is exacting, and never reaches the end of its 
 demands. Satisfied or unsatisfied, these demands are 
 a sign of a special interest in the object of affection ; 
 and the accompanying actions, whether of assistance or 
 or resistance, show the same predominant interest by 
 their uniform reference to that object. Acquiescence is 
 natural only to those who are affected, but are not inter- 
 ested, and is evidence of indifference. In the case of 
 nations, the realisation of the ideal of democracy would 
 make such indifference more exceptional than it now is. 
 At present the acquiescence of most citizens in what is 
 makes democracy a mere shadow in times of peace, 
 and in time of war allows even the pretence of it to be 
 entirely withdrawn. It is this acquiescence, miscalled 
 patriotism by politicians when it seems to them to be 
 useful, which is the worst enemy of democracy and of 
 true patriotism. Those who governed this country 
 during the five years of war were so afraid of exhibiting 
 the inevitable differences of opinion both among them- 
 selves and in the country generally, that they dared not 
 even express a policy, much less ask the country for a 
 
34 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER STATE 
 
 " mandate." They achieved an imposing pretence of 
 unity in the general election of 1918. But there can be 
 no real unity until the differences are allowed expression. 
 Where the alternatives offered are acquiescence and 
 revolt, revolt is bound to become increasingly attractive. 
 In such circumstances the more democracy is professed, 
 the more unattainable is the reality of patriotism ; and 
 criticism, denied its customary and legitimate expression, 
 turns to bitterness and violence. Thus democracy and 
 patriotism are themselves forced to breed disaffection 
 and revolution. 
 
 Thus we have two extremes ; on the one hand, 
 patriotism satisfied, glad to be active in what is recognised 
 as the country's service ; on the other hand, patriotism 
 dissatisfied, expressed in bitter opposition and revolt 
 against the ruling principles and practice of the com- 
 munity. The common fate of most active patriots lies 
 somewhere between these two extremes, approximating 
 now to the one and now to the other, sustained by a 
 sufficiency of fruitful service and social recognition. 
 It is an advantage of the administrative device known 
 as party government that it gives public recognitionto 
 the fact that opposition to the government of the day 
 shows no lack of patriotism, but is on the contrary a 
 public duty for those who do not agree with it. It 
 implicitly rejects the crude demand for unanimity as a 
 condition of patriotism, and makes prominent a form of 
 
PATRIOTISM 35 
 
 division which is not inconsistent with real unity. To 
 some, even in England, but still more outside it, such 
 divisions are shocking, since opposition to the adminis- 
 tration seems to them always unpatriotic and sometimes 
 treasonable. So a well-known German student of 
 English institutions, Professor Hasbach,* in a recently 
 published essay on Parliamentary Government, seeking 
 to exhibit the evils of the party system, recalls "the 
 treasonable behaviour of the Whigs during the North 
 American Revolution." He might also have cited the 
 " treason " of Cobden during the Crimean War, and of 
 Liberals, led by Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George, 
 during the War in South Africa. The toleration of such 
 " treason " is a condition of democratic unity, and makes 
 possible an active instead of a merely passive patriotism. 
 
 § 6. Ethical VALtre of the Patriotic Complex 
 
 Patriotism is often praised and sometimes blamed ; 
 by many it is applauded as a virtue, by others execrated 
 as a crime. Some regard it as a duty, or as giving rise 
 to duties ; others see in it only an obstacle to their ideal 
 of human perfection. This diametrical opposition is 
 only due in part to a difference in the meaning attached 
 to the word, or to a refusal by the one party to consider 
 that purest form of patriotism on which the eyes of the 
 other are fixed. There is a real problem involved, set 
 * Die Parlamentarische Kabinettsregiertmg, 1919. P. 141. 
 
36 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 by the fact that the patriotic spirit is apparently exclusive. 
 It is a devotion to a particular community, and, as such, 
 seems to involve potential injustice to other similar 
 communities. Since no obligation can lead to injustice, 
 it would seem to follow from this that patriotism cannot 
 be a duty, or a source of duties, but is at most a natural 
 disposition, neither good nor bad in itself, but capable 
 of good service when properly directed and controlled. 
 It is therefore necessary to attempt a moral valuation 
 of the patriotic spirit. 
 
 It is at once evident that if any duty is rightly 
 associated with patriotism it can concern only service. 
 Neither a man's affections nor his desires are direcdy 
 in his control. It is not true that a man ought to like 
 or ought to desire this or that ; or so far as it is true, 
 it is so only so far as by acting in a certain way he may 
 bring himself to like or desire these things. Thus all 
 duty or obligation concerns directly action, and action 
 alone. But of the three elements into which we have 
 resolved the patriotic complex the third, service, alone 
 is action ; and it alone, therefore, can be a matter of 
 obligation. The question is thus simplified. What we 
 have to ask is whether the citizen is under a moral 
 obligation to serve the political community of which he 
 is a member. If that question is answered, the question 
 of the value of the affection and the desire which are 
 characteristic of patriotism will present little difficulty. 
 
PATRIOTISM 37 
 
 When a man is admitted with his own consent to 
 any club or society, whatever its objects and character 
 may be, he is commonly supposed to lay himself under 
 some obligation to the society of which he becomes a 
 member. A certain minimum service, in the form of 
 a money contribution, is usually required as a condition 
 of membership ; and often this is the only positive 
 requirement which the society makes of its members. 
 But this is not thought to exhaust the moral obligations 
 incurred. These are less definite ; but they do not 
 appear to involve any duties to the other members of 
 the club as individuals. A member is not required to 
 give his fellow members any preference or special 
 attention, even in those fields of action in which the 
 society is directly interested. Of course, since he and 
 they are members of the society, in helping to decide 
 the action of the society, he will be directly affecting 
 every member, himself included, in a way in which he 
 wiU not be affecting non-members. But his obligation 
 is to the society which the members compose, and seems 
 to be fairly summed up in this, that, as a loyal member, 
 he feels it to be his duty to perform his share of its 
 common work, to be present at its meetings, give proper 
 attention to its business, and perform, so far as other 
 engagements permit, any special tasks which it may 
 ask him to undertake. Now most societies live in a 
 world of similars ; and each of them may at any time 
 
38 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 be in friendly or hostile relations, in competition or in 
 co-operation, with any other. It is important to notice 
 that the obligations of membership, as above defined, 
 do not involve a man in any conflict with other similar 
 societies or their members. If exclusion is involved, 
 it is at least necessary and harmless. It is necessary 
 because human time and capacity are limited ; and it 
 is harmless because it is the expression not of preference 
 or partiality, but simply of place and position. 
 
 All who are not pure anarchists, violently objecting 
 to every form of association, will probably admit most 
 of what has just been said as true, in general, of societies 
 which are voluntarily recruited. But some will urge 
 that the State, or political association, has certain 
 peculiarities which make all comparison with other 
 societies inadmissable. First, membership is for the 
 most part involuntary in origin ; secondly, it claims to 
 exist not for a limited purpose or time, like all others, 
 but without restriction in time and for all purposes; 
 thirdly, it claims absolute right over all that is within 
 it and admits no superior court to which appeal might 
 be made from its decisions. With regard to the first 
 of these points, we have already seen that the distinction 
 between voluntary and involuntary associations cannot 
 be pressed far, and that the difference of the State from 
 other forms of association in this respect is only one of 
 degree. The more involuntary character of the political 
 
PATRIOTISM 39 
 
 association might therefore be held to make the duties 
 of a citizen rather less binding on the individual than 
 obligations incurred by membership of societies which 
 he joined voluntarily ; but it would be difficult to go 
 further than that. And even this could be met with the 
 paradoxical corollary that, if so, an alien, who being of 
 mature age, deliberately adopts British citizenship, 
 would be under a stronger obligation to serve his new 
 country than those who were British born. Nor does 
 the supposed duty of service appear to be essentially 
 modified by either of the other peculiarities attributed 
 to the Slate. Very few associations expressly limit 
 their own duration or activities, and if they do, it is as 
 a rule in their own power to remove any such limitation. 
 Each of them does in fact perform a limited number of 
 services for its members, and new members join as a 
 rule less in view of the articles of association (if any) 
 than in the expectation of a continuance of such services. 
 But the State, equally, undertakes at any time only a 
 limited number of services, and can restrict or extend 
 their range, at least in modern times, only by a certain 
 recognised procedure, after much deliberation and with 
 full publicity. Finally, every society claims to be 
 sovereign over its members so far as its own affairs are 
 concerned, and the denial of this claim by a member 
 is regarded as revolt or revolution. A society which 
 authorised appeal by a member to a power outside itself 
 
40 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 would be declining its proper function of regulating the 
 affairs of its members, as members, in relation to their 
 common undertakings. The demands which the Society 
 makes upon its members and the benefits which they 
 get from it are not as a rule sanctioned or enforced by 
 any law but its own. The State, therefore, is not 
 peculiar in its claim to supremacy, and it is not peculiar 
 in refusing to limit its functions. Does any relevant 
 peculiarity remain ? 
 
 " The State," it may be said, " is peculiar in that it 
 rests on force." If it were true, this would of course 
 be conclusive ; for force can create no obligation. But 
 it is not true. The State rests on will, and if it employs 
 force or expresses itself as force, so does all will and so 
 do all associations. It may be true that it is the only 
 form of association which uses an army or a navy, and 
 which punishes refractory members by imprisonment 
 or death, but a State without an army or navy is not 
 inconceivable, and in some non-political associations, 
 e,g,, athletic clubs, the disciplinary element is promi- 
 nent.* Force, therefore, cannot be regarded as a dis- 
 tinctive property of the political association. 
 
 * Clearly the modern State, speaking generally, enjoys a monopoly 
 within its area of certain forms of force. But force itself is no State 
 monopoly. Every association tries to use force, in some form, against 
 refractory members. And it is not inconceivable that a State should 
 exist which did not possess the right to imprison or execute refractory 
 citizens. The territorial basis of the State is the fact which is primarily 
 responsible for its highly compulsory character. 
 
PATRIOTISM 41 
 
 " The State," it may be said, " is peculiar in this : 
 that, while everything in the world is included in a State 
 and subject, potentially at least, to its laws and ordinances, 
 no State is included in any wider community or is itself 
 subject to regulation from without," In view of 
 treaties which settle the boundaries of States, and some- 
 times their right to declare peace or war, or their action 
 in case of war, in view of protectorates, suzerainties, 
 guaranteed neutralities, and other diplomatic devices, 
 this statement clearly needs much qualification, if it 
 can be accepted at all. For these are not pathological 
 cases, or the kind of exception which proves the rule. 
 They show conclusively that absolute independence is 
 not as a matter of fact a uniform characteristic of existing 
 States, and either we must deny that, for instance, 
 Belgium, Poland, France, and Germany, are in certain 
 respects States, or we must refuse to accept independence 
 in this sense as a necessary attribute of a State. The 
 second alternative is clearly right. What is necessary 
 to a State is supreme authority over its members in their 
 common undertakings. That the relations of States 
 to one another should be continuously regulated by a 
 higher authority, as they have been intermittently 
 regulated by mutual agreements in the past, is in no way 
 inconsistent with the notion of the State. The State, 
 therefore, may itself be subject to regulation from 
 without. 
 
43 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 Every attempt, therefore, to establish a distinction in 
 kind between the State and other forms of association, 
 which will invalidate argument from them to it, has now 
 broken down. The State is particularly large, it is 
 particularly various both in composition and in it 
 activities ; it is certainly at times, but by no means 
 always or everywhere, particularly exacting. But it 
 can claim from its members only what any other 
 society can claim, some small compulsory contribution 
 to the common work and needs ; and it can ask further, 
 as they ask, that its members will accept the obligation 
 to give it more than this, as opportunity and capacity 
 may enable them. 
 
