I can remember no time in my life when I was not addicted to the study of humanity. The marvels of faces, types, and characteristics were, I feel sure, with me in my cradle. At the age of ten I had evolved a kind of astrological chart of my own, according to which all human beings, including uncles and aunts, grandmothers and children, could be placed in twelve categories. There were the long-nosed, thin-lipped, sandy-haired, over-principled people, who always knew right from wrong and who grudged me an extra chocolate because it was not the hour to have one. There were the snub-nosed, full-lipped, dark-eyed people, whose manners were jolly and who positively encouraged illicit consumption of fruit in the thin-lipped aunt's garden. There were the shortsighted, solemn people with bulging foreheads and studious habits who saw print and nothing else. They bored me and belonged to my eleventh category. As far as I can see now, my categories were a florid elaboration of the four temperaments of Hippocrates, though I have no idea of the cause of my childish absorption in the subject. It was certainly altogether spontaneous and not encouraged, for I have a vivid recollection of how an eager and eloquent description of my categories (profusely illustrated by mimicry) brought me a sharp reprimand and a very nasty tonic. The tonic was taken under compulsion, but the cure is still unaccomplished.

And now for many years I have sat at my chalet window and seen the world go by. The path from the village below to the peaks and pastures above runs past my nest. On it, in the summer months, there was a straggling procession of tourists and climbers, peasants and townsfolk. They were of all nationalities, and their loud voices proclaimed the immutability of the curse of Babel. I used to be annoyed at the close proximity of the path, until, one day, I discovered its marvellous opportunities for anthropological research. Then I settled down, content to limit my wooing of the solitude to the early morning and the late evening, or the time when the wild autumnal gales brush the mountains clear of trippers and paint the surrounding foliage in glorious tints of red and gold. For I assure you the proper study of man is man, and the proper study of woman is both man and woman.

Here comes the Parisian youth with his charming young mamma of forty. His face is pale and distinguÉ, and the black down on his upper lip has been trained with infinite care. Though his grey mountain suit is fashioned for great feats of daring, it has the rounded waist and martial shoulder-lines with which the Parisian tailor pacifies his conscience when he supplies English fashions. His stockings look ferocious. His dark eyes sparkle with inquisitiveness behind the pince-nez. He is vivacity incarnate, he is urbanity on a holiday. Mamma takes his arm and they trip past me. She is pretty, and would be plump if the art of the corsetiÈre had not abolished plumpness. Her hat conveys a greeting from the Rue Lafayette, her little high-heeled boots show faultless ankles and the latest way of lacing up superfluous fat above them. A hole and two uneven stones maliciously intercept the progress of that little foot. Mamma stumbles, and is promptly and chivalrously replaced in an upright position by the son. “Mon Dieu!” she cries; “what a path!” and through my open window there floats the odour of poudre-de-riz disturbed by nervous excitement. Papa follows. He is fat. No one can deny it, and I do not think he would like any one to try. Honesty is writ large on his rotund countenance. Now he is hot and somewhat weary with the climb. He carries his hat under his arm and large pearls of moisture shine on the puckered forehead. His hair is thick and closely cropped, and strives upward with the even aspiration of a doormat. His cheeks are a little sallow and pendulous. He smiles under his thin moustache, the contented smile of an honest, hardworking, successful man. I know him well; I seem to have met him in a hundred editions in the offices of municipalities and prefectures, behind the counters of banks and shops. He is generally amiable, but he can lose his temper, and when he loses it, it is worth your while to help him to find it.

