The War and Democracy | Page 8

the region of politics, and of purification and
conversion in the region of the spirit. "For the finer spirits of Europe,"
says the great French writer, Romain Rolland, who is none the less a
patriot because he is also a lover of Germany, "there are two
dwelling-places: our earthly fatherland, and that other, the City of God.
Of the one we are the guests, of the other the builders. To the one let us
give our lives and our faithful hearts; but neither family, friend, nor
fatherland, nor aught that we love has power over the spirit which is the
light. It is our duty to rise above tempests and thrust aside the clouds
which threaten to obscure it; to build higher and stronger, dominating
the injustice and hatred of nations, the walls of that city wherein the
souls, of the whole world may assemble."[1]
[Footnote 1: Article in the _Journal de Genève_, translated in the
Cambridge Magazine and reprinted in _Public Opinion_, Nov. 27,
1914.

Those who hold that Christianity and war are incompatible would seem
to be committed to a monastic and passively anarchist view of life,
inconsistent with membership in a political society. But whatever the
relation between Christianity and war, there can be no question of the
relation between Christianity and hatred. Hatred (which is not the same
thing as moral indignation) is a poison which corrodes and embitters,
and so degrades, and thereby weakens, the national spirit. It is a pity
that some of our most prominent newspaper-proprietors do not
understand this.]
Internationalism as a political theory has broken down: for it was based
on a false conception of the nature of government and of the
obligations of citizenship. The true internationalism--a spirit of mutual
understanding and fellowship between men and nations, to replace the
suspicions, the competition, and the watchful selfishness of the past
generation--is the moral task that lies before Europe and America
to-day. If Great Britain is to lead the way in promoting "a new spirit
between the nations" she needs a new spirit also in the whole range of
her corporate life. For what Britain stands for in the world is, in the
long run, what Britain is, and, when thousands are dying for her, it is
more than ever the duty of all of us to try to make her worthier of their
devotion.

CHAPTER II
THE NATIONAL IDEA IN EUROPE, 1789-1914
Europe, what of the night?-- Ask of heaven, and the sea, And my babes
on the bosom of me, Nations of mine, but ungrown. There is one who
shall surely requite All that endure or that err: She can answer alone:
Ask not of me, but of her.
Liberty, what of the night?-- I feel not the red rains fall, Hear not the
tempest at all, Nor thunder in heaven any more. All the distance is
white With the soundless feet of the sun. Night, with the woes that it
wore, Night is over and done.

A.C. SWINBURNE, _A Watch in the Night._
Sixty-two years ago reaction reigned supreme in Europe after the great
national and social uprisings of 1848, and England looked on passively
while the hopes of freedom were crushed in Bohemia, Hungary, and
Italy. Mazzini, the noblest of Italian patriots, the most prophetic soul
among nineteenth-century nationalists, selected this moment of
profound despair to publish an essay, entitled _Europe, Its Condition
and Prospects_, which, burning with the passion of an inextinguishable
faith, pierced the veil of the future and foreshadowed in an almost
miraculous fashion the situation which faces Europe and England
to-day. Nothing printed in this country since the war broke out
expresses more clearly the real issues of the mighty conflict and the
part our country is called to play in it than the following words, in
reference to the unredeemed peoples of Europe, uttered by the great
Italian more than half a century ago:
"They struggled, they still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word
inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live,
think, love, and labour for the benefit of all. They speak the same
language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they
kneel beside the same tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they
demand to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign
domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute
their stone also to the great pyramid of history. It is something moral
which they are seeking; and this moral something is in fact, even
politically speaking, the most important question in the present state of
things. It is the organisation of the European task. In principle,
nationality ought to be to humanity that which division of labour is in a
workshop--the recognised symbol of association; the assertion of the