 The citizen who accepts this demand as in general 
 just accepts it inevitably only as one obligation among 
 others. There are family obligations, business obliga- 
 tions, the call of friends, churches, trade-unions, on his 
 time and energies ; and the mutual adjustment of all 
 these is a problem which cannot be settled in general 
 or for all men, but only from day to day in each particular 
 case. But the acceptance of such a general obligation 
 means that the interests of the community to which it 
 refers will be attended to \yhere they are involved, that 
 its affairs will at least not be neglected or ignored. This 
 is the essence of patriotism, and in this sense alone can 
 the fact of association give rise to any duties. 
 
 Patriotism, then, is the effective recognition by an 
 
PATRIOTISM 43 
 
 individual of the obligation of service involved in 
 membership of a community, and primarily, of a 
 community as politically organised in the form of a 
 State. The special mystery and magic still attaching 
 to the forms of political unity may be explained histori- 
 cally in various wajrs, but must in the end be due to 
 the fact that they have in the past played a specially 
 important part in the development of human life. They 
 have certainly won for themselves, not only willing 
 service, but also warm affection, in rulers and subjects 
 alike, at ahnost all periods of history and under almost 
 every form of constitution. Such sentiments are of 
 course a help to service, and grow with it. Like all 
 other sentiments they are in themselves neither good 
 nor bad, and the action for which they provide inspira- 
 tion and energy may be morally either good or bad. If 
 patriotism is taken to mean the sentiment of affection, 
 and not the fulfilment of the obligation of service 
 (whether accompanied or not by affection), then it is 
 plain that patriotism is not a merit or a duty, but a fact 
 which is in itself of no more moral significance than the 
 sentiments which are its direct opposite. If two people 
 are thrown together they may like or dislike one another, 
 but they are not given credit in the one event or blamed 
 in the other. The affection of a man for the house in 
 which he was born, though a pleasing trait, is in itself 
 of no moral value ; and, if it conceals from him defects 
 
44 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 palpable to others, may be a positive hindrance to 
 effective action. Similarly, the mere sentiment of 
 affection for one's country may have mischievous 
 results ; but it is not thereby proved immoral. It is a 
 normal feature of a healthy and happy life. Service, 
 on the other hand, is a duty, if it is taken to mean, not 
 mere acquiescence in the decisions of the properly 
 constituted authority, but the free contribution of an 
 imdependent citizen to the collective strength and 
 wisdom. And such service, as we have seen, may some- 
 times seem and be disservice. There is, and can be, 
 no guarantee that actions of the purest patriotism will 
 not appear unpatriotic to most or many. Browning 
 shows us his " Patriot," not among the roses of his 
 popularity, but on his way to the scaffold, appealing from 
 the verdict of his countrymen to the judgment of God. 
 
II 
 
 NATIONALISM 
 
 In the sentiment of nationality there is nothing new. It was one 
 of the main keys of Luther's Reformation. What is new is the trans- 
 formation of the sentiment into a political idea. Old history and fresh 
 politics worked a union that has grown into an urgent and dominating 
 force. Oppression, intolerable economic disorder, governmental 
 failure, senseless wars, senseless ambitions, and the misery that was 
 their baleful fruit quickened the instinct of nationality. First it inflamed 
 visionaries, then it grew potent with the multitudes, who thought the 
 foreigner the author of their wretchedness. Thus nationality went 
 through all the stages. From instinct it became idea ; from idea abstract 
 principle; then fervid prepossession; ending where it is to-day, in 
 dogma, whether accepted or evaded. 
 
 Viscotnnr Mohley, Politics and History, p. 73. 
 
 § 7. Meaning of Nationalism, as Fact and 
 AS Theory 
 
 Nationalism has two senses. It stands in the first 
 place for a force or tendency which has been very 
 prominent in the history of Europe during the last few 
 centuries. By degrees out of the Roman Empire, a 
 vast and fairly homogeneous system of government, 
 extending over the greater part of Europe and beyond 
 it into other continents, has developed a group of large 
 independent States, each of which claims to be, not an 
 Empire, but a Nation. It stands, in short, for the 
 force or tendency which is supposed to be ^sponsible 
 for the Nation-State. It is natural that the term should 
 
46 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 also be used, secondly, of the theory, principle, or ideal 
 implicit in this historical development. No one thinker 
 could hope to express finally or adequately a mass- 
 movement of this kind. Nationalism, as an operative force, 
 has had many apologists and many antagonists : as an 
 ideal it has had one prophet, Mazzini. In his Duties of 
 Man, and in other writings, he attempted to express the 
 idea of the Nation, the idea of Nationality, the part 
 which the Nation was capable of playing, if men would 
 rise to the opportunity, in the progress of the human 
 race. Much that is inconsistent with Mazzini's ideal 
 has been credited, rightly or wrongly, to Nationalism ; 
 and we must, therefore, be prepared to make a distinc- 
 tion, where necessary, between the principle and its 
 practice. 
 
 Both as a movement and as a theory Nationalism is 
 primarily concerned with the political groupings of 
 men. But it is to the political unit or State, as we have 
 seen, that patriotism is supposed mainly to attach itself. 
 Both patriotism and nationalism are expressed in forms 
 which are not political or not purely political; but 
 these are of secondary importance. Nationalism, there- 
 fore, presents itself to us as a theory as to the proper 
 unit of government, and therefore of patriotism, and as 
 a historical tendency to develop such units. The unit 
 in question is, of course, the nation. There can be 
 little doubt that the nation is the dominating political 
 
NATIONALISM 47 
 
 idea of the present time ; that it is essentially a new idea, 
 distinctive of the period through which we are passing ; 
 and that to-day anyone who wishes to appeal to the 
 patriotic feelings of his fellow men will tend to use 
 this idea in preference to any other. " Nation " 
 has acquired a prestige and popularity far in excess 
 of its possible rivals, " State," " City," " County," 
 " Province," " Region." It is the fundamental social 
 and political fact of the present day.* 
 
 * If an illtistration of the obvious is permitted, I would cite the 
 following striking letter, which appeared in the New Statesman on 
 March i;th, igig. Though the word " Nation " is not so much ss 
 mentioned, the idea controls the whole argument. 
 
 THE STATE. 
 
 To the Editor of the ' New Statesman.' 
 
 " Sir, — ^Why do supporters of nationalisation of industries allow their 
 case to be eifectively prejudiced by the phrase ' The State ' ? To the 
 average man ' The State ' stands for such unpleasant things as laws, 
 taxes, craninal trials, and the like. Laws, taxes and trials are all 
 necessary, but in the abstract they are not popular, and by clever manip- 
 ulation individualists, capitalists and similar obsolescent people have 
 succeeded in conveying to the average man the idea that a semi-Satanic 
 personality resides behind ' The State,' a personality unhuman if not 
 inhuman, and against which it behoves all decent people to break a 
 lance. 
 
 " Suppose that all through the war we had talked about ' The 
 State.' Suppose we had said to recruits : ' The State needs you ' ; 
 to our men in the trenches : ' Stand fast for the State,' or had emblazoned 
 over the graves of our dead, ' He died for the State.' What irresist- 
 ible enthusiasm would have been called forth, what glamour of loyalty 1 
 Would Nelson have won the battle of Trafalgar if he had told his 
 sailors what ' The State ' expected of them ? 
 
 " And yet we fight in our wars for the same entity as that to which 
 we nationalisers now appeal. Call it ' The State,' and we make a 
 present to our adversaries of an incomparable strategical position. 
 But call it ' England ' (or if our Scottish friends prefer, ' Britain '), 
 say that England shall own her own industries, demand that the workers 
 
48 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 § 8. The Nation as Fact 
 
 What is a Nation ? The question requires a doubl 
 answer, according as we adopt the plane of fact or tb 
 plane of theory. Let us look first at the facts. Hen 
 the question means, what is the general nature of thi 
 various masses of humanity which call themselves, anc 
 are regarded by others as justified in calling themselves 
 nations ? 
 
 It will be wise to take our own country first, since Wf 
 know it best. For international purposes it is known a; 
 England ; but it consists of four " countries," England 
 Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, disposed on two islands; 
 
 shall toil not for the good of a private employer, but for the good of al 
 England, and who shall withstand so splendid a battle-cry ? 
 
 " And it is a sincere cry. What does England mean to each on( 
 of us ? It means every man, woman and child we meet, whether knowi 
 to us or unknown. It means that, were our industries nationalised 
 every miner, every railwayman, every sailor, would know that each stroki 
 of work he put in was for them ; that the appeal to him to do his besi 
 came from every woman and child in his country, and that if he did noi 
 fail them, they for their part — the much-maligned ' State ' of oui 
 opponents, but in truth our own dear England — ^would stand by thi 
 men who worked for them. And men w5l still respond to the cal 
 to work for England and for the happier homes of all her children. 
 
 " Does this seem a small point to your readers ? I would urg( 
 that, such is the force of prejudice, it is a vital point which may meat 
 the difference between victory and defeat, or, at least, the indefinitf 
 postponement of our cause. The love of our country, by which w( 
 chiefly mean the love of our countrymen, is a true thing, which thi 
 working men of England have in their hearts, and can be taught t( 
 possess still more. If they are themselves allowed the conditions o: 
 a happy and healthy life, they will give of their best for their countrymen 
 but not for a limited liability company. — ^Youts, etc., 
 
 " Soldier." 
 
NATIONALISM 49 
 
 and is officially described as the United Kingdom of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. (The British Dominions 
 Beyond the Seas must be left out of the reckoning for 
 the present). Why is this area supposed to include one 
 nation ? Presumably because its inhabitants are believed 
 to form a homogeneous group, inhabiting a continuous 
 area of land and united by real bonds which are not 
 created but merely recognised by the existing unity 
 of political institutions. The various groups within 
 this group — ^the English, the Scotch, the Welsh, the 
 Irish — ^though different from one another, are yet more 
 closely related and inter-connected with one another 
 than with any similar group outside these islands. 
 These four main groups are' themselves often dignified 
 with the title of nations ; but it will be convenient to 
 reserve the term nation for such groups as possess or 
 claim independent political status. We shall, therefore, 
 describe the United Kingdom as a nation composed of 
 four sub-nations. But here we are met by the case of 
 Ireland. Most Irishmen are profoundly dissatisfied 
 with the analysis implied in this description, and with 
 the political status which follows from it. Many Irish- 
 men claim for their country the completely independent 
 status of a nation ; and there is no known criterion which 
 will decide with certainty whether this claim is or is not 
 justified. Thus if Ireland is included, there is con- 
 siderable doubt whether the political entity commonly 
 
50 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 referred to as England is a single nation. If Ireland i; 
 excluded, we have what is perhaps as well attested : 
 case of nationality as any in the world. The area whicl 
 remains has been united for many centuries ; its bound- 
 aries are dearly defined by the sea ; and though more thac 
 one language is spoken within it, English is understood 
 everywhere. There is thus good reason for saying, oi 
 Great Britain at any rate, that it is a unity recognised 
 rather than created by political institutions. But, ol 
 course, we do not need to remind ourselves that this 
 island did not always feel itself thus one ; that his- 
 torically we are a fusion of races ; and that political 
 institutions have in the past largely assisted in producing 
 the unity which now they recognise and register. 
 
 Turning to the continent of Europe, we find that in 
 the west most of the existing political groupings can be 
 justified on similar grounds. In most cases it can be 
 urged with more or less plausibility that the population 
 united forms a homogeneous social group, which, while 
 it exhibits a certain variety, yet contains no group of 
 any si?e which would be likely to combine better into 
 another political group, or which is dissatisfied with its 
 present position and demands independent status, 
 From south to north, there is Spain and Portugal, 
 France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and the Scandi- 
 navian countries. Portugal might easily have been i 
 Spanish Ireland, but history has determined otherwise 
 
NATIONALISM 51 
 
 Belgium contains at least three distinct languages, and 
 is probably the case most difficult to justify on a priori 
 grounds ; but this only shows how dangerous in these 
 matters such considerations are. The people of Belgium 
 are content to be united, and they are resolved not to 
 accept fusion with any of their neighbours. Each of 
 the other countries mentioned has a distinctive language, 
 current almost universally in its territories ; and there 
 can be little doubt that at the present time community 
 of languages is the main bond and sanction of political 
 unity. The recent spread of representative institutions 
 has very greatly accentuated its importance. It is mainly 
 the factor of language which prevents the political 
 arrangements of Europe from seeming arbitrary and 
 fortuitous. 
 
 Excluding the British Isles and Scandinavia, the 
 test of language gives us in Western Europe three main 
 facts, viz., Spain, France and Germany, Of these 
 there are lesser variants, two of which, Holland and 
 Portugal, have succeeded in obtaining an independent 
 status. Small pockets of alien speech are of course 
 found here and there, as in Brittany and in the Basque 
 districts of the Pyrenees, and these are simply incor- 
 porated in whatever unit is geographically most con- 
 venient. Finally, certain frontier districts remain, of 
 mixed language and therefore of doubtful allegiance. 
 These sometimes, like Belgium, possess sufficient 
 
52 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 importance and resolution to acquire and maintain 
 independence; sometimes^ like Slesvig-Holstein and 
 Alsace-Lorraine, they are bones of contention between 
 the neighbouring powers. In any case, they lead a 
 troubled life. 
 
 The further east one travels in Europe the more 
 difficult it becomes to reduce the problem to its elements 
 in tins way. The small peninsulas of Italy and Greece 
 are two definite facts ; but in both cases the land frontier 
 is hard to define, and both peoples have crossed the 
 narrow seas to the east and claim the coast-line of 
 districts inhabited by men of alien race and speech, 
 And where else in eastern Europe is a land frontier 
 that is beyond dispute ? The difficulty, accentuated 
 by the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 
 and the collapse of Russia, and embittered by centuries 
 of warfare and misgovernment, if to find the main facts 
 which have a right to govern the solution. The division 
 of Europe into two hostile groups during the recent war, 
 and the fact that the settlement is now being dictated 
 by one of those groups, complicate the present position 
 still further, and make it unlikely that any settlement 
 arrived at now will be more than a temporary makeshift. 
 The main political facts of the past in this region were 
 Russia, Austria and Turkey. Of these the two last 
 practically exist no longer ; and the first, though it 
 cannot disappear in the same sense, is for the moment 
 
NATIONALISM 53 
 
 in chaos. Out of Russia, we have reason to believe, 
 will come in time a nation. For the rest, one tkmg 
 seems quite certain ; and if true, it is of cardinal import- 
 ance for our enquiry. It is impossible to suppose that 
 any ingenuity in defining frontiers will avail to create 
 in the enormous area that remains nations of the western 
 European type. Nothing less than a hundred years of 
 strong and settled government could do that. The 
 nations of the West have each been forged slowly and 
 painfully into a unity by long historical processes in 
 which forcible unification has played an all-importaaat 
 part. That has not been the fate of our Eastern neigh- 
 bours, and it is too late in the day to set such forces at 
 work now. The independent nation-state was a possiye 
 type for the new Italy, even with some modification for 
 modern Germany ; but if that is the only idea available 
 for the reconstruction of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, 
 Jugo-Slavia, and the other Balkan States, it will lead 
 straight to disaster. A new form of organisation is 
 wanted, which will at once satisfy the particularism of 
 the various racial and linguistic groups and make possible 
 their close political and economic co-operation. Homo- 
 geneous social units of adequate size and satisfactory 
 geographical disposition simply do not exist. 
 
 Before ending this rough survey of the facts, we 
 ought to pay a moment's attention to the case of Switzer- 
 land. The mixture of races and the variety of language 
 
54 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 is greater than in Belgium ; and the internal communi- 
 cations are very bad, while in Belgium they are very 
 good. Still there is an analogy between the two 
 countries in that both formed buffer-states between 
 great Powers, with each of which they had some 
 affinity. The surprising fact is that, though Switzerland 
 might appear a priori to be a purely artificial unity, 
 without any other bond that its bare and snow-capped 
 mountains, its people have on the whole led as happy a 
 life, and solved their own problems as successfully, as 
 any poUtical group in Europe. It may be doubted 
 whether one is fully justified in calling the Swiss a 
 nation ; but it cannot be doubted that this country of 
 lakes and mountains has made its own distinctive con- 
 tribution to the civilisation of Europe. And this fact 
 is bound to give pause to the fanatical advocate of 
 nationalism. 
 
 § 9. The Nation as Theory : Mazzini's Creed 
 
 We have next to consider the theory of the Nation, 
 the idea which Nationalism asks us to realise. 
 
 Maz?ini must be reckoned among the very few thinkers 
 who have believed quite literally the truth of the saying 
 that the voice of the people is the voice of God. It was 
 the central article of his creed ; and if to it is added a 
 profound conviction of the reality of progress and of 
 the supreme value of association the rest follows 
 
NATIONALISM 55 
 
 naturally. Here are some of his sayings. Humanity is " a 
 being whose life is continuous," " a man that lives and 
 learns for ever," "the Word, living in God." We 
 discover the law of God, " article by article, line by line, 
 according to the accumulated experience of the genera- 
 tions that have preceded us, and according to the 
 extension and increased intensity of association among 
 races, peoples and individuals." " No man, no people, 
 and no age may pretend to have discovered the whole 
 of the law." " Morality is progressive." Hence " I 
 believe in Humanity, sole interpreter of the Law of God 
 on earth." It is through association only that the Law 
 is revealed and progress made possible. Thus divine 
 inspiration is to be found, not in the solitary meditations 
 of supremely gifted individuals, but in the collective 
 manifestations of humanity. Assodation is the sacred 
 and saving fact. 
 
 Mazzini recognised the value of many kinds of 
 association. He was dissatisfied, for instance, with 
 the capitalist organisation of industry, and was strongly 
 attracted by the idea, active in the France of his time, 
 that industry might be transformed into free and self- 
 governing associations of producers. But the two 
 essential forms of assodation to him were the family 
 and the nation, and these were conceived symmetrically, 
 the family being intended to do for the nation what the 
 nation was intended to do for humanity. " Inspired 
 
56 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 but not enchained by tradition," family and nation were 
 the fundamental institutions which made possible the 
 continuous development of human life and wisdom. 
 As the family created the citizen, and made him free of 
 the accumulated treasures of the national life, so the 
 nation created men, conscious of man's past, critical of 
 his present, hopeful of his future, and devoted to the 
 service of humanity. The nations might be regarded 
 as the families into which God had chosen to divide his 
 people ; nationality as a device intended to make the 
 service of humanity easier and more fruitful by means 
 of division of labour and diversity of method. " You 
 are Citizens," he wrote, " you have a Country, in order 
 that in a given and limited sphere of action, the con- 
 course and assistance of a certain number of men, 
 already related to you by language, tendencies, and 
 customs, may enable you to labour more effectually for 
 the good of all men, present and to come ; a task in which 
 your sohtary effort would be lost, falling powerless and 
 unheeded among the immense multitudes of your fellow 
 beings." He was, of course, aware that in practice 
 the family might fail to produce citizens, and the nation 
 might fail to produce servants of humanity ; that each 
 might employ the strength which it owed to the devotion 
 of its members, in competition not co-operation with 
 other like associations, for its own aggrandisement; 
 each might be, in short, " a more or less enlarged egoism." 
 
NATIONALISM 57 
 
 But to such perversion all human affection is liable ; 
 and if you cut away the affection you lose the strength 
 which it supplies. Better even the perversion, he would 
 probably have said, than the total absence of the bond 
 itself. But in truth the bond was a fact, and the only 
 question was, for what purposes the power which il 
 generated should be used. 
 
 All this was addressed to the people of Italy, not 
 then or for many years after Mazzird wrote, politically 
 united. In their case he could fairly appeal to the 
 common language and the common traditions which 
 united them ; he could reasonably urge, as Fichte had 
 urged earlier (1806) in the parallel case of Germany, 
 that Italy was a " natural ** unit in comparison with the 
 artificial divisions enforced by existing political arrange- 
 ments. Ma^^ini himself spoke in similar terms of 
 dismembered Poland, and did what he could to assist 
 the agitation for its reconstruction. And he clearly 
 regarded England and France as true nations. But it 
 was not his concern to generalise ; and it is difficult to 
 find any passage in his writings which makes it quite 
 plain whether he conceived nationaUty as a principle 
 capable of universal or only of partial application. 
 Austria was for him the supreme case of a system of rule 
 in open conflict with the national principle. He contrasts 
 it with England. Destroy the English machine of 
 State ; England remains, a fact " engraven, so to speak. 
 
58 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 on the solid substance of the globe," But " destroy 
 the system of rule centralised at Vienna, and there 
 remains nothing at all in nature answering to the name 
 of Austria." One wants to know what exactly was 
 wrong with Austria. There is little doubt that he 
 connected the observed cynicism and immorality of 
 Austrian policy with its lack of the purifying national 
 flame, and that he wished to free from the Austrian 
 yoke the Polish and Italian districts of the south and 
 north. These to him were clear cases. But what of 
 the rest of that vast and mixed population ? Did he 
 think that a system of rule embracing a variety of races 
 and languages was necessarily an affront to morality 
 and civilisation ? Probably not. Probably he would 
 have said that, while a community so composed was 
 necessarily at a disadvantage, the same circumstances 
 which excused its existence might preserve and sustain 
 it ; might even in the end create the national bond 
 which was lacking. We have the ideal, therefore, of a 
 world in which all States are Nations and all Nations are 
 States ; but we have no guarantee that this ideal can be 
 fully realised, and no formula for the doubtful and 
 difiicult case. 
 
 Two points are of special importance in Ma^ani's 
 presentation of the nationalist creed ; the mutual depend- 
 ence of nationality and democracy, and the international- 
 ism of his outlook. These are of the greater importance 
 
NATIONALISM 59 
 
 because they serve to distinguish his view from a 
 multitude of other versions of the creed, and because 
 they involve him in flat contradiction with many familiar 
 manifestations of what we call the nationalist spirit. 
 The connection with democracy is plain, and has been 
 admitted by almost all the critics of nationalism. It is 
 a double one. In the first place, in regard to the forma- 
 tion of states, nationaUsm affirms that a population 
 which feels itself one, and asks to be politically united, 
 shall be given the political unity which it demands. 
 This is simply an extension of the democratic principle 
 to govern the settlement of boundaries and of areas of 
 government; it requires that states shall be (so to 
 speak) self-formed, as democracy requires that they shall 
 be self-governed. In the second place, in regard to 
 the actual conduct of government, nationality is in a 
 sense a necessity of democracy, since a consciousness 
 of real unity in the population is more essential to 
 democratic than to other forms of government. The 
 obstacles presented by mixture of races and languages, 
 or by any permanent and fundamental cleavage, become 
 more acute the more democratic the methods of govern- 
 ment become. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 
 ideas of nationalism and of democracy have a close 
 historical connection. These two ideas, with socialism, 
 form, according to Lord Acton, the main contribution 
 to poKtical thought and action of the " revolutionary 
 
6o PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 period" in European History; and of the three 
 nationalism was the last and the most subversive. But 
 whether his analysis of the revolutionary movement 
 is accepted or rejected, the connection between 
 democracy and nationalism, both in theory and in 
 fact, is beyond question. Nevertheless, there have been 
 forms of nationahsm, as we shall see, whidi have 
 been definitely anti-democratic in character; and at 
 the present time many of the most ardent believers 
 in democracy are highly critical of the idea of 
 nationality. 
 
 Mazzini's internationalism raises more doubtful 
 questions. Is there any reason to believe that co-opera- 
 tion between States would be made easier or more 
 fruitful if every State were a nation, and every nation 
 a State ? There are many at the present time who 
 would take precisely the opposite view, and maintain 
 that the present strength of national feeling is the main 
 cause of the perpetuation of the mutual jealousy and 
 suspicion of States, and the chief obstacle to the effective 
 realisation of a League of Nations. It is easy to see 
 that a population supremely conscious of its own 
 nationality and profoundly convinced of its superiority 
 to its neighbours and rivals will be the more easily led 
 into war for the defence or extension of that nationality 
 and will the more jealously guard its independent 
 status. The aggressive character of Prussian nationalism 
 
NATIONALISM 6i 
 
 was partly due to a consciousness of the weakness of 
 Prussia's eastern frontiers, and of the danger arising 
 from the superior numbers and inferior civilisation of 
 the Russians, No one who knew Germany could doubt 
 that the fear of Russia was genuine and widespread, 
 and many Germans were quite aware that their own 
 ruling class was prepared to exploit this fear in order 
 to produce war-feeling when required. Further, it 
 is easy in a country like England to create prejudice 
 against any proposal to erect a super-national authority 
 by appealing to an Englishman's sense of the superiority 
 of his own nation. Since England is clearly superior 
 to France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the rest, it is 
 argued that an assembly comprising all the countries 
 of Europe will be on a lower level than one which 
 is purely British. It is from the blind prejudice of 
 nationality, it will be said, that such arguments derive 
 their force. 
 
 All this is true. It is true, further, that the history 
 of the nineteenth century shows nationalism as the tool 
 of chauvinists and imperialists rather than as a cause of 
 peace and co-operation. But it does not follow that 
 Mazzini's principles are unsound, or his ideals self- 
 contradictory. It was not a friend, but an enemy of 
 nationalism, who said of it that it " forbids to terminate 
 war by conquest," and empire is based on conquest. 
 But the problem must be reserved for later treatment. 
 
62 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 § 10. Criticisms of Nationalism. 
 
 The older critics of nationalism were alarmed chiefly 
 at the threat to the existing order of things which they 
 detected in the new principle. Nationality was to 
 them a subversive principle, which threatened great 
 Empires with destruction ; and their fear was propor- 
 tioned to their belief in such units of government as a 
 civilising force. Lord Acton* was perhaps mainly 
 moved by the danger to Catholic Austria. Leckyf 
 hints plainly at a danger to the British Empire. After 
 noting, as a limitation of the principle, that " scarcely 
 anyone would apply it to the dealings of civilised nations 
 with savages," he further asserts that : 
 
 " Every great Empire is obliged, in the interest of 
 its imperial unity, and in the interest of the pubhc order 
 of the world, to impose an inflexible veto on popular 
 movements in the direction of disintegration, however 
 much it may endeavour to meet local wishes by varying 
 laws and institutions and compromises." 
 
 He urges, with questionable justice, that if the 
 Americans of the North had been true Nationalists 
 they would not have been able to fight the Southern 
 States on the question of secession. He also sees danger 
 
 * See the essay of Nationality (1863), reprinted in the posthumous 
 volume, History of Freedom, 
 
 t Democracy and Liberty (1896), ch, V. 
 
NATIONALISM 63 
 
 for Belgium and Switzerland, and in general to that 
 " belief in the sovereign authority of the State and in 
 the indissoluble character of national [sic] bonds " 
 which gives stability to political arrangements. He 
 himself compares the question with that of marriage 
 and divorce. As the marriage tie loses stability if divorce 
 is known to be easily obtained, so political groupings 
 lose authority if they are believed to be subject to re- 
 arrangement on demand. Lord Acton's argument is 
 more subtle, but similar in its main tendency. Nation- 
 alism is the rejection of law and authority. " There 
 is," he says, " no principle of change, no phase of 
 political speculation conceivable, more comprehensive, 
 more subversive, or more arbitrary than this." 
 
 These critics were brought up in that curious 
 combination of belief in the State and distrust of 
 State action which was characteristic of nineteenth 
 century liberalism. John Stuart Mill belonged to the 
 same tradition. He, however, writing within a year of 
 Lord Acton, accepted in general the nationalist claim.* 
 The sentiment of nationality constitutes a " prima facie 
 case " for a separate government. " This is merely 
 saying that the question of government ought to be 
 dedded by the governed. One hardly knows what 
 any division of the human race should be free to do if 
 not to determine with which of the various collective 
 • Representative Government (i86i), ch. XVI. 
 
64 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 bodies of human beings they choose to associate them- 
 selves." And he observes that the case is only 
 strengthened by free institutions. Nevertheless^ he 
 also recognises that the dislike and distrust of foreigners 
 is a savage and uncivilised trait, and that " whatever 
 really tends to the admixture of nationalities, and the 
 blending of their attributes and peculiarities in a common 
 union, is a benefit to the human race." This shows 
 that he was aware of the dangers arising from national 
 particularism, on which Acton dwells so strongly. At 
 bottom the difference between Mill and Acton seems to 
 be this, that Mill believed in democracy, while Acton 
 did not. Both, of course, had in mind mainly the Italian 
 renaissance ; and, though modern developments of the 
 nationalist spirit were hidden from them, Actcai must 
 be given credit for foreseeing the danger that nationalism 
 triumphant might assert itself in tyranny and oppression 
 against ahen minorities within its territories. 
 
 At the present day it is not disintegration, or even 
 oppression, which is chiefly feared from nationalism. 
 It is not the weakening of the bond of State, but its 
 excessive strengthening which is apprehended. Jingoism, 
 militarism, aggressive imperialism — these are now said 
 to be the fruits of the awakened national spirit. Pro- 
 fessor Zimmern,* speaking in the second year of the 
 recent war, could even go so far as to say that the 
 * Nationality and Government, esp. ch. II.-IV. 
 
NATIONALISM 65 
 
 prindple of nationality was " one of the most formidable 
 and sinister forces on the side of our enemies, and one 
 of the chief obstacles to human progress at the present 
 time." He argues that nationality is only a sound and 
 safe principle if wholly divorced from the State and 
 restricted to the social and educational sphere. Govern- 
 ment, in his view, should be based on nothing narrower 
 than common humanity : but education requires a more 
 defim'te foundation than this. The necessary back- 
 ground can only be supplied, outside the home, in the 
 customs and traditions of the race. In education, 
 therefore, nationahsm is both necessary and harmless. 
 He writes as a Jew, with the problem of the Jews, 
 scattered over the world throughout all countries, in his 
 mind, and with an eye to the American problem how to 
 fuse into a single solid whole the heterogeneous overflow 
 of Europe. The Jews, he thinks, are a nation, though 
 for many centuries they have not formed a State ; and 
 similarly the immigrants into the United States may 
 avoid the demoralisation which awaits the diracinS, if 
 each group is trained in its own home-traditions. It is 
 not necessary that a brand-new American nationality 
 should be forced upon them, with the waving of flags 
 and the singing of patriotic songs. They will be better 
 citizens if they are encouraged to bring with them to 
 their new home the familiar treasures of the old. 
 
 It will be observed that the two lines of criticism 
 
66 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 above sketched are to some extent mutually destructive. 
 The opposition may be put in a sentence. By the first 
 nationalism is felt to make empire impossible ; by the 
 second nationalism is supposed to lead directly to 
 imperialist aggression. And since a State which is also 
 a nation is by definition one and homogeneous, and 
 therefore necessarily not an empire, it might seem that 
 the second line of criticism has completely missed its 
 mark and confused two things, nationalism and imperial- 
 ism, which, though they have happened to occur 
 together, yet have no real connection with one another. 
 But we all know that in fact this is not true. The 
 nation of our day wants to be an empire, and the more 
 conscious it is of its nationality, the more it wants this. 
 The fact of British nationality may be something of 
 which an Englishman is proud and conscious ; but that 
 pride and consciousness does not necessarily involve 
 any doubts as to the legitimacy of our Indian empire, 
 however loudly the Indians may proclaim that they too 
 are a nation. A group proud of its own national 
 characteristics and achievements is not thereby forced 
 to recognise the justice of a similar pride in another group, 
 still less to refuse to undertake the economic exploitation 
 of undeveloped areas, inhabited by coloured races, 
 for the sake of an airy generalisation that every con- 
 siderable and relatively self-contained unit of population 
 has an absolute right to determine its own manner of 
 
NATIONALISM 67 
 
 life and forms of government. A nation, like an 
 individual, is apt to refuse to apply to others the measures 
 which it applies to itself. It will fight for its own inde- 
 pendence, and yet deny the right of peoples it has 
 conquered to fight for theirs. " Never deny your sister 
 nations," said Mazzini. National conceit denies their 
 existence. The intoxicated behever sees only his own 
 nationality, unique, overpowering, incomparable. He 
 is filled with missionary zeal. He will spread it over 
 the world ; force its treasures on " the lesser breeds 
 without the law." Thus self-conscious nationality 
 helps to lend a cloak of philanthropy to Empire. Groups 
 struggling for independence within the nation are 
 ruthlessly suppressed ; and the religion of the " white 
 man's burden " sanctifies the duty of seeking sunny 
 places for the surplus capital of the home country. 
 When all is finished, nationality is no longer the bond 
 of union of a single homogeneous community, but the 
 title to supremacy of a governing race. To Mazzini 
 nationality was a people's special ways of thought and 
 action, a natural and homely thing, creating neighbourli- 
 ness and forbearance ; to the poet of Empire, to Swin- 
 burne, Kipling, and their lessor imitators, it is a bright 
 and baleful star whose glory is to darken the lesser 
 lights and dominate the heaven. In Swinburne's 
 " Trafalgar Day," England is no mere local fact, but 
 the glory of the whole earth : 
 
68 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 As Earth has but one England, crown and head 
 Of all her glories till the sun is dead. 
 Supreme in peace and war, supreme in song. 
 Supreme in freedom, since her rede was rrad, 
 
 Since first the soul that gave her speech grew strong 
 To help the right and heal the wild world's wrong. 
 So she hath but one royal Nelson, bom 
 To reign on time above die years that throng. 
 