Here comes the Heidelberg professor, accompanied by two fair daughters. He is tall, of commanding presence, and walks with patriarchal gravity under a green umbrella. A large pocket, embroidered and ingeniously designed with numerous compartments, is strapped to his waist. He strokes his long, well-trimmed beard as he admonishes the girls to pay serious attention to the natural beauty of the scenery. He rummages the pocket for his field-glasses. “This, dear children, is Mont Blanc. I do not say that our Schwarzwald is not just as lovely in its way. This mountain was first climbed by Paccard and Balmat. It stretches from the Col de Balme to the Col du Bonhomme and the Col de la Seigne. [A book is now extracted from the fourth division of the pocket.] There are the following passes: the Col d'ArgentiÈre, the Col....” His eye-glasses slip downwards on his nose. The girls are not listening. Gretchen is entirely absorbed in the fascinating appearance of an Italian who has just passed, and who by unmistakable signs conveyed to her that she is adorable. His flashing eyes, his jet-black hair, his lithe figure, his pointed toes, the nimble way in which he managed to press her hand behind the very back of her father, have stirred her imagination. Hedvig is shocked. The elder daughter is permeated with respect for her father's professorial dignity. Every gesture betrays the capable housekeeper. She seems to be made of squares—good, proper, solid squares. She tells the smiling Gretchen, whose cheeks suggest strawberries and cream, that she must never encourage dark Italians by looking at them. She should look at the ground when such men pass. She should be more attentive to father. The sound of their footsteps dies, and the green umbrella is but a dream. Hedvig has filled my window with visions of a well-ordered German home, of sausages and Sauerkraut, of beer and pickled fruit, of embroideries and coffee-parties.

Here comes a hatless representative of young Russia. His clothes are shabby and neglected; he walks with a shuffling, tired movement. But his face is startling. It seems to light up the path with some kind of spiritual fervour. His hair is long and golden, his beard suggests an aureole of virtue, his large blue eyes are penetrating but mild. A confused series of faces flash through my mind—Abraham, Tolstoy, Jesus Christ? Yes, it may seem sacrilegious, but the man is like Jesus Christ. I see now that the likeness is studied, cultivated, impressive. This is one of the intelligentsia who has lingered for a while in Geneva or Lausanne en route for the haunts of spiritual revolution. A din of dear familiar voices now fills the path and seems to shake the tops of the pines. “I guess you won't try that again. I did Munich in one day, Dresden in one and a half, Berlin in two, and Europe in twenty.” Three women and a man stop opposite the chalet. The ladies are charmingly dressed in summer frocks of white and pink and blue, and carry nothing heavier than a parasol. The man is laden with cloaks, rugs, and bags. They peer into my window and try to catch a glimpse of the interior. I hastily draw the curtains and leave one peep-hole for myself. “Quaint houses these Swiss live in,” says one. “It isn't a bad shanty,” says the man. “Let's have a glass of milk,” says another.

“Dew lait,” they shout through the window. I callously observe them through my peep-hole. The man is of a fine American type, sinewy, resolute, hawk-eyed. The mountain sunshine provides me with RÖntgen rays, and I see Wall Street inside his brow. “Dew lait,” they yell. As there is no answer, they hammer at the door. The door is adamant. They leave reluctantly. “I think I saw the face of one of those Swiss idiots through the curtains,” says the lady in pink; “of course he would not understand what we said.”

There is a delightful readiness to jump to conclusions on the part of visitors. Sometimes they are the reverse of flattering, but they are always a source of delighted interest to me. I remember one day, years ago, when I had gone to draw water at the source, which emerges as a thousand diamonds from the rock and then descends into the hollow trunk of a tree and becomes tame and inclined to domesticity. The cows had come for a drink at the same hour, and we had just exchanged a few polite remarks when I found myself observed by an English clergyman. Yes, unmistakably English. His face was prim and clean-shaven, his collar straight and stiff, upon his lips there played a sweet and devout smile. He lifted up the tail of his coat ceremoniously and, selecting a clean stone, seated himself upon it. He radiated condescending kindness.

“Lor a bun,” said he. I asked the cows to excuse me for a moment and turned to him. “Lor a bun,” he repeated, this time with a query. I stared uncomprehendingly. The sweet smile became sweeter. “Lor a bun, ma pettit fille, eh?” At last I understood. “Oh, yes, the water is excellent here,” I replied, “and freezingly cold if you put your fingers in it.” He departed in unceremonious haste.

