The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people proclaimed in France presupposed the doctrine of the solidarity of the people proclaimed by the dismembered nations of Europe.  France could set its house in order; but Belgium, Germany, Italy, Bohemia, Hungary, etc., had as yet no house of their own.  The house had to be built before it could be furnished on the latest democratic lines; and before it could be even built, the ground had to be wrested from the hands of absentee landlords or cleared of the little dynastic State-shanties which cumbered it.  The Polish nationalists became the backbone of the republican movement in Europe; the French republicans proclaimed the independence of nations as one of their cardinal principles.  Thus the social idea and the national idea were originally intimately connected.  They were the twin children of Poland and the French Revolution, and in their cradle it was hard to tell them apart, so strongly were the features of each stamped with the likeness of Liberty.

For a time it seemed that the new ideas would carry all before them.  Even before France had herself abolished the monarchy, Belgium threw off the Austrian rule and declared for a republic.  And when in 1792 France found herself at war with the Austrian and Prussian governments, and in the following year with practically all the governments of Europe, her victorious armies were everywhere greeted as saviours by the subject peoples.  But the old dynastic states proved to be of tougher material than was expected.  Moreover, it was not long before France found herself in conflict with the national aspirations which she had called into existence.  The various republics which France set up all over Europe soon discovered that they were nothing but tributary states of their “deliverer”; and when Napoleon began his career of undisguised conquest, he unwittingly did even more than the Revolution to strengthen the national idea in Europe, for the nationalities had now become thoroughly hostile to France and fought in alliance with their old dynasties to throw off the yoke of the hated foreign tyrant.

This strange change in France from liberator to despot is worthy of some attention.  It is not good for a nation, any more than for an individual, to be too successful.  Moreover, the doctrine of liberty, whether in the individualist or nationalist sense, if carried to extreme, is liable to abuse.  All to-day are aware that sheer individualism in the economic sphere is an almost unmitigated evil; sheer individualism in the political sphere and sheer nationalism are equally evil.  France at the beginning of last century was suffering from too much success, too much political liberty, too much nationalism.  Having overthrown the old regime within the State quickly and easily, she began to think she could do without the State altogether:  the result was anarchy, for which the only remedy is despotism.  Having, again, suddenly become conscious of her power