 This drunkenness of national self-conceit, of which 
 we are now frightened, will not be prevented by any 
 refutation of the theory of nationalism. Reasoning 
 in any case is of little avail against sentiment and 
 prejudice ; but it throws away at the start its best chance 
 of effed, if it begins, as it too often does, by denying the 
 fact of nationality altogether, or by assuming that men 
 can be educated to ignore it in practice. It will do 
 best to accept national feeling, where it exists, as a sound 
 basis and justification of political unity and self-govern- 
 ment. It will then be in a position to bring home to 
 militant nationalism the hypocrisy and self-contradiction 
 involved in an attitude which denies to other groups that 
 which it claims for its own. After all, the Irishman and 
 the Indian get more comfort from Mill and Mazzini 
 than from Marx and Professor Zimmern. The sober 
 nationalism of Jaures did more to hinder the European 
 war than the theoretic anti-nationahsm of the German 
 socialists. If our States are too large, let us try to make 
 them smaller ; if they are too proud, let us try to prick 
 their pride. But nothing will be gained by any attempt 
 
NATIONALISM 69 
 
 to ignore the truth asserted by the nationalist, that 
 political boundaries must be determined primarily by 
 the wishes and affinities of the populations concerned. 
 
 § II. National Policy — Imperialism and Democracy 
 
 In Maz^ini's pages the nationalist creed is combined 
 with an ardent faith in democracy ; but in many of its 
 practical developments nationalism meets democracy 
 in open conflict. Germany before the war was strongly 
 nationalist, but not democratic; and in countries like 
 England and France, in which democracy had become 
 part of the official creed, it was the anti-democratic 
 parties that proclaimed most loudly their nationalism. 
 We have had for many years an organ of militarism and 
 imperialism called Tke National Review, and we are 
 now threatened with a " National Party " of similar 
 complexion. The name of the " National Democratic 
 Party " is also significant. This branch of opinion seems 
 to have got into the habit of claiming a monopoly 
 both of nationalism and of patriotism. The claim is of 
 course fraudulent ; but it will repay us to consider 
 rather more fully the circumstances which give rise 
 to it. 
 
 At one time it was feared that the acceptance of the 
 principle of nationality might lead to perpetual crusades 
 by powerful nations on behalf of submerged and 
 oppressed nationalities, and so permanently endanger 
 
70 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 the peace of Europe. The troubles which accompanied 
 the formation of united Italy and the nineteenth century 
 settlement of the Balkans, gave some colour to this 
 fear. Nor is the danger past even now in Eastern Europe. 
 The evidence does not warrant much fear of disinterested 
 action by Great Powers on behalf of oppressed peoples ; 
 national heroism of that kind soon reaches its limits. 
 The danger is rather that the rivalries of the Powers 
 will find in the national principle a ready and popular 
 pretext for a conflict desired on other grounds. A revived 
 Russia may revive the Pan-Slavist propaganda against 
 a resurgent Turkey or Austria, or an imperialist Italy 
 or Greece, inspired not so much by the hope of any direct 
 gain for itself as by the desire to cripple a rival. National- 
 ism, by bringing the race-relationships of peoples into 
 prominence, lends a certain popularity to a conflict 
 in which a racially related people is supported against 
 another power. On similar grounds or pretexts, at 
 the time of the last South African War, the German 
 Government was on the point of taking up the cause 
 of the Boers against the British. To such fears, how- 
 ever, the nationalist has a fairly complete answer. He 
 will admit that, while political boundaries remain arbi- 
 trary and rest upon force, nationality must always be 
 a disturbing factor, inevitably affording pretexts for the 
 aggressive action of power against power. But he will 
 say that the only possible safeguard here is the fuller 
 
NATIONALISM 71 
 
 realisation of the principle of nationality itself. If 
 political boundaries are everywhere based on nationality, 
 or if (which comes in the end to the same thing) the 
 principle of self-determination is universally admitted 
 and acted upon, the spring of all these intrigues and 
 agitations will be removed. Nationality may cause 
 disturbance of frontiers, re-arrangement of units of 
 government, but it does at least offer a prospect of 
 finality in such re-arrangements which no rival principle 
 offers. When the principle of nationality fully prevails, 
 there will be no oppressed and rebellious racial groups. 
 
 It is obvious that the dangers just described arise 
 from the existence of nationality unsatisfied ; and the 
 defence amounts to this, that they would be removed if 
 nationality were everywhere satisfied. This is plainly 
 true ; but the defence cannot be accepted as complete 
 until we have assured ourselves that nationality satisfied 
 does not bring with it dangers as great. It is on this 
 ground at the present day that nationality is chiefly 
 attacked. It is the " national " policy of an established 
 State which is distrusted ; and it is to this that we must 
 now turn. 
 
 A national policy in this sense means, of course, a 
 policy of national selfishness and aggrandisement, a 
 " sacred egoism," made sacred, presumably, by the 
 sentiment of nationaUty. Internally its effort is to 
 strengthen and tighten the national bond by every means 
 
72 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 in its power ; externally to make the nation feared or 
 " respected " by a bold and firm policy, backed by a 
 sufficiency of military force, and so obtain for it a share 
 in the riches of the undeveloped portions of the earth's 
 surface. It appeals to the cruder forms of patriotism. 
 Its love of country turns readily into hatred of the 
 foreigner, its desire for prosperity into competition for 
 territory ; and the duty of service is interpreted as a 
 duty to maintain national unity by unquestioning assent 
 to every decision of government. The appropriate 
 political ideas are instilled into the citizen by the 
 machinery of public education and by compulsory 
 military service ; and direct inducement not to surrender 
 these ideas in later life is easily supplied if the State 
 keeps control over appointments in some of the main 
 professions, especially the teaching profession, and is 
 liberal in its rewards to right-thinking leaders of opinion. 
 Such a policy is necessarily the antithesis of nineteenth 
 century liberalism. In the interest of national unity 
 it will ruthlessly suppress dissentient groups within the 
 nation, and will be prepared for whatever sacrifice may 
 be necessary of the principle of free speech and thought. 
 It will develop a national economy with all its machinery 
 of tariffs, subsidies, and concessions. In every sphere 
 it will tend to penalise the foreigner, in its colonies by 
 frank preference for the trade and capital of the 
 home country, at home by interposing obstacles to 
 
NATIONALISM 73 
 
 immigration and naturalisation. The rulers of Germany 
 perceived further that a certain measure of what is called 
 State Socialism is of assistance to the objects of this 
 policy, which are to make nationality overwhelmingly 
 important to the citizen and so strengthen the hands of 
 government. This leads straight to war, not merely 
 because a strong government will tend to show its 
 strength by threatening and provoking war, and will 
 seek to increase its strength by piling armament on 
 armament and training every available man in the use 
 of arms, bitt more than all because war is the final proof 
 of the value of strong government and of the importance 
 of nationality. In time of war citizens are reduced to a 
 proper dependence on their rulers, and men and women 
 lose all civil rights, are imprisoned, even wounded and 
 killed, for no other reason than that they are of another 
 nation and owe allegiance to another State. War has 
 no doubt its dangers and disadvantages, but, in the 
 current phrase, it is the " add test." 
 
 It may be doubted whether any country has ever 
 been able to carry out such a policy in its completeness. 
 In some countries it has been more doQiinant, in others 
 less ; now this element, now that, has come to the front, 
 with the ebb and flow inevitable in human affairs. But 
 it cannot be denied that certain sections of the pro- 
 gramme have been operative for many years in the 
 politics of every one of the powers engaged in the late 
 
74 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 war, and that they have survived into the years of 
 peace. They are a present danger. While our 
 civilisation cannot discover the cause and cure of these 
 tendencies its very existence is imperilled. But the 
 diagnosis is quite simple. Much of this is simply 
 absolutism up-to-date, seeking support, where it has 
 always found it, in human ignorance and superstition. 
 The divine right of kings is dead (though William II 
 of Germany had not observed it), but the divine right 
 of nations has a fashionable air. If the nation can be 
 deified without serious concession to the claims of 
 democracy, governments will be assured of an intensity 
 of popular support unparalleled in history. The 
 difficulty is to intensify nationality without creating 
 democracy ; and it may be that this is in the long run 
 an impossible task. Still the attempt is made and does 
 for a time succeed, as we know well. War, and the fear 
 of war, between nations is the main factor making for 
 its success. This sham nationalism, allied with a sham 
 socialism and a sham democracy, and resting on the 
 primitive distrust of the foreigner, lives in the end 
 by war. , 
 
 The cure, then, is obvious. Remove or sufficiently 
 relax the danger of war, and establish genuine democracy. 
 Democracy is the child of peace, and we know by experi- 
 ence that in time of war it ceases to exist. Democracies 
 will do foolish things. In the present phase of opinion 
 
NATIONALISM 75 
 
 they would be only too likely to discriminate against 
 foreigners and to fall into many of the other specious 
 absurdities committed by their present rulers. They 
 might add to these other fresh absurdities of their own. 
 But they do not love war or military training, and they 
 have a proper distrust of strong government. The 
 worst kinds of internal oppression and exploitation they 
 simply cannot commit. It is certain that, separated 
 from democracy, nationality is a most dangerous 
 principle. It is probable that, allied with democracy, 
 its worst dangers would be removed. It is highly 
 improbable that nationality can be deprived, as Professor 
 Zimmern would desire, of all political significance. It 
 will remain for the present a cardinal political fact. 
 The only practical course is to accept this fact, to 
 recognise its valua, and to work, where we can, for the 
 realisation of Mazzini's ideal of the democratic nation. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 
 
 You are all soldiers in one army . , . God alone has the 
 plan of battle, and He at length will unite you in a single camp, beneath 
 3 single banner. 
 
 Mazzini, Duties of Man, ch. IV. 
 
 § 13. Barbarian and Foreigner — The problem. 
 
 In the Dialogue of Plato called the Statesman,* the 
 leader of the discttssion accuses his interlocutor of an 
 error in classification. He is asked to explain. " The 
 error," he says, " was just as if someone who wanted to 
 classify the human race were to divide them up after 
 the fashion which prevails in this part of the world. 
 Here they cut off the Hellenes as one species, and all the 
 other species of mankind, which are innumerable and 
 have no ties or common language, they include under 
 the single name of barbarians ; and because they have 
 one name they are supposed to form a single species." 
 Later he adds an illustration : " Some wise and under- 
 standing creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, 
 might in imitation of you make a similar division, and 
 set up cranes against all other animals, to their own 
 
 * 363-3. Jowett's Plato, Vol. IV., p. 458-9 (translation slightly 
 altered). 
 
