In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of internationalism.
The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their subjection.
I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley’s moral:—
‘Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.
‘That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is, to enter into a competition for the sources of strength—territory and strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.
‘The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the condition of its success.’
CHAPTER V
PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE
IN the preceding chapter attention has been called to a phenomenon which is nothing short of a ‘moral miracle’ if our ordinary reading of war psychology is correct. The phenomenon in question is the very definite and sudden worsening of Anglo-American relations, following upon common suffering on the same battle-fields, our soldiers fighting side by side; an experience which we commonly assume should weld friendship as nothing else could.[58]
This miracle has its replica within the nation itself: intense industrial strife, class warfare, revolution, embittered rivalries, following upon a war which in its early days our moralists almost to a man declared at least to have this great consolation, that it achieved the moral unity of the nation. Pastor and poet, statesman and professor alike rejoiced in this spiritual consolidation which dangers faced in common had brought about. Never again was the nation to be riven by the old differences. None was now for party and all were for the State. We had achieved the ‘union sacrée’ ... ‘duke’s son, cook’s son.’ On this ground alone many a bishop has found (in war time) the moral justification of war.[59]