Thus began the third period in the emancipation of Italy, the period of Cavour, who became head of the Piedmontese cabinet in 1850. His aim was first to make Piedmont the model State and champion of all Italy. He believed fervently in liberty—"Italy," he said, "must make herself by means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her"—and he was at the same time one of the ablest and most practical statesmen who have ever guided the destinies of a nation. In ten years he made the State of the north-west an oasis of freedom and good government which attracted the best intellects of Italy to its service, and henceforth Piedmont became the centre of Italian aspirations. A new propaganda movement was set on foot, called the National Society, which rejected both federalism and republicanism and declared in favour of a united Italy under the crown of Victor Emmanuel of Savoy; and when the chance of French support came in 1858, Cavour felt it was time to act. This time the end crowned the work. Austria was deprived of everything but Venice; Tuscany and Romagna declared for incorporation by plebiscite; Garibaldi conquered Sicily and the south; and by the end of 1860 the King of Sardinia was king of practically the whole of Italy. All that still remained to be won was Venice, which Austria ceded in 1866; Rome, which the French had occupied in the name of the Pope, and were forced to evacuate in 1870; and the Italia Irredenta of to-day, viz. the Trentino, Trieste, and Istria, which may be recovered as a result of the present war. It is worthy of note also that the trans-Alpine provinces, Savoy and Nice, which had been part of the dominions of the Sardinian kingdom, were ceded to France in 1858-1859 as a return for her aid, thus rounding off the western frontier of the new kingdom of Italy so as to correspond fairly closely with the boundary of nationality.
The foundation of modern Italy shows us the "national idea" at its best; it was accomplished by noble means and by noble minds; and the latter, in their perpetual struggle against the forces of reaction, were never allowed to forget the claims of individual as well as of national freedom. Three tests of true nationhood, it will be remembered, were suggested at the beginning of this chapter: a state-frontier co-extensive with the nationality-frontier, a unitary state-system, and a form of government recognised by the inhabitants as an expression of their general will. Italy fulfils all these conditions; for, though the first has not yet been perfectly realised as regards Italia Irredenta, the exception is after all a trifling one. Thus the development of the national idea in Italy is almost a model of what such a development should be, and we have dwelt somewhat at length upon it for that very reason. The work of Mazzini and Cavour provides us with a standard of comparison which should be found very useful in dealing with the national idea in other countries.
§6. The National Idea in Germany: a Case of Arrested Development.[1]—Nothing, for example, could be more instructive, both as a study in nationalism and as an aid to the understanding of the present situation in Europe, than a comparison between the making of modern Italy and the making of modern Germany. At first sight the German Empire, with its marvellous progress, its vast resources, and its world-wide ambitions, would appear to be an even more successful example of national development than the kingdom of Italy. Its demand for "a place in the sun," its hustling diplomacy, its military spirit, its obvious intention to expand territorially, if not in Europe itself then in Asia or Africa, are all taken as symptoms of this success. No doubt there is a certain amount of truth in this view. The truculence of German foreign policy is to be partly attributed to that form of swollen self-consciousness and self-complacency to which all nations are subject more or less, and which is most likely, one would suppose, to be found in countries where a nationality had recently succeeded in making itself into a nation. The natural instinct to regard one's own nation as the peculiar people of God and to look down on other nations as "lesser breeds without the law" is a phenomenon which must be constantly reckoned with in any comprehensive treatment of nationalism. Every nation has its own variety of it; in England it is Jingoism, in France Chauvinism, in Italy Irredentism, in Russia Pan-Slavism, and so on. These are instances of over-development of the national idea, due either to some confusion between race and nationality, or to simple national megalomania, which usually subsides after a healthy humiliation, such as we suffered in England, for example, in the Boer War or as Russia suffered in her struggle with the Japanese.
[Footnote 1: The student is advised to read the chapter on Germany before beginning this section.]
Yet a careful examination of the German body-politic will reveal symptoms unlike those to be found in any other nation. German nationalism is over-developed in one direction because it is under-developed and imperfect in other directions. Apply our three tests to the German nation, and it will be found to fail in them all. National boundary and State frontier do not coincide because there are still some twelve million Germans living outside Germany, in Austria-Hungary;[1] Germany is a State, but not a unitary State, for she still retains the obsolete "particularism" of the eighteenth century, with its petty princes and dynastic frontiers; and lastly, the government of Germany cannot claim to express the general will, while more than a third of the voters in the empire are sworn to overthrow the whole system at the earliest opportunity. The German nation, in fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably accompanied by morbid psychology. That Germany at the present moment, and for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few impartial observers will deny. It has, however, not been so generally recognised that this disease—for it is nothing less—is due not to any national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects, which are themselves the result of an unfortunate series of historical accidents. Let us look a little closer into this matter, considering the three defects in German nationalism one by one, and using the story of Italy as an aid to our investigation.
[Footnote 1: There are also Germans living in Switzerland, the Baltic
Provinces of Russia, and the United States of America; but these may be
regarded as lost to the German nation as the French Canadians are lost to
France.]
First, then, why was it that, while the unification of Italy led to the inclusion of the whole Italian nationality within the State frontiers, with the trifling exceptions above referred to, the unification of Germany was only brought about, or even made possible, by the exclusion of a large section of the nationality? Germany, like Italy, was hampered by traditions inherited from the mediaeval Roman Empire, represented by an ancient capital which stood in the path of unity. Why was it that, while Italy could not and would not do without Rome, Germany was compelled to surrender Vienna and to exclude Austria? The answer is: because the unification of Germany was only possible through the instrumentality of Prussia, which would not brook the rivalry of Austria, and therefore the latter had to go. The problem of the making of Germany as it presented itself to the mind of Bismarck was first of all a problem as to which should be supreme in Germany, Prussia or Austria; in other words Bismarck cared more for the aggrandisement of Prussia than for the unity of Germany.[1] To the mind of Cavour the problem of the unification of Italy presented itself in a totally different light. For him there was no question of the aggrandisement of Piedmont, though he no doubt felt pride in the thought that the House of Savoy was to possess the throne of Italy. Austria was expelled from Italy in 1860, not that Piedmont might take her place as ruler of the peninsula, but that Piedmont might disappear in the larger whole of an emancipated Italy. Austria was expelled from Germany in 1866 in order that Prussia might rule undisturbed. Thus, though the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was an essential step in the foundation of the modern German State, its motives and results were not in the least comparable to those which inspired and followed the Italian War of Liberation in 1859-60. In the first place the Austrians were not foreigners but Germans, whom it was necessary for reasons of State not of nationality to place outside the rest of Germany. Germany had, in fact, to choose between national unity and State unity; and she chose the latter, partly because Prussia really decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the establishment of a strong German State was the essential prelude to the creation of a strong united nation. Austria had to be shut out in 1866 in order that she might be received back again at some later date on Germany's own terms. In the second place Austria was in no sense the oppressor of Germany as she had been of Italy. She was simply the presiding member of the German Confederation who, as the rival of Prussia, as the inheritor of the mediaeval imperial tradition, as the ruler of millions of non-Germanic people, would have rendered the problem of German unification almost insoluble. It was therefore necessary to get rid of her as gently and as politely as possible. After the crushing victory at Königgrätz, Bismarck treated Prussia's ancient foe with extraordinary leniency; for he had already planned the Dual Alliance in his mind; knowing as he did that, though in Germany Austria might be an inconvenient rival to Prussia, in Europe she was the indispensable ally of Germany. And so, though the ramshackle old German imperial castle was divided in two, and the northern portion, at any rate, brought thoroughly up to date, the neighbours still lived side by side in a "semi-detached" kind of way. It would be a mistake then to call the war of 1866 a war of deliverance. Indeed, since the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, Germany has had no such war. That is in a great measure her national tragedy. Italian nationalism was spiritualised by the very fact that it had to struggle for decades against a foreign oppressor, and the foundations of her unity were laid on the heroic memories of her efforts to expel the intruder. This spiritualisation, these heroic memories were Germany's also in 1813-14, but the opportunity of unification was allowed to slip by, and when the task was performed fifty years later it was through quite other means and in a very different spirit. And yet, though there was no one to expel, Germany could only hope to attain unity by fighting. In 1848 she made an attempt to do so by peaceable means, and a national Parliament actually assembled at Frankfurt to frame a constitution for the whole country. But the attempt, noble as it was in conception, proved a dismal failure, and it became clear that national unity in Germany was to be won "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron." The words are Bismarck's, and the task was his also. Set them beside the words of Cavour about Italy and liberty, quoted above, or compare the harsh unscrupulous spirit of the great German master-builder with the spirit of Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi, and you get a measure of the difference between the developments of the national idea in Germany and in Italy. Yet Bismarck's famous sentence expressed the truth of the matter for Germany. Austria had been put outside the German pale, and Germany north of the Main had accepted unity under the hegemony of Prussia, but there still remained the four great States of South Germany to bring in. They had been the allies of Austria in 1866, and Prussia, had she willed it, might have incorporated them by conquest. But Bismarck saw that they must put themselves willingly under Prussia if the German Empire was to be a stable concern; he therefore left them alone to think it over for a while. Sooner or later they would have to come in, since now that Austria had been excluded there remained only the choice between dependence on France and union with Prussia. Bismarck deliberately played upon South Germany's fear of France, and Napoleon III's restless foreign policy admirably seconded his efforts. But a war was necessary to bring matters to a head. The opportunity came in 1870, and Bismarck was able to make it appear a war not of his own choosing. The Southern States threw themselves into the arms of Prussia; France was crushed, and Alsace-Lorraine annexed; the German Empire was proclaimed, and modern Germany came into being. There had been no foreigner to expel from German soil, but Bismarck found that an attack upon France served his purpose equally well.
[Footnote 1: Perhaps it would be fairer to say that he was incapable of distinguishing between them. See his Reflections, i. pp. 315, 316.]
Germany was made by a war of aggression, resulting in territorial expansion at the expense of another nation; Italy by a war of liberation, driving the alien from her soil. And the subsequent history of the two nations is eloquent of this difference in their origins. Since 1860 Italy has in the main occupied herself with domestic reforms, with the working out of the "social idea" which had had to wait upon the realisation of the "national idea." She has had, it is true, her "adventures," more especially in Africa, and her Jingoism, which has taken the natural form of Irredentism or the demand for the recovery of Italian provinces still left in Austrian hands; but she has never threatened the peace of Europe, or sought power at the expense of other nationalities. Since 1870, on the other hand, Germany has had to sit armed to defend the booty taken from France. "We have earned in the late war respect, but hardly love," said General von Moltke soon after the conclusion of peace. "What we have gained by arms in six months we shall have to defend by arms for fifty years." At the beginning of 1914 more than forty out of the fifty years named by Moltke had passed by and the situation had undergone no material change. "The irreconcilability of France," writes the late Imperial Chancellor of Germany, "is a factor that we must reckon with in our political calculations. It seems to me weakness to entertain the hope of a real and sincere reconciliation with France, so long as we have no intention of giving up Alsace-Lorraine. And there is no such intention in Germany."[1] The annexation of two small provinces has thus made a permanent breach between two great nations, a breach which has poisoned the whole of European policy during the past half century, which has widened until it has split Europe into two huge armed camps, and which has at last involved the entire world in one of the most terrible calamities that mankind has ever known.
[Footnote 1: Imperial Germany, von Bülow, p. 69.]