... The
peoples, despite the changes they undergo, are everlasting, and
they add to their own greatness by helping the world upward. And
so we are at one and the same time good Socialists and good
Germans."
This might almost seem to be a rhapsody, but every movement of
continental politics in recent times confirms and enforces its plain
truth. "The spirit of resurgent nationality," as Professor Bury of
Cambridge tells us, "has governed, as one of the most puissant forces,
the political course of the last century and is still unexhausted." It
has governed not only the West but the East; the twain have met in that
demand for a constitutional national State which in our day has flamed
up, a fire not to be put out, in Turkey, Persia, Egypt. But it is in
Imperial politics that the bouleversement has been most complete. When
critics now find fault with the structure of the Empire they complain
not that there is too much Downing Street in it, but that the residual
power of Downing Street-is not visible to the naked eye. To us Irish the
blindness of England to the meaning of her own colonial work is a
maddening miracle.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80