nation; Ireland is not. Germany is a nation; Bavaria and Prussia are not. France and Italy are nations; Russia is not. All are nationalities, plural or singular. States exist wherever government controls nationalities for its own purposes without regard to the will and preference of the nationalities. Nations exist where the purposes of government are the expression and execution of the will of the people. Nationality is the basis and material of both states and nations. It exists potentially wherever human beings are associated in durable groups, through natural, inward and spontaneously enduring media of association. It becomes actual whenever the members of the group become aware of the history and form, the cult and culture of this association, reverence its past and hope for its future. III THE "PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY": NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY BY Y and large, nationality is the integration of the successive and permanent elements of group life, as personality is the integration of the successive and permanent elements of individual life. It is as useless to seek any irreducible differentia of the one as of the other. Controversy about the nature and constituents of nationality goes on, as controversy goes on about the nature and constituents of personality. Both dissolve under analysis; both are the most potent of dynamics in the making of history, which is their record. And it is upon the observation of the conditions and workings of this fact, and this alone, that a programme of lasting peace can successfully base itself. Nationality, we must always remember, is to the group what personality is to the individual: tradition is its memory; custom its habits; |