In many respects the obstacle to international coöperation which is most difficult to remove is the strong and still growing sentiment of nationality. This is not, like dominance, a waning survival of a cruder method of social order; it is a genuine type of coöperation. Rooted as it is in a historic past, in community of ideals and traditions, and usually of language and art, it wakens the emotional response to a degree once true only of religion. Born of such a social tradition, the modern may be said in truth mentally and spiritually, as well as physically, to be born a Frenchman or a German, a Scotchman or Irishman or Englishman. He may be content to merge this inheritance in an empire if he can be senior partner, but the struggles of Irish, Poles, Czechs, and South Slavs, the Zionist movement, the nationalistic stirrings in India, with their literary revivals, their fierce self-assertions, seem to point away from internationalism rather than toward it. The Balkans, in which Serb, Bulgar, Roumanian, and Greek have been developing this national consciousness, have been the despair of peacemakers.
The strongest point in the nationalist programme is, however, not in any wise opposed to coöperation, but rather to dominance or non-social competition. The strongest point is the importance of diversity combined with group unity for the fullest enrichment of life and the widest development of human capacity. A world all of one sort would not only be less interesting, but less progressive. We are stimulated by different customs, temperaments, arts, and ideals. But all this is the strongest argument for genuine coöperation, since by this only can diversity be helpful, even as it is only through diversity in its members that a community can develop fullest life. A world organization based on the principle that any single group is best and therefore ought to rule, or to displace all others, would be a calamity. A world organization which encourages every member to be itself would be a blessing.
Why do nationalism and internationalism clash? Because this national spirit has rightly or wrongly been bound up so intimately with political independence. Tara's harp long hangs mute when Erin is conquered. Poland's children must not use a language in which they might learn to plot against their masters. A French-speaking Alsatian is suspected of disloyalty. Professor Dewey has recently pointed out that in the United States we have gone far toward separating culture from the state, and suggests that this may be the path of peace for Europe. We allow groups to keep their religion, their language, their song festivals. It may perhaps be claimed that this maintenance of distinct languages and separate cultures is a source of weakness in such a crisis as we now face. Yet it may well be urged, on the other hand, that a policy less liberal would have increased rather than diminished disunion and disloyalty.
VI
The student of human progress is likely to be increasingly impressed with the interaction between ideas and institutions. How far does man build and shape institutions to give body to his ideas? How far is it the organized life with its social contacts, its give and take, its enlargement of its membership to see life sub specie communitatis, which itself brings ideas to birth? Desire may bring the sexes together, but it is the association and organized relationships of the family which transform casual to permanent affection and shape our conceptions of its values. A herding instinct or a common need of defense or of food supplies may bring together early groups, and will to power may begin the state, but it is the living together which generates laws and wakens the craving for liberty and the struggle for justice. Seer and poet doubtless contribute to progress by their kindling appeals to the imagination and sympathy; the philosopher may, as Plato claimed for him, live as citizen of a perfect state which has no earthly being, and shape his life according to its laws; but mankind in general has learned law and right, as well as the arts of use and beauty, in the school of life in common.
So it is likely to be with international coöperation. Fears and hopes now urge it upon a reluctant, incredulous world. But the beginnings—scientific, legal, commercial, political—timid and imperfect though they be, like our own early confederation, will work to reshape those who take part. Mutual understanding will increase with common action. When men work consistently to create new resources instead of treating their world as a fixed system, when they see it as a fountain, not as a cistern, they will gradually gain a new spirit. The Great Community must create as well as prove the ethics of coöperation.
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