For some years I have watched the procession of nations on my path. French, German, English, Russian, Austrian, American, Italian—they all brought me a picture of their tribal characteristics, trivial, thumbnail sketches, but nevertheless true to life. It may be urged that holiday-makers do not constitute reliable material for the observation of national peculiarities. I am not so sure. A man on a holiday generally takes his goodwill with him, and endeavours, at least, to restrain his temper and his prejudices. He may fail in the attempt, and be a peevish thing at play, but the attempt will show him at his best. From the hotels below, where the crowds of cosmopolis stayed en pension at reasonable and unreasonable terms, the sound of music and songs visited me in the evening. The nations were waltzing. International peace reigned under the auspices of the Swiss hotel keeper. Forgotten were the ancient feuds of dynasty and religion. Common humanity was uppermost.

And now the nations are at war. The concourse of friendly strangers who used to meet in the hotels is sharply divided into hostile groups. Travel is suspended or severely restricted. The Frenchman who a short time ago raised his glass in friendly salute to the German at the opposite table, who had guided him across the moraine, is now convulsed at the thought that he could ever forget the essentially brutal and inhuman character of all Germans. The German wishes he had dropped the Frenchman into the crevasse. There would then, he argues, have been one less of these treacherous, mean people, whose love of military conquest is only checked by impotence. He remembers Napoleon and the fact that any insignificant-looking chip of the Latin block may one day threaten the heart of Germany. The easy and good-humoured internationalism of tourist-life is at an end.

I do not know to what extent modern facilities for inexpensive travel have helped to establish friendship and understanding between the nations. But I do know that a person who claims to be educated, and who has never travelled abroad, is insufferably boresome. I prefer the society of a mole. The mole does not lecture me on the incalculable advantages of remaining in one's dark passages. I do not shut my eyes to the fact that some people go abroad and come home with their stupidity unmodified by experience. But they have been made uncomfortable, and that is something. A series of pricks of discomfort might dislodge the obstacles to mental circulation. A Swiss hotel may serve to check the contempt which the Philistines of all nations (there is a truly international bond between them) feel at the thought of a foreigner, though the shock of finding oneself amongst such peculiarities of clothes, or frisure, or table-manners may be almost unbearable. “Can you tell me,” said a charming but agitated old lady from Bath one day, “of a hotel where there are no foreigners?” “I am afraid I cannot,” I answered. “The hotel you have in mind would be full of foreigners in Switzerland, and you would but add to their number.”

Even the most cosmopolitan habituÉs of Nice, or Monte Carlo, or Homburg feel the mildly stimulating effect of being in the presence of foreigners. You are interested or disgusted, you are attracted or repelled; your curiosity is aroused; you guess, you weave romances, you make conscious use of the rich material for comparison which lies before you. In Europe, apparently, the nations meet but do not merge. America achieves the miracle. I remember one evening in New York. I had addressed a meeting of good Americans and was coming home in the train. I was tired and unobservant and kept my eyes closed. Suddenly a loud remark in Danish attracted my attention. I looked up at the row of humanity in the long carriage. Sitting opposite me, standing at my side, hanging by the straps, were the nations of the world. The racial types were there: Slavonic, Latin, Teutonic; the skull dolichocephalic and the skull brachycephalic rested side by side without any attempt at mutual evacuation. I could distinguish the faces of Frenchmen, Jews, Englishmen, Japanese, Germans, Poles, negroes, Italians. They did not study one another. They were journeying home from the day's work. A strange homogeneity brooded over the company. America had put her super-stamp on their brows. They were citizens of an all-human country.

What, then, is this mysterious power which seems to master the Old World, whilst it is mastered by the New World? Nationality is clearly a mundane thing. It is not generally suggested that heaven is mapped out into national frontiers; the Christian religion and other faiths are bent on roping in all the nations. The missionaries who are sent out to Africa and China go with the conviction that there is room in heaven for the black and the yellow sinner. True, the black and the yellow man will first have to shed their somewhat irregular appearance and come forth white and radiant, but the belief in the possibility of such a feat is proof positive that we regard the nationality of a man as a transient business. Nationality is local, spirituality universal. Nationality is a form, a mould, a means; spirituality is the essence, the force, the object. The problems of nationality are wrapped up in the problems of personality. A personality is an amalgam of likes and dislikes, of habit and prejudice, the product of circumstances and a will. There is such a thing as multiple personality, and there is also multiple nationality. But the simple measure of nationality is severely natural and elemental. It is rooted in the need of understanding and being understood. It begins with love of self (we do love ourselves, in spite of all assurances to the contrary), family, and tribe. In a world of diversity and uncertainty it envelops us with a comforting assurance that there are creatures who feel and think as we do. It endows us with a group-soul, without which we, like ants and bees, cannot face life. The sense of nationality is but an enlarged sense of personality.

