And how often has the written or spoken word fanned the flame of nationality among downtrodden peoples! The story is the same from land to land and age to age. The soul of a nation in bondage is wrapped around its patriotic literature. Generation after generation of Bohemians, Finns or Poles have drunk at the national fount of poem and song. Within the peasant’s thatched home as in the city abode, the well-worn volume, pregnant with past glory, becomes the beacon of hope. It lights the darkness of oppression’s heaviest hours. For men of feeling, destiny will ever be hailed in the word that stirs. The harvest reaped by Cavour was of Dante’s sowing.
In the bitter linguistic struggles waged in Europe two gratifying facts are discernible. The dominance of the majority by an intellectually gifted minority prevails in every country and age. Furthermore, the survival of oppressed minorities in the midst of oppressing majorities appears to be general. The one is the reward of competence; the other is the triumph of right over might. Both are victories of the human will. Both have been purchased by dint of hard struggle. Humanity is the better for them.
Neither has conquest always been able to introduce a new language. The widening sphere of Roman influence carried the original dialect of the capital to the confines of the world. But it is unlikely that Latin was spoken in the Nubian provinces or other outlying districts to a greater degree than English is spoken in India today. It was only the language of the dominant element and the one in which official transactions were recorded. As a rule the oldest language of a country is spoken by its peasants. The tillers of the soil usually represent the oldest stratum in the population of a region. The principle holds in territories which have borne the brunt of successive invasions. It is the same in Macedonia, Poland or Transylvania. On the other hand, the land-owning class is generally recruited from among past invaders.
The value of language as a national asset was shown in France during the trying days of war when the very existence of the country was at stake. Respect for the mother-tongue is deeply immured in every Frenchman’s heart. In no other country does the feeling reach the same pitch. The French educational system provides ample facilities for the early initiation of students to the beauties of their vernacular. The clear and connected thought for which French writing stands preëminent, its capacity for expressing the most subtle shades of meaning, are largely results of literary discipline.
A perusal of war-time literature cannot sufficiently indicate the part played by French language in periods of stress. One must preferably have had the privilege of acquaintance with correspondence exchanged between relatives and intimates. Patriotism pours unfaltering from the artless lines never intended for strangers’ eyes. It is as if the crowded consciousness of French nationality found constant release through its language. Every observant foreigner in France has been struck by this fact. In some instances where perception was more than usually attentive we find, as in E. Wharton’s “Fighting France,” that:
“It is not too much to say that the French are at this moment drawing a part of their national strength from their language. The piety with which they have cherished and cultivated it has made it a precious instrument in their hands. It can say so beautifully what they feel that they find strength and renovation in using it; and the word once uttered is passed on, and carries the same help to others. Countless instances of such happy expression could be cited by any one who has lived the last year (1915) in France. On the bodies of young soldiers have been found letters of farewell to their parents that made one think of some heroic Elizabethan verse; and the mothers robbed of these sons have sent them an answering cry of courage.”
One of the most remarkable instances of the influence of poetry on national destiny is found in Serbian nationality, which has been cast altogether in the mold of the country’s epic ballads or “pjesmes.” Although primarily inspired by the valorous deeds of legendary heroes, these indigenous compositions describe Serbian life and nature with extraordinary verisimilitude and beauty. They are national in a significant sense, not merely because the very soul of the Serbian people is displayed in their lines, but also because they have perpetuated Serbian history and language. The purity of the Serbian tongue, its freedom from alien words, no less than the maintenance of historical continuity in Serbia are due, in a large measure, to the wandering of native minstrels—the guzlars—who went to and fro reciting or singing the wonderful exploits of their noted countrymen. Their unconscious, though passionate insistence provided the Serbian with the only schooling in national sentiment which he has undergone for generations beginning with half-mythical times. However slow, the method was effective, for it prevented atrophy of national hopes. Without this influence the Serbians would probably have degenerated into a people listless and inert to the call of nationality. The very name of Serbia might never have been recorded in modern history.
The guzlars were therefore peddlers of nationality. The most convincing evidence of their vital contribution to the formation of the modern Serbian state is found during the five hundred years in which the Turk’s benumbing rule was felt in the land. Marko Kraljevitch, the popular hero-knight, feudal lord and outlaw, according as occasion demanded, embodies Serbian resistance and Serbian revolt against Moslem invaders. The stirring accents in which tales of his deep attachment to Serbia were recounted awakened exultant delight in the heart and brain of listeners and inspired them to the hope of liberation from the hated yoke. Serbia was prepared for the day of national independence by means of this slow and century-long propaganda.
Replete with the glow and color of Serbian lands, the pjesme voices Serbia’s national aspirations once more in the storm and stress of new afflictions. Its accents ring so true that the geographer, in search of Serbian boundaries, tries in vain to discover a surer guide to delimitation. For Serbia extends as far as her folk-songs are heard. From the Adriatic to the western walls of Balkan ranges, from Croatia to Macedonia, the guzlar’s ballad is the symbol of national solidarity. His tunes live within the heart and upon the lips of every Serbian. The pjesme may therefore be fittingly considered the measure and index of a nationality whose fiber it has stirred. To make Serbian territory coincide with the regional extension of the pjesme implies defining of the Serbian national area. And Serbia is only one among many countries to which this method of delimitation is applicable.
In Finland, nationality is embodied in the heartening lines of the “Kalevala,” that Iliad of the north which takes its coloring from nature with no less delightful sensitiveness than the Homeric masterpiece. The lines of the poem define this Finnish epic as: