[16] Politics, ch. vii., [Greek:  hotan to plethos pros to koinon politeue tai sympheron.]

The same difficulties and uncertainties as those which influence the history of a political entity when once formed confront the statesman who is engaged in making a new one.  The great men, Stein, Bismarck, Cavour, or Metternich, who throughout the nineteenth century worked at the reconstruction of the Europe which Napoleon’s conquests shattered, had to build up new States which men should respect and love, whose governments they should willingly obey, and for whose continued existence they should be prepared to die in battle.  Races and languages and religions were intermingled throughout central Europe, and the historical memories of the kingdoms and dukedoms and bishoprics into which the map was divided were confused and unexciting.  Nothing was easier than to produce and distribute new flags and coins and national names.  But the emotional effect of such things depends upon associations which require time to produce, and which may have to contend against associations already existing.  The boy in Lombardy or Galicia saw the soldiers and the schoolmaster salute the Austrian flag, but the real thrill came when he heard his father or mother whisper the name of Italy or Poland.  Perhaps, as in the case of Hanover, the old associations and the new are for many years almost equally balanced.

In such times men fall back from the immediate emotional associations of the national name and search for its meaning.  They ask what is the Austrian or the German Empire.  As long as there was only one Pope men handed on unexamined the old reverence from father to son.  When for forty years there had been two Popes, at Rome and at Avignon, men began to ask what constituted a Pope.  And in such times some men go further still.  They may ask not only what is the meaning of the word Austrian Empire, or Pope, but what in the nature of things is the ultimate reason why the Austrian Empire or the Papacy should exist.

The work therefore of nation-building must be carried forward on each plane.  The national name and flag and anthem and coinage all have their entirely non-logical effect based on habitual association.  Meanwhile the statesmen strive to create as much meaning as possible for such symbols.  If all the subjects of a State serve in one army and speak, or understand, one language, or even use a black-letter alphabet which has been abandoned elsewhere, the national name will mean more to them.  The Saxon or the Savoyard will have a fuller answer to give himself when he asks ‘What does it mean, that I am a German or a Frenchman?’ A single successful war waged in common will create not only a common history, but a common inheritance of passionate feeling.  ‘Nationalists,’ meanwhile, may be striving, by songs and pictures and appeals to the past, to revive and intensify the emotional associations connected with older national areas—­and