I cannot agree that Gladstone was a prophet of nationalism. He was a prophet of Liberalism, and, as such, a hater of oppression. He protested against Bourbon oppression in Naples or Turkish oppression in Bulgaria or Armenia; but to protest against oppression is not to champion nationalism. Gladstone championed not nationalism, but internationalism; he emphasized the idea that “public right” should control the relations of states. The fine words which Mr. Asquith used to state the British cause in August, 1914, were (unless I am mistaken) an echo of Gladstone’s own words. A noble objection to oppression; a noble championing of the rule of public right—these were the staples of Gladstone’s prophecy. The pity was that, when it came to the actual handling of foreign affairs (e.g. in Egypt about 1884), Gladstone could not translate his ideals into practice.—E. B.
[477] G. B. Stern’s Children of No Man’s Land is a novel of this topic of British nationality in relation to German Jews written with great insight.
[478] The doctrine of nationalities was in reality a legacy of French revolutionary theory. From the men of the First Republic, who found it a useful excuse for a forward foreign policy in the best Richelieu tradition, it passed into the possession of Napoleon, who gave more attention to it at St. Helena than he had ever done at the Tuileries. Thence it came naturally into the political inheritance of Napoleon III, who sacrificed France to his belief in it. Gladstone only got it by a side wind, the theory having drifted into the British tradition by reason of the accident of Canning’s anti-interventionist foreign policy during the Spanish-American War of Independence.—P. G.
[479] This is a paradox to which I cannot subscribe. Please put me down as convinced of the opposite.—E. B.
[480] Albert Thomas in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
[481] There were also hopes of an Italian alliance for France, and these, combined with the anti-Prussian direction of Austrian policy, and the Franco-Russian rapprochement which had followed the Crimean War, almost justified Napoleon in believing that he would not be left entirely alone.—P. G.
[482] Hence “Jingo” for any rabid patriot.
[483] See England’s Debt to India by Lajpat Rai for a good statement of India’s economic grievance.
[484] Now a French Protectorate.—P. G.
[485] See Putnam Weale’s Indiscreet Letters from Pekin, a partly fictitious book, but true and vivid in its effects.