 76 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 77 
 
 special glorification, at the same time jumbling together 
 all the others, including man, under the appellation of 
 brutes." The speaker was a visitor to Athens from one 
 of the Greek settlements in Southern Italy, and perhaps 
 he felt and resented the suspicion that one who came 
 from those distant regions must be a barbarian, or at 
 least soiled by contact with barbarians. He complains that 
 this division into Greeks and barbarians is not a reason- 
 able point of departure for the study of human affairs. 
 The citizen of every modern State performs a similar 
 bisection or dichotomy upon the body of humanity. 
 There are his own people and there are foreigners, the 
 one familiar, intelligible, reasonable ; the other strange, 
 remote, incalculable, uncouth. Englishmen who go 
 to live in places hke South Africa, where races are mixed, 
 are forced to attempt some rudimentary classification 
 of the varied mass of foreigners. A coloured man is not 
 a foreigner at all, but a black or a nigger, and among 
 whites he recognises a main distinction between ** Dutch- 
 men " and " Dagoes." But to the mass of men who have 
 no contact with coloured races and do not live near a 
 frontier, the supreme and overriding distinction, the 
 point of departure in all thought that travels beyond 
 their own Society, is the distinction between their own 
 people and the foreigner. This distinction is in some 
 ways more unreasonable than the one critidsed ia 
 Plato's Dialogue. Greece or Hellas was not the name 
 
78 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 of any political unit, but stood for a civilisation, united 
 by a common language, and scattered in small inde- 
 pendent communities along the Mediterranean sea- 
 board. The non-Greek populations, with which these 
 communities were immediately in touch, were in general 
 at a much lower level of social and political development. 
 There was therefore some excuse for distrust and 
 depreciation of the barbarian. There is no similar 
 justification for the undertone of contempt with which 
 the word foreigner is commonly used.* And there is 
 more danger in such an attitude : for with us the dis- 
 tinction is political. Our countries are what Greece 
 was not, solid and ambitious powers ; on whose ability 
 to live in peace and friendliness with one another the 
 happiness of the western world largely turns. Thus 
 the patriotism which binds men to the State has reinforced 
 the sense of nationality which joins together men of 
 common language and traditions : and the resulting 
 divisions are embittered by the memories of rivalry 
 and warfare, of the bluff and boasting, the deceit and 
 double-dealing, of generations of patriotic statesmen. 
 Instead of a comparatively innocent racial pride, justified 
 on the whole by the facts, we have the sensitive vanities 
 
 * In the summer of 1914 an eminent English general, addressing 
 a School O.T.C. after an inspection, told them that their hair was too 
 long ; it made them look like "foreigners or civilians." In fact, of course, 
 men's hair is habitually cut shorter in most European countries than 
 in England. 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 79 
 
 and incompatible ambitions of a number of large com- 
 raumtics> inter-dependent and inter-related in a thousand 
 ways, but each jealously guarding its exclusiveness, 
 each strong enough to be a potential danger to the rest, 
 and each convinced that the cause of civilisation is bound 
 up with its own prosperity and aggrandisement. It 
 might seem that, as compared with the Greeks of the 
 fourth century before Christ, we have lost, not gained ; 
 that the common dichotomy has only become more 
 absurd and pernicious in the course of its history. 
 
 This sets the problem which we have now to face. 
 Accepting patriotism as the duty to serve the State with 
 a free man's service, accepting nationality as the deter- 
 minant of State boundaries and as the natural comple- 
 ment and ally of democracy in government, we have 
 to consider the resulting relations of the groups so 
 constituted. There is, of course, a short way out of 
 this difficulty. We are often urged to put aside patriotism 
 and nationality as childish things, unfit for grown and 
 educated men ; we are told that until this is done there 
 is no hope that any international organisation can be 
 anything but a covert scramble for power between the 
 nations.* But we are already committed to a different 
 
 * This appears to be a very widespread opinion, at any rate in the 
 middle classes, at the present time, though of course the conclusion 
 usually drawn is not that patriotism and nationality must go, but that 
 international organisations have no future. More than once recently 
 I have taken part in examinations in which questions raising this 
 point have been set. At least nine out of ten of the schoolboy candidates 
 thought patriotism a serious obstacle to a League of Nations. 
 
8o PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 view. We cannot see our way to dispensing either 
 with patriotism or with nationality. If, therefore, we 
 are to help to build a wider organisation than that of 
 the nation-state, it must be a society of nations ; and if 
 such an organisation is to have real life and success, it 
 must not merely not conflict with state-patriotism ; it 
 must actually enlist this patriotism in its service. We 
 have to convince ourselves that patriotism and national 
 feeling can help in the foundation of an international 
 order, and that the traditional dichotomy, so far as it is 
 necessarily involved in these attitudes, may at least be 
 rendered harmless and inoffensive. In short, our question 
 is this. Given nations, or political units approximating 
 to nations, what sort of a world will they, or might 
 they, form ? 
 
 § 13. The basis of Government. Two Alterna- 
 tives FOR THE Society of Nations. 
 
 It must be taken for granted that every nation will 
 in the main seek- its own prosperity and advancement. 
 All that one can hope is that these will not be too 
 crudely conceived. Actions of generosity or self- 
 abnegation are quite conceivable, but they will always 
 be exceptional. It is therefore absurd to suppose that 
 an international order can be made by appeals to the 
 moral feeling of mankind. This is not cynicism ; it 
 is common sense. Man cannot live by moral heroism ; 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 8i 
 
 and before he can do anything else, he has to live. An 
 organisation based upon nothing but moral and humani- 
 tarian sentiments has no roots. It could at most enjoy 
 snatches of life in favourable conjunctions of circum- 
 stance. What is continuous and calculable in the life 
 of communities, as in that of individuals, is the steady 
 pull of the economic interest ; and on this in the last 
 resort all government, all permanent organisations must 
 be based. Before all else an organisation must pay. 
 
 The institution called the State (which may stand 
 for government in general) is firmly rooted, if any is ; 
 and we may therefore be certain that it pays, or has 
 hitherto paid. It should help us to arrive at a possible 
 form for an international order if we first consider what 
 is the secret of its success. One of the first English 
 writers who tried to answer this question, Thomas 
 Hobbes, said that government was the only alternative 
 to the endless warfare of man with man, which follows 
 naturally, in the absence of government, from the desire 
 of each individual for his own prosperity and advance- 
 ment. Such warfare unchecked would reduce men to 
 a state of utter misery and destitution. A century later, 
 John Locke saw the secret of government in the 
 provision that no man is to be a judge in his own cause. 
 Both of these statements have a substantial truth, and 
 fundamentally they are in agreement. When men 
 quarrel and there is no third party authorised to intervene 
 
82 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 on their invitation or without it, war results, and in war 
 each is a judge in his own cause. But the institution 
 of a third party, an umpire* or arbitrator, plainly does 
 not prevent war, in this general sense of unlimited 
 competition ; it only provides a machinery for cutting 
 it short. If government consisted only of courts of 
 arbitration, it might be an occasional, even a frequent 
 convenience ; but it would not be the necessity which 
 nearly all men now think it. The State in fact intervenes 
 in private disputes not as an arbitrator but as a judge, 
 declaring to the disputants the will and practice of the 
 community, and enforcing its declarations where 
 necessary. The advance lies in the existence of an 
 enforceable will and practice, by inference from which 
 individual rights can be determined and disputes thus 
 avoided. Arbitration is occasioned by a dispute, and the 
 umpire's vision is more or less narrowly confined to 
 the matter of the dispute. Law puts whole classes of 
 questions beyond the region of dispute ; and the crimes, 
 wrongs, and differences actually brought into court 
 are as nothing to the. disputes and discomforts which 
 law by its existence prevents. For law exists outside 
 courts and independently of them, while arbitration 
 exists only in them. 
 
 * " Umpire " is Locke's word. In his Civil Government, Bk. II., 
 ch. VII., he seems to think of government primarily as existing for the 
 purpose of settling disputes. But this is, of course, not the whole of 
 his account of . government. 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 83 
 
 The expression of a common will in the form of law 
 is made possible by a rough and ready empirical dis- 
 crimination between matters of public, and matters of 
 merely private, concern. The distinction can only be 
 temporary and empirical. To decide in general and 
 for all communities what matters belong to either class 
 would be impossible, and any attempt to erect the 
 reigning distinction into a theory (such as J. S. Mill 
 seems inclined to make in his Liberty) is therefore 
 certain to be a failure. But in practice discrimination 
 is not hopelessly difficult. In one matter after another 
 unlimited competition between private individuals and 
 corporations is found unsatisfactory. Sometimes, as 
 in the England of the industrial revolution, the com- 
 munity finds itself threatened with disaster ; sometimes, 
 as in the case of private tram and water companies in 
 modern times, it is led to act merely by small incon- 
 veniences or by the perception that the public interest 
 demand^ something which the motive of private profit 
 will not supply. In either case the result is similar. 
 The sphere of government is extended. Private compe- 
 tition in a particular region is either limited or altogether 
 suspended. Factory legislation throws its ample net 
 over the private employer of labour, and municipal 
 trams and water come into being as communal mono- 
 polies. In general, if private competition in any 
 sphere gives rise to sufficient inconvenience, and that 
 
,84 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 inconvenience appears to be removable by common action, 
 the appropriate action tends to be taken, and governments 
 with their apparatus of law, justice and administration, 
 exist to take it on behalf of the community. It follows 
 naturally that when a government wishes to break out 
 in a new direction, to regulate factories for the first time 
 or in fresh ways, or to administer directly some business, 
 like coal-mining, which has hitherto been in private 
 hands, the burden of proof is with it. It has to show 
 that the existing methods are irremediably unsatisfactory. 
 For the same reason, its action, whether considered 
 necessary or unnecessary, is commonly regarded as 
 ** interference." Governments, when they encroach in 
 this way on private enterprise, are interfering with an 
 established right or vested interest, deducible from the 
 laws which their innovations disturb. 
 
 Apart from a few theoretical anarchists, whose 
 proposed alternative is rather an aspiration than a 
 considered plan, and in spite of much difference of 
 opinion as to the proper forms and organs of government, 
 everyone is agreed that government, in some such sense 
 as this, is a remunerative investment. To the question, 
 What is the most suitable area of government ? not much 
 thought has been devoted, and practice has differed 
 widely in different places and at different times. 
 Analysis of practice is complicated by the fact that there 
 have always been governments within governments. 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 85 
 
 Even in the Greek city the parts often enjoyed a certain 
 independence ; and in modern times organisations which 
 to everything outside them are single wholes, may be 
 composed of parts which, as in Germany or the United 
 States, claim to be themselves States. This means that 
 in practice the functions of government tend to be 
 divided between the central authority, which speaks for 
 the whole area, and locally restricted authorities, which 
 divide up this area between them. But no two countries 
 agree in the relation established between the central 
 and local authorities, or in the fashion and degree of 
 independence allowed to the latter ; some, like France, 
 allow them very little independence. Thus political 
 practice recognises different areas of government for 
 different purposes ; and this makes it difficult to speak 
 of the area of government in general terms. We may, 
 however, say that an area is under one government 
 when and so far as its people is able to act as a whole 
 in some departments of pohcy, internal and external, 
 and when all authorities within it, whatever their rela- 
 tion, derive their powers from a single source. The 
 geographical areas called Germany, Switzerland, and 
 the United States, are plainly each under one govern- 
 ment in this sense ; but the British Empire is seen to 
 possess unity only in a very slight degree, since the 
 self-governing Dominions are independent of London 
 in much of their external relations (e.g., in regard to 
 
86 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 tariffs), while the people of the non-self-governing 
 territories are definitely subject communities, not 
 forming an integral part of the whole. Further, the 
 shadow of unity of government which exists is made 
 still more unsubstantial by the fact that the responsible 
 goyernment in London, in which the central control is 
 vested, is representative only of the people of the British 
 Isles, and has therefore no moral authority to interfere 
 with the action of the Dominions, Their peoples have 
 no access to it, and it has practically no access to them, 
 except through their governments. This fact sharply 
 differentiates the British Empire from all Federal States. 
 For in every Federal State the central authority' has 
 direct communication with, and is directly responsible 
 to, the peoples which form the federation. 
 
 Leaving empires out of account, but including 
 federations, we may say that history records a fairly 
 constant tendency towards the effective enlargement 
 of the area of government. Not only have larger areas 
 been brought under a single government, but central 
 authorities have tended to increase their range of legis- 
 lative and administrative action. But the process of 
 enlarging the area of government seems now to have 
 reached ah end, at least for the time being. The principle 
 of nationality, though it helped the unification of 
 Germany, has on the whole tended rather to the increase 
 than to the diminution of the number of independent 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 87 
 
 governments. Out of Turkey and Austria-Hungary 
 have been created, in its name or with its sanction, a 
 number of comparatively small independent States ; 
 and critics of nationality, beginning with Lord Acton, 
 have appealed, in the name of progress, against 
 nationality on this ground. Professor Zimmern,* for 
 instance, says : " Sympathy with small nationalities has 
 led many unthinking people to a wholly unjustified 
 admiration for small States, regardless of the fact 
 that, for all practic^ purposes, they are as great an 
 anachronism in the large-scale world of to-day as the 
 stage-coach and the sailing-ship, and other relics of a 
 vanished past." 
 
