The War and Democracy | Page 9

individuality of a human group called by its geographical position, its
traditions, and its language, to fulfill a special function in the European
work of civilisation.
"The map of Europe has to be re-made. This is the key to the present
movement; herein lies its initiative. Before acting, the instrument for
action must be organised; before building, the ground must be one's

own. The social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever
before this reorganisation of Europe is effected; before the peoples are
free to interrogate themselves, to express their vocation, and to assure
its accomplishment by an alliance capable of substituting itself for the
absolute league which now reigns supreme.
"If England persist in maintaining a neutral, passive, selfish part, she
will have to expiate it. A European transformation is inevitable. When
it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places
at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, the
peoples will remember that England stood by, an inert, immovable,
sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts. The nation must rouse
herself and shake off the torpor of her government. She must learn that
we have arrived at one of those supreme moments in which one world
is destroyed and another is to be created; in which, for the sake of
others and for her own, it is necessary to adopt a new policy."
England to-day has adopted this "new policy"; she has responded to
Mazzini's appeal by stepping into the arena and declaring herself ready
to take part in "the organisation of the European task"; her sons are
dying on the Continent in defence of the principle of nationality, in
support of the rights of other nations to that liberty which her insular
position has secured for herself for many centuries, the liberty "to
associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in
order to elaborate and express their idea." She is fighting, moreover,
not only on behalf of the threatened freedom of Belgium, France, and
Serbia, on behalf of the unborn freedom of Poland, Alsace-Lorraine,
and the subject races of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires,
but also on her own behalf. It is not merely that she recognises that her
Empire is in danger; she recognises also that she is unable to work out
her own salvation, unable to carry on her industrial development and
her schemes for the betterment of her people in security, while the
Continent at her doors remains in constant peril of change. "The social
idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever before this
reorganisation of Europe is effected."
§1. Nation and Nationality.--The social idea and the national idea have

been for a century past the twin pivots of European development. The
political structure of the Continent has oscillated this way and that
according as these ideas have in turn assumed ascendancy over men's
minds; and when, as in 1848, both claimed attention at the same time,
the whole edifice was shaken to its very foundations. In England, on
the other hand, it is the social idea alone which has been a motive force
in the nineteenth century, although she has always had to reckon with
the national idea across the St. George's Channel. Owing to her
fortunate geographical situation, she acquired national unity many
centuries ago and has always been able to defend it successfully against
the danger of external aggression. The national idea, therefore, has long
ceased to be an aspiration, and consequently a revolutionary force,
among us; it has been realised in actual fact, we have grown as
accustomed to it and as unconscious of it as of the air we breathe. Thus
Englishmen, as their attitude towards Ireland has shown, find it difficult
to understand exactly what the principle of nationality means to those
who have never possessed national freedom or are in constant danger of
losing it. This is perhaps especially true of the English working classes,
who grew to the full stature of political consciousness some fifty years
after the last serious threat to our national existence was made by
Napoleon, and upon whom the burden of the social idea presses with
peculiar weight. And yet, unless the significance of the principle of
nationality and the part which it has played in the history of modern
Europe be realised, it is impossible to enter fully into the true meaning
of the present tremendous conflict.
What then is nationality? The question is more difficult to answer than
appears at first sight. A nationality is not quite the same thing as a
nation. For example, there is a German nation, ruled by the Kaiser
Wilhelm II., but this does not include twelve million people of German
nationality who are the subjects of the Emperor of Austria; or again,
there is the Swiss