The Jews are a truly extraordinary race. Though they have for centuries been persecuted, despised, outcast, so far from being crushed by their sufferings, they seem actually to have been toughened in fibre, and to-day they exercise a commanding influence in the world.
England's geographical position does not fit her for the rôle of a Continental Power. Her home is on the sea; her empire world-wide.
Each race, each nation, has its own characteristics, its own peculiar type of civilisation. Attempts to destroy these inherent qualities have time and time again been baffled—as the examples of the Jews, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine clearly demonstrate.... As Treitschke puts it: "The idea of a world-State is odious. The whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single State. Every people has the right to believe that certain powers of the Divine Reason display themselves in it at their highest."
Patriotism may indeed be but a larger form of selfishness, but it is a larger form. It does involve devotion to others. As long as men are men, it is so unlikely as almost to be impossible that patriotism will ever be replaced by cosmopolitanism.
A great point in favour of the rule of democracy is its character-building power.
It is customary in a certain class of society to abuse trade-unionism. People talk of the tyranny of trade-unionism; it would be as easy, perhaps more justifiable, to talk of the tyranny of Capital. The trade union has its counterpart in what are termed the "upper classes." For example, the British Medical Association is nothing but a trade union under another name. The trade union is an absolute necessity to the worker in modern society.
Laissez-faire has advantages up to a point; State control has advantages up to a point. The most successful nation will be that one which succeeds in making a judicious mixture of the two systems.
The Englishman in his devil-may-care way does not trouble to persecute or oppress; his tolerant spirit, aided by the splendid devotion of a few great men, has, in the words of Seeley, built up a glorious free Empire "in a fit of absence of mind."
You will never make the English people idealistic, but you will never conquer them on that very account.
While the German talks and dreams of world-Empire, the Englishman smiles, puts his pipe in his mouth and goes off to found it by accident.