It is a realization of unity which comprises many lesser units. Our household, our village, our country, our constituency, are all independent unities which we deliberately (though not always successfully) press into the service of the greater unity. The lesser unities always run the danger of being superseded by the greater unities. The conditions of soil and climate in a hamlet produce a crop of personalities similar in content and range, a type which we may distinguish by the shape of the nose or the trend of the remarks. Ten neighbouring little hamlets may have their little ways of distinction which separate one from the other, and yet one day—to their dismay—discover that they have greater generalities in common. Once the discovery is made, prudence and common sense demand co-operation. The great nations are built up on the discovery. Italy, Germany, and Great Britain have taken it to heart after endless trials of the smaller unities. America had one severe trial, and then settled down to circumvent and undo the curse of Babel. The sense of separateness, once so precious to Florence, Genoa, and Pisa, could not resist the larger conception of Italy.

There is no reason, historical or logical, why this expansion of the consciousness of unity should not proceed until there is nothing further to include. The recognition of an all-human brotherhood is followed by the realization of an all-animal brotherhood in which the essential likeness of all that breathes and feels is paramount. Personally, I have never found the slightest difficulty in accepting our near relationship to the apes. On the contrary, every monkey I meet—and I have specially cultivated their acquaintance—reminds me sharply of the simian origin of our dearest traditions.

The consciousness of unity and the consequent sense of separateness from some other body or bodies are subject to constant change and surprisingly erratic in their application. A bare hint to the Welshman, the Scotsman, the Breton, the ProvenÇal, or the Bavarian that his national idiosyncrasies do not exist, and you will speedily see a demonstration of them. And yet, a moment ago, they felt entirely British or French or German. Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians have each a keen sense of national separateness (and superiority), but let the tongue of slander touch their common nature, and Scandinavia rises in indignant unity. I have attended many International Congresses, and have observed how easily the party is on the verge of grave national crises. Each alliance musters a good-humoured tolerance of the deficiencies of others. But let an opponent of the whole scheme, for which they have assembled, attack the principle which is sacred to all, and there is an immediate truce and concerted action against the intruder. Russian and German troops have found it necessary to suspend their fighting in order to defend themselves against the attacks of wolves. The hungry pack of wolves, waiting by the trenches at night, presented a force which called for united opposition, and the European war had to wait whilst the men of the opposite armies joined in killing them. When the slaughter of wolves was happily over, the human battle was resumed. Supposing, instead of wolves, an airship of super-terrestrial proportions had brought an army of ten-armed, four-headed, and six-legged creatures, bent on dealing out death to the occupants of the trenches, what would have happened? Supposing the inhabitants of a more cruel and vicious planet than ours (cosmological specialists assure us such exist) developed powers of warfare before which the exploits of Hannibal or Attila paled into insignificance, and learnt the art of destroying life not only in their own world but in others as well? They might come armed with new atmospheric weapons, trailing clouds of suffocating fumes to which resistance with guns and bombs would be utterly ineffectual. The horror of the unknown danger would paralyse the war, batteries would be deserted and the trenches would quickly be internationalized. The sense of our common humanity, outraged at the sight and the smell of the monsters, would assert itself. Generals and statesmen of the belligerent peoples—if any were left to direct the defensive—would hold subterranean meetings, and, forgetting the cause for which they sent men to die nobly but a few days ago, would discuss how they could save the united remnants of humanity by strategy and simulation.

