History follows out for us the growth of national consciousness on the English plain in Plantagenet times right up to its organization under the Tudors and its great outburst under Elizabeth, when the common revolt of the English plain and central Scotland against Rome drew the two historic units towards one another, helped by community of language and by the weakening of old ties between Lowland Scotland and Catholic Bourbon France. The rise of industrialism may be said to have consummated the union, albeit with an attendant loss of valuable elements of the population in the events following eighteenth-century highland rebellions and nineteenth-century evictions for the creation of deer forests. The remnants of old-time people and ways in the western Highlands and the Hebrides are nevertheless interesting and important from several points of view; they preserve valuable elements of traditional civilization, and possibly even distinctive spiritual faculties, which our industrial civilization seems to kill, or at any rate to damp down.
Ireland, it will be seen, was not led to co-operation with England in at all the same ways, and it also illustrates the diversity which is so apt to persist in off-shore islands, largely because of the diverse outlooks of their different shores (compare Ceylon, Java, Crete, &c.). In the case of Ireland the poverty of its centre has played a great part in maintaining disunion. But neither was it led to revolt against Rome along with England and Scotland, nor was it transformed as they were by industrialism, save in its north-east corner. So, mutatis mutandis, the small, if interesting survivals of old tradition and feeling noticed in the western Highlands are the characteristic of large areas of Ireland, and its Catholicism has been ever deeper rooted in the people's minds by the bitterly cruel persecutions maintained by England. The net result has thus been, as in Czechoslovakia, a tendency to redevelop separate and antagonistic national consciousness, and to make it likely that association rather than subordination is the line of solution of this difficult problem. The openness of Ireland to the sea and her many connexions with the Continent seem to have been, along with repressive politics, causes of loss of native language which, in any case, would have been difficult to adjust to modern needs, so that Ireland is a case of nationality in which the language basis is not a real vital fact, however much enthusiasts may try to insist on it. But apart from this the cases of Ireland and Czechoslovakia are remarkably analogous; the latter is as much within striking distance of the German centres as Ireland is within striking distance of us, they both have an industrial element which finds it difficult to co-operate with the agricultural majority and claims separate treatment, both look back to centuries of unhappy memories of undoubted wrongs, and both have strong claims on the thoughts of those who desire peace.
The Scottish people have found a modus vivendi, and with the recent growth of toleration a modus vivendi has almost been attained for the Welsh people, but in any case the matter of Wales is different from that of Ireland; the language difference in Wales does not cut so deep as the religious difference in Ireland, and the industrialized population is a majority in Wales, but a minority in Ireland. The gradation of Welsh into English on the Welsh side of the border is another important factor in the case of Wales, and that country is becomingly increasingly able to develop the spiritual heritage of her rural areas in pacific fashion. With moderation on the part of England there seems hope that Great Britain may thus be able to maintain and develop a scheme of unity-in-diversity, and recent developments hold out hopes for Ireland too.
Man with its Gaelic and Norse elements, the Hebrides with their immemorial survivals, Orkney and Shetland with their Norse background, are all of great interest to the ethnologist, and contribute interesting diversities to the enrichment of British civilization, but hardly constitute serious problems.
6
Peoples of Low German and Scandinavian Speech
We now come to the Low German and Scandinavian peoples.
The Dutch include the fair-haired Nordic and Nordic Alpine people of what may be called the mainland, and the dark broad-heads of the islands of the Rhine mouth. Whether these latter are Alpine peoples or maritime settlers of prehistoric time one does not know, but their strong seafaring interests, on the whole, support the latter hypothesis, in spite of the power of environment. The common effort and common sacrifices to fight the sea have been a cement for the people of Holland, and, beyond the Rhine, they were comparatively little influenced by Rome. Their absorption in the struggle with the sea and their apartness from Romance Europe of the Middle Ages have had results in their provision of refuge for Jews and heretics, in their secession from Rome during the religious schism, and in their increasing separateness from their Flemish linguistic cousins on the Roman side of the fateful river. The thoughtfulness encouraged by old-established, if incomplete, toleration has made Holland contribute to thought in a way quite disproportionate to her size; and her sea-beggars, becoming in time sailors of the world's seas, inherited the East Indies from the Portuguese, and inaugurated what, under the English name of New York, has become the biggest port of the world. If vulnerability to organized militarism beyond her borders and England's advantages of position for maritime primacy have led Holland, especially with the growth of British industrialism, to fall somewhat to the rear commercially, her people, nevertheless, remain a most important element both in the life of Europe and in the commercial relations of the world. Her language has developed a literary standard to which have been approximated the Flemish dialects of a people struggling for recognition, but unlikely to seek union with Holland because of religious divergence. This nevertheless increases the strength of the Dutch tradition, while the growth of German industry has meant almost as much for both Rotterdam and Amsterdam as it has for Antwerp. Further, the provisioning of the big centres of industry has given Holland new commercial opportunities, and she is thus in a position to play her part in relation to her big German and English neighbours, while nevertheless maintaining her own individuality, and, indeed, making that individuality rather a difficulty in connexion with the complex international problem of Antwerp and the Scheldt. That problem, being one of economics rather than of peoples, need not be discussed here beyond an indication of the extremely international development of that premier outlet for the European plain prior to 1914.
Standardized German has not ousted old forms of speech in the rural parts of the north-west German coasts, and there has been a tendency to give Frisian literary expression in the nineteenth century, but this movement, like that in favour of Provençal, has not gone far enough to have economic influence or to bear much upon politics. On the whole, with the growth of systems of education, Frisian has receded, and is now chiefly spoken on the west coast of Holstein and of the part of Slesvig which, by plebiscite, has recently decided to remain German.