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Page 14
"Nationality in its highest form is ... a precious possession. It
is the highest expression of human civilisation in an individual
form, and mankind is the richer for its appearance. Our purpose is
not only to see to it that men shall be housed and fed and clothed
in a manner worthy of human beings, but also that they may become
humanised by participation in the culture of centuries, that they
may themselves possess culture and produce it. All culture is
national. It takes its rise in some special people, and reaches its
highest form in national character.... Socialism and the national
idea are thus not opposed to each other. Every attempt to weaken
the national idea is an attempt to lessen the precious possessions
of mankind.... Socialism wants to organise, and not disintegrate,
humanity. But in the organisms of mankind, not individuals, but
nations are the tissues, and if the whole organism is to remain
healthy it is necessary for the tissues to be healthy.... The
peoples, despite the changes they undergo, are everlasting, and
they add to their own greatness by helping the world upward. And
so we are at one and the same time good Socialists and good
Germans."
This might almost seem to be a rhapsody, but every movement of
continental politics in recent times confirms and enforces its plain
truth. "The spirit of resurgent nationality," as Professor Bury of
Cambridge tells us, "has governed, as one of the most puissant forces,
the political course of the last century and is still unexhausted." It
has governed not only the West but the East; the twain have met in that
demand for a constitutional national State which in our day has flamed
up, a fire not to be put out, in Turkey, Persia, Egypt. But it is in
Imperial politics that the bouleversement has been most complete. When
critics now find fault with the structure of the Empire they complain
not that there is too much Downing Street in it, but that the residual
power of Downing Street-is not visible to the naked eye. To us Irish the
blindness of England to the meaning of her own colonial work is a
maddening miracle. A wit of the time met Goldsmith at dinner. The
novelist was a little more disconcerting than usual, a result, let us
charitably hope, of the excellence of the claret. Afterwards they asked
his fellow-diner what he thought of the author. "Well," he replied, "I
believe that that man wrote 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and, let me tell
you, it takes a lot of believing." Similarly when we in Ireland learn
that Great Britain has founded on the principle of local autonomy an
Empire on which the sun never sets, we nerve ourselves to an Act of
Faith. It is not inappropriate to observe that a large part of the
"founding" was done by Irishmen.
But the point of immediate interest lies in this. The foolishness of
England in Ireland finds an exact parallel, although on a smaller scale
and for a shorter period, in the early foolishness of England in her own
colonies. In both cases there is an attempt to suppress individuality
and initiative, to exploit, to bully, to Downing Street-ify. It was a
policy of Unionism, the sort of Unionism that linked the destiny of the
lady to that of the tiger. The fruits of it were a little bitter in the
eating. The colonies in which under the Home Rule regime "loyalty" has
blossomed like the rose, were in those days most distressingly disloyal.
Cattle-driving and all manner of iniquities of that order in Canada; the
boycott adopted not as a class, but as a national, weapon in Cape
Colony; the Eureka stockade in Australia; Christian De Wet and the crack
of Mausers in the Transvaal--such were the prop�deutics to the
establishment of freedom and the dawn of loyalty in the overseas
possessions. But in this field of government the gods gave England not
only a great pioneer, Lord Durham, but also the grace to listen to him.
His Canadian policy set a headline which has been faithfully and
fruitfully copied. Its success was irresistible. Let the "Cambridge
Modern History" tell the tale of before and after Home Rule in the
Dominion:
"Provincial jealousies have dwindled to vanishing point; racial
antipathies no longer imperil the prosperity of the Dominion;
religious animosities have lost their mischievous power in a new
atmosphere of common justice and toleration. Canada, as the direct
outcome of Confederation, has grown strong, prosperous, energetic.
The unhappy divisions which prevailed at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and which darkened with actual revolt and
bloodshed the dawn of the Victorian era, are now only a memory. The
links which bind the Dominion to Great Britain may on paper seem
slight, but they are resistless. Imperial Federation has still
great tasks to accomplish within our widely scattered Imperial
domains, but its success in Canada may be accepted as the pledge of
its triumph elsewhere. Canada is a nation within the Empire, and in
Kipling's phrase is 'daughter in her mother's house and mistress in
her own.'"
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