The sense of unity is, after all, dependent on innumerable conditions and circumstances over which we have little control. There is the unity of tradition and education, of Eton and Harrow, of Oxford and Cambridge. It moulds opinion and imposes certain restrictions of conduct and prejudices in outlook. Rivalry is an indispensable and normal adjunct of such unity. Races and the honour and glory of one's school and team can stir the group-soul to incredible heights of enthusiasm and effort. There is the instinctive unity of seafarers. Who has not, when crossing the ocean, felt that he was part of a small world independent and isolated from others, but bound together by special ties of adventure? An encounter with an iceberg will bring the common responsibilities and dangers to the notice of the most inveterate individualist, but even while the ship moves uneventfully forward, he, perforce, shares the feeling of oneness. There is the humorous unity which will seize the opposing parties in a court of law and make them join in laughter at some feeble judicial joke just to experience the relief of forgetting that they are there to be contentious.

The advocates of the theory that nations and nationalities are eternally distinct and separate can see no analogy of unity in the simple examples of everyday life. They tell us conclusively that England is England and France is France, and our humble retort that we know as much and something besides is silenced by the further information that each nation has a soul that will tolerate no interference from other souls. They forget, our apostles of the creed of separateness, that the States of to-day are built up on a vast mixture of races and nationalities. They forget, also, that nationality is not a fixed and immovable quantity. Like personality, it is alive and changing, susceptible to influence and experience, liable to psychic contagion from the thoughts and emotions of others. There is no pure nationality. Hybrids are regarded as inferior creatures, as biological outlaws. The truth is, we are all hybrids. Our bluest blood has all the shades of common colour in it when examined ethnically. Great Britain—and Ireland—contains a mixture of Romans, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and Celts. To-day, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish are mixtures within mixtures. And what is the British Empire? A conglomeration of races and languages, a pan-national product of conquest and colonization, in which the forces of racial modification are always at work obliterating old divisions and creating new claims to national recognition.

The Russian Empire, sown by Vikings, Slavs, and Mongols, has a rich racial flora, including Germans, Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Letts, Roumanians, Afghans, Tartars, Finns, and scores of others. The Great Russians, the White Russians, and the Little Russians may each claim to have sprung from the purest Russian stock, but no one has as yet been able to settle satisfactorily the meaning of that claim. The Russians have successively been proved to be of Mongol, Slav, Teutonic, Aryan, Tartar, Celto-Slav, and Slav-Norman origin. Italy, believed to be the home of pure Latin blood, has sheltered and mingled a great number of races, such as Egyptians, Greeks, Spaniards, Slavs, Germans, Jews, and Normans. The Republics of Central and South America are to a large extent peopled by half-breeds. Here the commingling is flagrant and offensive to the partisan of the superiority of the white race. Spain in Mexico and Portugal in Brazil have produced a wild-garden crop which is the despair of the custodian of racial law and order. The search for national purity brings many unexpected discoveries and destroys various theories. It reveals the fact that America has no monopoly of racial amalgamation.

France and Germany appear to us as opposites and irreconcilables. Yet, if you pursue Germany to the hour of her birth you will find that her mother was France. Examine France physiologically and you will find that her muscles and arteries have a German consistency. A thorough investigation of the origins of Germany may prove that she is more Gaulish than Gaul. The Germanic invasions of France are matters of elementary history. Originally a mixture of Ligurians, Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, she is only Latin in part. CÆsar conquered Gaul, but the Roman mixture has not obliterated previous or subsequent additions. The Latin blood of France was thoroughly diluted by Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Vandals, Normans, and other peoples of Germanic stamp. When Gaul was partitioned into the Burgundian kingdom, Austrasia, and Neustria, there were already present the selective processes which, centuries later, shaped the French and the German souls. Neustria clung to Roman culture, whilst Austrasia nurtured the seeds of the specific Kultur which attained its full bloom in the twentieth century. Through rivalry and war the two types persisted. Charlemagne crushed the rebellious Saxon spirit and conquered Bavaria. He unified the divergent tendencies, but only for a time. In 843 his empire was partitioned. France grew out of the western portion, Germany out of the eastern. Lotharingia or Lorraine was established as a middle kingdom. Did kind Fates design it as a guarantee of peace and stability?