 These are some of the facts and principles which 
 have to be taken into account in considering the 
 possibilities of a formally organised Society of Nations. 
 They suggest a number of alternatives. The hypothesis 
 of an Empire of the West under the rule of America, f 
 or of some European power, may be dismissed. Like 
 all empire, it would have an irreconcilable enemy in 
 the nationalism and patriotism of every subject people. 
 Apart from this, two main lines of development are 
 possible. The nations which are able and willing to 
 form the Society might be content to establish a common 
 * Nationality and Government, p. 71. 
 
 t It is interesting to note that this idea of an American conquest 
 of Europe occurred to Fichte in 1806. He used the hypothesis as an 
 argument in favour of the unification of Germany. 
 
88 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 court of arbitration for the peaceful settlement of mutual 
 disputes, backed perhaps by some kind of permanent 
 alliance against enemies outside the group. Or they 
 might be willing to go further, and attempt to bring 
 their territories for some purposes under a single 
 government. In this case they would probably associate 
 on some federal basis. Our next task is to examine 
 these two alternative possibilities. 
 
 § 14. (i.) A League of Governments. 
 
 The first alternative is, on paper at least, familiar, 
 since it is in substance the plan embodied in the existing 
 Covenant of the League of Nations. The Covenant 
 institutes for the nations which adopt it a permanent 
 machinery for the settlement of disputes among them 
 by arbitration, backed by a permanent alliance against 
 aggression from without. There are phrases in the 
 Covenant which contain suggestions of a more drastic 
 plan ; but it was assumed, rightly or wrongly, by the 
 framers of the Covenant, that no nation would tolerate 
 any interference with its " sovereignty," and this 
 assumption excluded the possibility of conferring on 
 the League any of the essential attributes of a government. 
 By Article 33, however, the members of the League 
 undertake to " establish and maintain the necessary 
 international organisation " for the maintenance of fair 
 and humane conditions of labour, and also to " entrust 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 89 
 
 the League with the general supervision over " the 
 armament trade and certain other matters. Article 24 
 provides that the League may take over existing inter- 
 national bureaux or commissions, and shall control 
 any such bureaux established in the future. The 
 registration of treaties (Article 18) may be regarded 
 as incidental to the function of arbitration ; but these 
 permanent bureaux, in which the suggested labour 
 organisations may perhaps be included, fall outside the 
 notions of arbitration and alliance. On the other hand, 
 since the bureau occupies only the position of an adviser 
 of the various nations concerned, it is no less clear that 
 its function is not government. This side of the 
 League's work is a natural and valuable extension of the 
 possibilities of voluntary co-operation between nations, 
 which was already before the war a familiar fact in such 
 matters as copyright. The advance lies in the provision 
 made for the consideration, not merely of matters which 
 occasion disputes between nations, but of common 
 problems, of difficulties with which each government 
 has to grapple in its own territory. On this side, there- 
 fore, the Covenant of the League may be said to contain, 
 as it were in embryo, that notion of a common will and 
 policy which is the backbone of government ; but the 
 absence of power to enforce this will leaves it in the 
 embryo stage. 
 
 Another suggestion of a wider conception of the 
 
90 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 League is contained in the provision for the government 
 of certain territories by a member of the League under 
 a mandate (Article aa). Principles and methods of 
 government are to be laid down by the League and 
 enforced upon the mandatory member. The territories 
 concerned are those " which are inhabited by peoples 
 not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous 
 conditions of the modern world," but only if, in conse- 
 quence of the late war, new rulers have to be found 
 for them. Since the nations victorious in the war have 
 already succeeded in arranging for the government of 
 most of these territories without reference to the League, 
 the power of mandate is not likely to be of much effect 
 for some time to come. If vested interests had been 
 less tenderly treated, and if the relation of the League 
 to the Supreme Allied Council had been more carefully 
 defined, this article of the Covenant would have been a 
 new departure of the very first importance. Even as 
 things are, much may come of it ; but it is equally possible 
 that it will turn out to be an empty form. Anyhow, the 
 power vested under it in the League is certainly oi the 
 nature of government. The independence of the con- 
 stituent nations is actually limited, so far as they admin- 
 ister mandates under the League ; but, in the first place, 
 it is empire,* and not government proper, which is in 
 
 * That is to say, subject communities. Government proper, how- 
 ever absolute it may be, is never a control imposed upon a commimity 
 by another community in which it is not included 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 91 
 
 question, and in the second place, all existing rights 
 remain unaffected. Thus the new conception is 
 introduced in very tentative fashion. 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter into further detail as to the 
 Covenant of the League. Our object is not to criticise 
 the Covenant, or to suggest possible lines of amendment, 
 but simply to define in general the relation estabUshed 
 between the nations which have adopted it. We have 
 probably said enough to show what the general con- 
 ception is, which is embodied in the Covenant. The 
 new organisation does not replace or render tmnecessary 
 any part of the existing machinery of the States con- 
 cerned ; it is something super-added to that machinery, 
 which is left entirely untouched. Embassies, foreign 
 offices, and foreign secretaries retain precisely the 
 positions which they held before. For them and their 
 governments the League provides a permanent possibility 
 of advice, an occasional resource in a diflRculty, and cer- 
 tain obligations, analogous to those entailed by ententes 
 and alliances in the past, which should exert a continuous 
 influence on policy. It follows logically from this 
 conception that the nations present themselves to the 
 League as units or individuals, since the League is 
 external to them.* Hence they have access to the League, 
 and the League to them, only through their governments. 
 
 * " In relation to what is external to it, it [the body politic] becomes 
 a simple being, an individual." Rousseau, Social Contract, L, vii. 
 
93 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 It has often been suggested that the Covenant should 
 have made provision for the representation of peoples 
 as well as of governments in the parliament of the 
 League. President Wilson is said to have supported 
 this view. If those who framed the Covenant had 
 intended to institute a super-national government, they 
 would no doubt have made such provision ; but in that 
 case the representation of governments would have been 
 unnecessary, just as it has been proved unnecessary in 
 existing federal constitutions. Since their ideas were 
 rather those of alliance and arbitration, they were 
 consistent in avoiding this complication. For these 
 purposes the representation of governments is essential, 
 and any popular assembly they might have devised 
 could have existed only in a purely advisory capacity. 
 A popularly elected assembly would give an opening to 
 determined minorities in the larger countries which 
 cannot logically be given them under the present 
 Covenant. All that could be granted without confusion 
 is the opportunity of airing grievances j and the value 
 of this is doubtful when there is no concurrent responsi- 
 bility for remedying them. 
 
 This, then, is one alternative — a League in which 
 each nation is represented by its existing government, 
 standing for a definite policy, a League which advises 
 and so influences policies in their formation, which 
 mediates, and so breaks the harshness of their oppositions, 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 93 
 
 which arbitrates and conciliates, and so ends and com- 
 promises their occasional deadlock, a League to end 
 conflict, after it has begun. National and patriotic 
 sentiment may be touchy and stupid ; but surely, apart 
 from excess of conservatism, it could hardly resist a 
 League framed in this spirit. The nation, the State, 
 even the Empire, remain what they were, with an 
 enhanced security of existence, which would have been 
 still further increased if the allies had taken the pre- 
 caution of insisting that their former enemies should at 
 once become members of the League. One might have 
 expected that nationalism, where it is satisfied and 
 victorious, would have rushed to join this League. If 
 it did not, that is because our imperialists feared a League 
 of another kind, a League which their own opposition 
 prevented ; and because they are still not quite convinced 
 of the completeness of their victory. 
 
 § 15. {ii,) A Federation of Peoples. 
 
 The second main alternative offered was that of a 
 federal union of nations, constituting a genuine super- 
 national authority. The existing League of Nations is 
 invited, as we have seen, to exercise in certain ways an 
 influence upon governments, to correlate and advise 
 them, even in certain circumstances to contemplate 
 their coercion. A development or strengthening of 
 the League would necessarily follow the same lines. 
 
94 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 The conference of governments, of which the League 
 essentially consists, might in course of time acquire 
 power to enforce its decision on its members, and so 
 come to exercise a quasi-legislative function. But any 
 such development would inevitably be attended with 
 endless friction and dissatisfaction. The matters with 
 which the Conference dealt would necessarily be matters 
 with which the Parliaments of the nations were also 
 competent to deal ; hence the conference would find 
 itself attempting to compromise differences instead of 
 formulating a common will and policy. While it 
 remains a conference of governments it will be, in 
 principle, less a government than a Court of Arbitration. 
 Compulsory arbitration is never a very attractive 
 formula, even in the hands of an established government. 
 In the hands of a League which is not a government, it 
 would only be too likely to provide either the final proof 
 of the League's impotence or the immediate cause of 
 its violent dissolution. 
 
 The federal alternative would be sharply differ- 
 entiated from the present League in two main respects. 
 In the first place it would constitute an authority to be 
 appointed by, and responsible to, the federating peoples, 
 and to those peoples as a single whole, not as a number 
 of separate national units. There might be a second 
 chamber, as there is in most federal constitutions, in 
 which the federating units were represented as units ; 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 95 
 
 but this need not mean that their governments are 
 represented, and in any case the second chamber in 
 most such cases plays a very secondary part. In the 
 second place, this authority would have direct legisktive 
 and administrative responsibility in such matters as 
 were entrusted to it ; and these matters would be beyond 
 the competence of the national parliaments. There 
 would, therefore, be no question of a direct conflict 
 between the national and super-national authorities. 
 They would be occupied with different matters. This 
 would mean that within the federation the whole 
 machinery of diplomacy would be scrapped completely. 
 Within the federation there would be no question of 
 foreign policy, and relations with countries outside it 
 would be regulated by the central authority. It would 
 mean also that out of the federating nations might be 
 built a single community, with a will and policy of its 
 own, and with a reasonable claim to the service and 
 devotion of the individuals who found themselves 
 within it. Within the limits of the powers entrusted 
 to the central authority, war and competition between 
 nations would be suppressed and the rule of law 
 established. 
 
 It was presumably a world-embracing organisation 
 of this character that floated before Tennyson's mind 
 when he wrote of " the parliament of man, the federa- 
 tion of the world." Such a development is not of course 
 
96 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 inconceivable ; but it is not a very practical possibility. 
 The difiFerences of opinion and of practice, of life and 
 civilisation, among the various races which people the 
 earth are so wide and fundamental, that it is hard to see 
 how, even within a thousand years from now, the world 
 could become one community in this sense. But, even 
 so, a world-federation is not more difficult to conceive 
 than a world-league of nations. Unified world-control 
 of such matters as posts and transports, industrial raw 
 material, even of import and export duties, is by no 
 means impossible at the present time ; in regard to posts, 
 indeed, international control is to some extent a fact.* 
 It is in such matters as this that the necessary economic 
 foundations must be sought for the future Society of 
 Nations. Not by alliances of ever increasing range of 
 complexity, like those which divided the world into two 
 vast armies in the recent war, will the foundations of the 
 future order be laid. Such alliances. tend to divide 
 precisely those who most need to be combined — France 
 and England from Germany, Italy from Austria, Bulgaria 
 from Serbia and Roumania. Nor by occasional confer- 
 ences of Great Powers, seeking to " localise " conflict, 
 and dictating to lesser powers the terms on which they 
 may continue to exist. It is rather in such an institution 
 
 * For a survey of existing international organisatious, see Woolf, 
 International Government, Part II. 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 97 
 
 as the Universal Postal Union,* a genuine organ of 
 government, with authority to make its dedsions binding 
 on the nations, that Tennyson's idea begins to be realised. 
 Examples may also be found, among the lesser powers, 
 of permanent combinations formed without reference 
 to war and on a durable basis of common problems and 
 interests.! Such groupings would no doubt retain 
 their utility within a wider federation. Scandinavia 
 and South America, for instance, offer in this respect 
 a hopeful contrast to the unending rivalries of the Great 
 Powers ; and the pretences of the Concert of Europe 
 arc to some extent balanced by the realities of the 
 Universal Postal Union. These instances suffice to 
 show that super-national government is no mere chimera. 
 It has been frequently said in recent times that the 
 only alternative to war is law. The statement is true 
 and cannot be too often repeated ; but its full implica- 
 tions are not always realised. When this statement is 
 made in reference to the international problem, it is 
 usually followed by proposals for what practically 
 amounts to compulsory arbitration between nations, 
 based on a conception of the relation of nation to nation 
 which necessarily excludes a common law. A law is a 
 rule of action framed by a community for itself 
 
 « For details, see Woolf, {.c. 
 
 t Particulaily the Scandinavian and South American groups. See 
 International Politics, by C. Deltsle Bums, ch. II. 
 
98 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 and enforced upon its members. A common law 
 presupposes a common government. Our existing " inter- 
 national law " may be a useful and admirable structure, 
 but it is not law : it is a form of agreement or treaty. 
 An agreement ends or limits disagreement, and the 
 disagreement of nations is in the end war. The 
 institution of a common law and government does not, 
 of course, remove the possibility of quarrelling and 
 fighting, but it does at once remove the possibility of 
 war, between the governed. The conflict gets a new 
 name, rebellion or civil war, and is thought of as some- 
 thing portentous and disastrous, not as an unfortunate 
 but glorious and heroic adventure. In the stage of 
 treaties and agreements war is a permanent possibility, 
 never forgotten ; it is indeed the ultimate ruling 
 consideration ; but when once common government 
 is established war is out of account; its disturbing 
 influence is removed ; and the real problems set by the 
 actual complicated inter-actions of men can at last be 
 faced and studied. While war is a recognised resource 
 of national governments, military security will be the 
 first consideration with the nations, fatally obstructing 
 the solution of the urgent economic problems of the time. 
 The no-man's-land between the nations will give capital 
 its opportunity for extortion and exploitation, and enable 
 it to escape the benevolent attentions of the home 
 governments. Palliatives are possible, but the only 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 99 
 
 road to cure is the extension of government and the 
 wider rule of law. 
 
 We know that government pays. We see that it 
 commonly evokes from the governed a devotion which 
 is inexplicable to many of its critics. We find that we 
 suffer more from its Umitation than from its defects. 
 But treaties and alliances, courts of arbitration and 
 conciliation, leave men cold. They seem to cause as 
 much trouble as they save ; and they have no touch 
 with the familiar realities of life. An organisation which 
 is to have life and acquire a reputation must be given 
 some necessary work to do and must be made responsible 
 for doing it. It must be, in short, an organ of government, 
 responsible to the individuals whom it governs. 
 
 This is the second alternative h'ne of solution of our 
 problem. By the general judgment of the present 
 time it is regarded as quite visionary and impossible. 
 The reasons given for this view are not our concern 
 here, except in one respect. It is alleged that national 
 patriotism, while suspidous of any international 
 organisation, is inflexibly opposed to an organisation 
 which in any way replaces national government or 
 infringes its sovereignty. Our last task, therefore, is 
 to see how the sentiments of patriotism and nationality 
 are likely to be affected by a development such as has 
 just been suggested. Will they help or hinder either 
 the attempt or its success ? 
 
100 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 § 1 6. Relation of Patriotism and Nationalism to 
 These Alternatives. 
 
 It seems fairly plain that in the long run the idea of 
 a federation of nations has less to fear from the patriot 
 or the nationalist than the idea of a league of governments. 
 The essential claim of the nationalist is that his group 
 is a nation and should be given the political status of a 
 nation. He is not committed irrevocably to any abstract 
 theory as to what national status is. The same rights 
 and privileges as other nations is what he demands. 
 If it can be shown that some function of government 
 requires for its exercise an authority embracing a number 
 of nations, there is nothing in the nationalist creed 
 which should lead him to hesitate to assent to the 
 establishment of such an authority. National self- 
 conceit would perhaps be reluctant to admit that there 
 was an3rthing which the nation was not competent to 
 settle for itself ; but this would be a challenge on the 
 ground of fact which could be met. And it is not easy 
 to see how nationalism should lead a man to fall out 
 with this authority once established. No other nation 
 would be interfering with the affairs of his nation ; no 
 external authority would be over-riding the decisions of 
 his government. Certain matters would have been 
 removed from the control of his national government, 
 but from that of others equally, and placed in the hands 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS loi 
 
 of a wider organisation responsible directly to himself 
 and to all others concerned. It could hardly oifend him 
 that members of other nations should have a voice 
 in deciding matters in which they were directly impli- 
 cated ; and national susceptibility could hardly be touched 
 except in the unlikely event of national rivalries domin- 
 ating the federal convention. In a League, on the other 
 hand, national rivalries are perpetuated. The national- 
 ism of each associated power is thus continually aroused 
 and engaged in support of its own national policy. If 
 a League attempted to coerce any of its members, the 
 act would necessarily be an interference from without, 
 which national sentiment might bitterly resent. 
 
 The difference may be illustrated by an instance 
 which Mr. Woolf* uses for another purpose. " Nothing" 
 he says, " could make a war between Austrians and 
 Serbians as inevitable as a demand on the part of 
 ' Austria ' to interfere in the administration of ' Serbia.' " 
 He is thinking of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia 
 which precipitated the recent war. He agrees that the 
 Austrian demands were unjustifiable ; but he suggests 
 that they were made to appear more monstrous than 
 they really were by a false conception of the State as 
 " an isolated entity, a water-tight compartment of 
 ' national interests,* " a conception " which does not 
 mirror the realities of life and the world as they exist 
 
 • International Government, p. 114. 
 
I03 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 to-day." But surely no such conception is required 
 to justify resentment at a claim by one national govern- 
 ment to interfere administratively virith another. No 
 administration in history has ever admitted such a claim 
 except through fear of superior force. The attempt 
 would be equally resented, and with the same justice, 
 if made by the County Council of Cheshire on the 
 County Council of Lancashire ; but in that case the 
 resentment would find practical expression in the Law 
 Courts, and the conflict would be decided without 
 recourse to arms. The matter is within the jurisdiction 
 of. a community of which the people both of Cheshire 
 and of Lancashire are members, and for this reason the 
 action of the court is not felt to be interference, or to 
 be in any way derogatory to the county spirit of either 
 local group. In the instance given, Austria was in fact 
 claiming to be judge in its own cause. Serbia had 
 offered arbitration, A League of Nations, if it had 
 existed, might have enforced arbitration. A League, 
 certainly, could have intervened with more authority 
 than any single power. But nothing can intervene in 
 such a dispute with full authority except a permanent 
 and established government, the organ of a community 
 in which the disputants are included, responsible, not 
 to the councils or ministers who have fallen out, but 
 directly to the peoples whom they claim to represent. 
 It would be foolish to deny or underrate the practical 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 103 
 
 dfficultics which would confront any proposals for 
 establishing a true super-national government, or 
 federation of nations, in the world we know at the 
 present time. It may well be that some kind of League, 
 with rudimentary organs of government, is the immediate 
 limit of our capacity and opportunity. But mere 
 opportunist improvisation, distorted by present fears 
 and greeds and jealousies, by debts of honour and 
 hopes of vengeance, and unguided by any reflection on 
 ultimate possibilities, is not likely to lay truly the outline 
 of a Society of Nations. It is with these ultimate 
 possibilities, and especially in their connection with the 
 profound and masterful sentiments of patriotism and 
 nationality, that we are here occupied. The main 
 points which we are concerned to establish are two : 
 
 (i) What is wanted is government, not arbitration ; 
 and this requires a federation rather than a League, 
 an organisation of which the normal and essential feature 
 is the representation of peoples, not governments. 
 
 (3) Whatever practical difficulties there may be in 
 establishing or maintaining such a government, these 
 difficulties are not likely to be seriously increased by 
 opposition on grounds of sentiment from nationalists 
 and patriots. These sentiments are in fact hkely to be 
 less troublesome to a genuine super-national government 
 than to the growing powers of a League of Nations. 
 
104 PATRIOTISM AND THE SUPER-STATE 
 
 It is possible to go even a little further. The institu- 
 tion of a common national government does in fact 
 secure that local rivalries within the nation are normally 
 of direct profit to the nation as a whole, because the 
 national government is in a position to prevent com- 
 petition where it would turn to the disadvantage of the 
 whole. In the present almost unorganised society of 
 nations, much, perhaps the greater part, of the ceaseless 
 competition of the members works similarly for the good 
 of the whole. But its benefits are dwarfed and imperilled 
 by the disastrous competition in armaments and empire, 
 and by hostilities which, in the absence of government, 
 competition is certain to create. In whatever sphere 
 competition is allowed, the patriot will support his State 
 and the nationalist his Nation. It is no remedy, even if 
 it were possible, to eradicate these loyalties. This 
 would be to destroy the good with the bad, and to reduce 
 governments to hfeless bureaucracies, inspired by no 
 force or principle except expediency. The remedy is 
 to prevent competition where it is dangerous ; and this 
 can only be done by establishing common government. 
 If this were once achieved, the sentiments of patriotism 
 and nationality would be to the advantage of the world. 
 They would not, of course, lose their crudities, their 
 curious and engaging absurdities ; the primitive dislike 
 of the foreigner would no doubt survive, and sometimes 
 give trouble ; but these aberrations would certainly 
 
THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 105 
 
 tend to diminish with experience in co-operation, and 
 the sentiments themselves would on the whole work 
 for the general advantage of humanity. Under govern- 
 ment, the rivalry of England, France, and Germany, 
 might be as profitable to the world as the rivalry of 
 Yorkshire and Lancashire now is to England. 
 
 We are now, therefore, in a position to give some 
 kind of answer to the queries raised as to the inter- 
 nationalism which in the mind of Mazzitii was involved 
 in the national idea. Nations, we say, will in the main 
 follow what they suppose to be their interest ; and in 
 the pursuit of that interest they will not shrink, if 
 necessary, from " denying their sister nations." It 
 may be that a nation has more generosity and public 
 spirit than a mere political artifice ; but this alone will 
 not carry it far. Certainly this by itself will not avail 
 to solve the urgent international problems that call 
 for co-operative treatment. If co-operation between 
 nations under the forms of government were rendered 
 possible, then nationalism and internationalism would 
 be proved mutually consistent and complementary. 
 
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 BsAiLSFOBD, H. N. : War of Steel and Gold. 1914. Bell, 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 Bdkns, C. D. : International Politics. 1920. Methuen, 5s. net. 
 
 DiccmsoN, G. L. : The European Anarchy. igz6. Allen & Unwin, 
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 Headley Bios., i6, Devoiwhiie St., B.C.a., and Ashford, Kent. 
 
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