"Do not be led away by the idea of improving your material conditions without first solving the national question. You cannot do it.
"Country is not a mere zone of territory. The true country is the idea to which it gives birth." It is "A common principle, recognized, accepted, and developed by all."
His thought is clear and consistent. How shall a man serve all humanity whom he has not seen, if he does not serve his nation whom he has seen? "The individual is too insignificant, and humanity too vast." The stuff of nationality is the sacrifice rendered by the people to realize their aspirations—"By the memory of our former greatness, by the sufferings of the millions." The limits of nationality will tend toward natural boundaries—the division of
"humanity into distinct groups or nuclei upon the face of the earth, thus creating the germ of nationalities. Evil governments have disfigured the divine design. Nevertheless you may still trace it, distinctly marked out—as least as far as Europe is concerned—by the course of the great rivers, the direction of the higher mountains, and other geographical conditions. They (the Governments) have disfigured it so far that, if we except England and France, there is not perhaps a single country whose present boundaries correspond to that design. Natural divisions, and the spontaneous, innate tendencies of the peoples, will take the place of the arbitrary divisions sanctioned by evil governments. The map of Europe will be redrawn.
"Then may each one of you, fortified by the power and the affection of many millions, all speaking the same language, gifted with the same tendencies, and educated by the same historical tradition, hope, even by your own single effort, to be able to benefit all Humanity. O my brothers, love your Country! Our Country is our Home, the house that God has given us, placing therein a numerous family that loves us, and whom we love; a family with whom we sympathize more readily, and whom we understand more quickly than we do others; and which, from its being centered round a given spot, and from the homogeneous nature of its elements, is adapted to a special branch of activity."
The method of strengthening the sense of nationality is by education. "Every citizen should receive in the national schools a moral education, a course of nationality—comprising a summary view of the progress of humanity and of the history of his own country; a popular exposition of the principles directing the legislation of that country."
That Mazzini's ideas are a living force to-day is proved by the response of the nations in this war. In the seaside town of Hove, Sussex, where I live, his book, developing these ideas, was drawn out from the public library thirty-eight times in the last four years.
There is a danger here of over-stressing nationality and inviting a return to the anarchy of war, and this is the difficulty one has in pointing out the psychologic unsoundness of Cosmopolitanism. The limitations of the Mazzini theory have been convincingly drawn by Graham Wallas.
"Nationalism, as interpreted either by Bismarck ("We must not swallow more than we can digest") or by Mazzini, played a great and invaluable part in the development of the political consciousness of Europe during the nineteenth century. But it is becoming less and less possible to accept it as a solution for the problems of the twentieth century."