The Germans are apt to claim for themselves a pure and Valhallic origin, an exceptionally unmixed descent of the highest attributes. The primogenial origin may be hidden in obscurity, but the German people have absorbed Gauls, Serbs, Poles, Wends, and a medley of Slav and Celtic races which confound all claims to racial purity. Slavs settled in Teutonic countries and Teutons settled in Slavonic countries. The German colonists who invaded Russia at the invitation of Catherine II were imported to strengthen Russia, just as the Great Elector helped thousands of Huguenots fleeing from France to settle in Brandenburg, and gave them the rights of citizenship for the sake of the vitality which they would impart to his depopulated country.

The belief in the unalloyed purity of races and the consequent battles for national exclusiveness seem to be founded on one of those gigantic illusions which hold humanity captive for centuries. Here, as elsewhere, knowledge will spell freedom. When we realize that here and now nations are in course of transformation, that the divisions of the past are not the divisions of to-day, and that we, despite conservatism and resistance, are made to serve as ingredients in some great mixture of to-morrow, momentous questions arise. Are nations made by war and conquest? Are peoples amalgamated by oppressive legislation? Do political alliances between States create international unities?

Such alliances have not in the past caused any organic union. The nations have met like partners at a ball and danced to the tune of the dynastic or religious quarrel which happened to be paramount at the time. The grouping of nations in alliances has simply been a means of more effective prosecution of military campaigns, a temporary convenience to be discarded when no longer needed. If the example of the past is to be followed, then Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and America, though holding hands now, will separate when the war is over, and may find it necessary to use the same hands for chastizing each other. Alliances have been political games and devices, useful or useless according to the shrewdness of their instigators, but of no value in promoting love between nations. Old-time enemies become friends, and old-time friends become enemies at the command of the political drill-sergeant. England was the hereditary enemy of France. Prussia was the ally of England. In the war of the Austrian succession, France in alliance with Prussia fought England and Austria. During the Seven Years War Prussia, allied to England, fought Austria allied to France. England, allied to France and Turkey, fought Russia in the Crimea. Turn the kaleidoscope of history and you see the English driven out of Normandy, Napoleon defiling Moscow, the Russians attacking Montmartre. Any schoolboy, can trace the changing partners in the grand alliances of the past, or refuse to commit them to memory on account of the bewildering fluctuations in international friendship.

A fiery common hate, though acting as a powerful cement for a time, is no guarantee of durability. Napoleon and the French were hated by the nations, as Wilhelm and the Germans are hated to-day. Rapacious designs for hegemony have always brought about a corresponding amount of defensive unity on the part of those whose independence was threatened. Whether it is Spain or France or Germany that dreams of world-supremacy, the result is international combination. Richelieu and Bismarck rouse the same resentment. A great hatred cannot by itself create a lasting unity, for hatred is apt to grow out of bonds, and, having settled its legitimate prey outside the circle, generally ends by turning on its neighbours within it.

Who can deny that nations have been made by conquest? Heroic self-defence, anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable to amalgamation. A few decades, a few centuries, and there is fusion between oppressor and oppressed. Hence the loyalty of conquered nations to their foreign masters, at times, when rivals vainly hope for trouble. Hence the indisputable fact that many a nation which but a short time ago fought valiantly for liberty now manifests not only passive resignation, but positive contentment. If, on the other hand, the psychological factors do not favour amalgamation, the legacy of resentment and opposition is handed on from generation to generation and the injury is never forgiven. Cases of contented acceptance are quoted as evidence of the ultimate blessings of war by the adherents of the theory that efficient military measures constitute right. To me they are rather evidence of the strength and endurance of the pacifying forces in human life, and of the sovereignty of the greater unities which draw nations together. If, in spite of the injuries and devastations of war, it is possible for men to forgive and to labour for the same social ends, that is surely proof that the peoples erect no barrier to brotherhood. The truth is, war sometimes achieves that which pacific settlement and free intercourse always achieve.

