That, I think, is an impartial statement of the reasons which some dominant Power, such as Germany, might fairly advance in defence of her rule if we were included in a foreign Empire.  At all events, they very closely resemble the reasons we put forward to glorify the services of our Empire to India and Egypt.  I suppose also that the Fabians among ourselves would support the foreign domination, just as their leaders supported the overthrow of the Boer republics, on the ground that larger states bring the Fabian—­the very Fabian—­revolution nearer.  And, perhaps, the Social Democrats would support it by an extension of their theory that the social millennium can best arrive out of a condition of general enslavement.  The Cosmopolitans would support it as tending to obliterate the old-fashioned distinctions of nationality that impede the unity of mankind, while a host of German pedants and poets would pour out libraries in praise of the Anglo-Teutonic races united at last in irresistible brotherhood and standing ready to take up the Teuton’s burden imposed upon the Blood by the special ordinance of the Lord.

The parallel is false, some may say; the conditions are not the same; in spite of all material and educational advantages, we in England would never endure such subjection; we should live in a state of perpetual rebellion; our troops would mutiny; much as we all detest assassination, the lives of our foreign Governors would hardly be secure.  I agree.  I hope there is implanted in all of us such a hatred of subjection that we should conspire to die rather than endure it.  I only wish to suggest the mood of a subject race, under the best actual conditions of subjection—­to suggest that other peoples may possibly feel an equal hatred toward foreign domination—­and to supply in ourselves something of that imaginative sympathy which Madame Malmberg tells us the Finns only learned after their own freedom had been overthrown.

We feel at once that something far more valuable than all the material, or even moral, advantages which a dominant Power might give us would be involved in the overthrow of our independent nationality.  That something is nationality itself.  But what is nationality?  Like the camel in the familiar saying, it is difficult to define, but we know it when we see it.  Or, as St. Augustine said of Time, “I know what it is when you don’t ask me.”  Nationality implies a stock or race, an inborn temperament, with certain instincts and capacities.  It is the slow production of forgotten movements and obscure endeavours that cannot be repeated or restored.  It is sanctified by the long struggles of growth, and by the affection that has gathered round its history.  If nationality has kindled and maintained the light of freedom, it is illuminated by a glory that transforms mountain poverty into splendour.  If it has endured tyranny, its people are welded together by a common suffering and a common indignation.  At the lowest, the people of the same nationality