History has a cavalier way of recording the benefits of conquest. The feelings of the great conquered receive scant consideration. It is enough that after the passage of some centuries we contemplate the matter and declare the conquest to have been beneficial. Was not France invigorated by the wild Northmen who overran her territories and settled wherever they found settlement advantageous? The Normans, originally pirates and plunderers, intermingled with the gentler inhabitants of France. When they turned their eyes to England they were already guardians of civilization. And we blandly record the Norman conquest of England as an unqualified benefit, as an impetus to social amenity, art, learning, architecture, and religion. Protests are useless. The earth abounds in instances of the spread of knowledge, inventions, culture, through war and subjugation. The “rude” peoples who cried out at the outrage, and who fain would have kept their rudeness, receive no sympathy from posterity.

This, I repeat, is no argument for the perpetuation of the old ways of aggression. We have reached a new consciousness and a new responsibility. We see better ways of spreading the fruits of civilization. In the past ambition and brute force, hatred and suspicion, fear and deceit, have had full play. In spite of barbaric warfare and Machiavellian politics the human desire for unity and co-operation has not been uprooted.

The principle of nationality is emerging from the tortuous confusion of the ages. We see that it follows no arbitrary rules of state or empire. It is a law unto itself: the law of mental attraction and community. The centres of passionate nationhood—Poland, Finland, Ireland—withstand all attempts at suppression. You cannot break a strong will to national independence by sledge-hammer blows. In all the wars of the past nations have been treated with contemptuous indifference to the wishes of the people. They were there to be seized and used, invaded and evacuated at a price, to be bought and sold for some empirical or commercial consideration. In the treaties of peace, princes and statesmen tossed countries and populations to each other as if they had been balls in a game of chance.

A new conception of human dignity and of the inviolability of natural rights now demands a revaluation of all the motives and objects for which governments send subjects to battle. Democracy is finding her international unity. A great many wars of the past are recognized as having been, not only unnecessary, but positively foolish. The force of an idea is threatening to dispel the force of arms. The idea which rises dominant out of the European war is the conviction that nations have a right to choose their own allegiance or independence; that there must be freedom instead of compulsion; that real nationality is a psychological state, a tribute of sympathy, a voluntary service to which the mind is drawn by affection. To some who lightly praised the idea, treating it as an admirable prop to war, the consequences and application will bring dismay. For here you have the pivot of a social revolution such as the world has never yet seen. It cannot only remain a question of Belgium, or Serbia, or Alsace-Lorraine. It will inevitably be retrospective and prospective. It cannot be limited to the possessions of Germany or Austria or Turkey. It will not pass over India, South Africa, and Egypt. All empires have been extended by conquest of unwilling nationalities. Bitter wars have been fought in Europe for colonial supremacy in other continents. The unwilling tribes of Africa, Asia, and America who have been suppressed or exterminated to make room for the expanding nations of Europe knew little of the liberty of choice which has now become the beacon of militant morality. The principle—if triumphant—will be destructive of empire based on military force. It will be destructive of war, for war is national compulsion in its most logical and uncompromising form. If there is nothing and nobody to conquer, if you may not use armies to widen your national frontiers, or to procure valuable land for economical exploitation, the incentive to war will be removed. The principle will be constructive of a commonwealth of nations, and empires which have achieved a spiritual unity will survive the change of form.

Nationality may be merely instinctive. It is characterized by the my-country-right-or-wrong attitude, and knows not the difference between Beelzebub and Michael. It is primitive and unreasoning. Nationality may be compulsory—a sore grievance and a bitter reproach to existence. It may be a matter of choice, free and deliberate, a source of joy and social energy. Such nationality—whether inborn or acquired—is the best and safest asset which a State can possess. It is generally supposed that the naturalized subject must be disloyal in a case of conflict between his country of adoption and his country of birth. Such a view assumes that all sense of nationality is of the primitive and unreasoning kind. It precludes all the psychological factors of attraction, education, friendship, adoption, amalgamation. It is ignorant of the fact that some of the bitterest enemies of Germany are Germans, who have left Germany because they could stand her no longer. These men have a much keener knowledge of her weak spots than the visitors who give romantic accounts in newspapers of her internal state. The whole process of naturalization may be rendered unnecessary and undesirable by future developments in international co-operation. As things are, it is a formal and legal confirmation of an allegiance which must exist before the certificate of citizenship is sought. Once given, the certificate should be honoured and the oath respected. To treat it as a scrap of paper is unworthy of a State which upholds constitutional rights. There are doubtless scoundrels amongst naturalized people. It would be strange if there were not. But to proclaim that a naturalized subject cannot love the country of his choice as much as the country of his birth is as rational as the statement that a man cannot love his wife as much as he loves his mother. Now I have touched on a delicate point. He may love his wife, but he must repudiate his mother, curse her, abuse her, disown her. In time of war some do, and some do not. I am not sure that the deepest loyalty is accompanied by the loudest curses.

There is a class of people—I have met them in every country—who are devotees of the simple creed that you should stay at home and not interfere in the affairs of others. Travel you may, with a Baedeker or a Cook's guide, and stay you may in hotels provided for the purpose, but you must do it in a proper way and at proper times, and preserve a strict regard for your national prerogatives. But you should not go and live in countries which are not your own. To such people there is something almost indecent in the thought that any one should deliberately wish to shed his own nationality and clothe himself in another. They form the unintelligent background against which the wild and lurid nationalists of every tribe disport themselves in frenzied movements of hate and antagonism. An irate old colonel (very gouty) said to me the other day: “A man who forgets his duties to his own country and settles in another is a damnable cur. So much for these dirty foreigners who overrun England.”

I ventured to remind him that the English have settled in a good many places: in America, in Australia, in spots fair and foul, friendly and unfriendly; that they have brought afternoon tea and sport and Anglican services to the pleasure resorts of Europe and the deserts of Africa. Meeting with no response, I embarked on a short account of the past travels and achievements of the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the French in the art of settlement in foreign lands. I ended up by prophesying that the aeroplane of the future will transport us swiftly from continent to continent and make mincemeat of the last remnants of our national exclusiveness. He was not in the least perturbed. “That is all rubbish,” he said; “people ought to stick to their own country.”

I am afraid neither he nor anybody else can check the wanderings of individuals and peoples which have gone on ever since man discovered that he has two legs with which he can move about. And naturalization, after all, is an easy way of acquiring new and possibly useful citizens. The subjects come willingly, whilst the millions who are made subjects by war and subjugation are sometimes exceedingly troublesome. After all, the aim of all the great kingdoms has been to increase and strengthen the population, and differences of nationality have been treated as but trifling obstacles in the way. If the principle of free nationality which is now stirring the world and inspiring a war of liberation is to triumph, then the liberty won must include the individuals who prefer a chosen to a compulsory political allegiance.

Sometimes the forces of attraction and repulsion create strong ties of sympathy or lead to acts of repudiation which cross frontiers irrespectively of the indications on the barometer of foreign politics. A man may find his spiritual home in the most unexpected place. He may irresistibly be drawn by the currents of philosophy and art to a foreign country. The customs in his own may drive him to bitter denunciation. No one has said harder things of Germany than Nietzsche. Schopenhauer wished it to be known that he despised the German nation on account of its infinite stupidity, and that he blushed to belong to it. Heine fled from Germany in intellectual despair. “If I were a German,” he wrote, “and I am no German....” His heart was captured by the French. Goethe and Frederick the Great were both profoundly influenced by the French spirit. Voltaire was most useful at the Prussian Court, for he corrected the voluminous literary and political output which his Prussian majesty penned—in French. But there was something more than mere utility in the tie between the philosopher and the monarch. Frederick was not only trying to handle heavy German artillery with light French esprit; his mind craved for the spices of Gallic wit, his thought was ever striving to clothe itself in the form of France. Another “great” German, Catherine II of Russia, also moved within the orbit of the French philosophers.

Admiration of Germany and German ways has found the strongest expression in foreigners, and the megalomania from which her sons suffer to-day may be traced to such outbursts of adulation. Carlyle, the most representative of pro-German men of letters in the Victorian era, wrote in 1870: