the name of Burgenland. The case of East Galicia was left open,
and so remained in 1921. Experience in the case of Upper Silesia
abundantly proved the wisdom of thus limiting the right of
self-determination. Plebiscites had worked smoothly enough in
the case of fairly homogeneous areas defined by ancient bound-
aries, as in Avignon in 1791 and Savoy and Nice in 1860; they
are altogether another matter in districts inhabited by mixed
populations divided by bitter national jealousies. The method
proved in any case to be costly and dilatory. In large areas it
involved an extensive military control which the victorious
Allies were unable to provide, while it was impossible to set up
provisional governments to supervise the partition of areas over
which they exercised control.
' The experience of the diplomatists at Versailles has then, if properly studied, great value as a corrective to the dreams of idealists who persist in building theories for an imaginary world. But, apart from this experience, it is certain that the principle of self-determination could not be universally applied without overthrowing all that remains of the world's order. Yet the principle remains, in spite of disillusionment, a powerful solvent of established bodies politic, and it is therefore still important to understand its implications. The phrase " the self-determi- nation of nations " is widely accepted as the expression of a prin- ciple as clear as it is just. So far as the meaning of self-deter- mination is concerned, it is indeed clear enough. What is not so clear is what is meant by a " nation." This is a subject round which interminable discussions have centred, and which must be examined if the full implications of the principle of self- determination are to be realized.
Definition of Nation and Nationality. Legally denned, a na- tion is the aggregate of the subjects or citizens of a particular sovereign state, and nationality is the quality of such subjection or citizenship. But the word " nation " has also a wider mean- ing, which the New English Dictionary embodies in the following inclusive definition: "A nation is an extensive aggregate of persons closely associated with each other by common descent, language, or history, so as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political State and occupying a definite territory." This definition is open to criticism, as involving some confusion of thought: and this confusion is not made less confounded by the definition of " nationality " as primarily synonymous with " nation " but " frequently a people potentially but not actually a nation," while a " people " is defined as " a body of persons composing a community, tribe, race, or nation."
The truth is that the vagueness of our terms reflects the vagueness of our ideas about a problem the intricacies of which we have only recently been called upon to unravel. No satis- factory definition of the word " nation " is possible because, save in its legal sense, it conveys no definite idea ; and the same is true of the word " nationality." Yet a clear definition is the essential preliminary to any fruitful discussion. It is proposed then, for the purposes of the present argument, to use the word " nation " in the sense of " the sum of people constituting a sovereign and independent body politic," the Latin populus as distinguished from natio. The word " nationality " it is pro- posed to deprive of its legal connotation, and to define a nation- ality as " an extensive aggregate of persons conscious of a com- munity of sentiments, experiences, or qualities which make them feel themselves a distinct people." The various elements that produce this consciousness will be discussed later. They have an important bearing on the practical problem which was only very imperfectly solved by the Treaty of Versailles, namely, the problem raised by the claim of nationalities, thus defined, to become nations. The complexity and perils of the issues involved in this claim may be illuminated by the fact that, even now, in the actual polities of the world, nationalities and nations nowhere coincide. It remains, therefore, of great importance to determine what are the essential qualities of nationality and what are its necessary relations to the conception of the state.
Theories of Nationality. On few subjects has there been so great a difference of opinion as on the question of what con-
stitutes nationality. Fichte explained it, in terms of his tran- scendental philosophy, as a thing divine and spiritual, a mani- festation of the mind of God revealing itself in the national soul. So, too, for Mazzini, the prophet of the Italian risorgimento, nationality was a thing sacred, not to be profaned by a cold analysis of its elements, but believed in and suffered for as a prime article of faith the " faith in liberty "; for him the map of Europe would have to be redrawn on national lines as the necessary first step towards " the universal association of the human race." l No student of the history of the rise of nation- alities during the last hundred years will underrate the part played by such prophets as these. Yet their enthusiasm by itself explains nothing and would have achieved nothing; it is like fire, itself a subtle and mysterious element, which yet needs very material fuel to feed its destructive and creative force. The explanation of the phenomena of nationality, as other thinkers have realized, must be sought, not in the region of metaphysics, but in that of observed facts.
If we analyze the composition of the several nationalities, we find these elements: race, language, religion, common habitat, common conditions, mode of life and manners, political asso- ciation. These elements are, however, never all present at the same time, and none of them is essential. Community of race, even where this is put in the forefront of the claim of nationality, is mainly a politic fiction, at least in countries of European civilization, in which the races are inextricably mixed up. Language, again, is as little as race the criterion of nationality, It may be, as Bluntschli says, the expression of a common spirit and of intellectual intercourse, and as such it may be brought powerfully to the aid of nationality, as in the case of the Czech language in Bohemia, or, still more strikingly, of the English language in the United States. But nationality and inherited community of speech are not identical. The Swiss are a distinct nationality, though they speak four different languages. Com- munity of language, on the other hand, has not prevented the British and the Americans from developing different nation- alities. Religion, too, has clearly no necessary connexion with nationality, though it has played a great part in creating and stereotyping nationalities, notably in countries of backward civilization, as in the Balkan peninsula or in Ireland. A common habitat and common conditions are doubtless powerful influences at times in determining nationality; but people have thus lived together for centuries without developing a national conscious- ness, and in many cases notably in the east of Europe they have evolved separate national consciousnesses in spite of a common habitat and common conditions. As for manners and mode of life, these are apt to raise stronger barriers between classes than between nationalities. Lastly, political association, though as in the case of the Swiss it sometimes encourages the spirit of nationality, is more often its result than its cause.
All these elements, then, may or may not contribute towards the formation of 'a nationality, but when we have summed them up we are no nearer to a solution of the problem of its formation. Some theorists seek this solution in a psychological process. " A nationality," says Bluntschli, " only comes into being slowly, by a psychological process which gradually produces in a mass of men a distinctive form of existence and community of life, and stereotypes these as the inheritance of the race." 1 For him time, and a tradition of many generations, are the essential conditions. This may be true of the evolution of new nation- alities; it is not true of the creation of a new sentiment of nationality in even large masses of persons. It is, for instance,
1 Scritti (18 vols., Milan-Rome, 1861-91), viii., 205; xi., 181, 243; xii., 245. Mazzini avoided the practical problem involved in the reconstruction of Europe on national lines by saying that it was sufficient to indicate the " large lines " and " to leave details to the future and to the votes of the peoples " (x., 137). His own plan of reconstruction included the restoration to Poland of the frontiers of 1772, and the setting up of a Bohemian-Moravian-Hungarian fed- eration. As Signer Salvemini (Mazzini, 1920) points out, " the ' design of God ' was not quite so clear as Mazzini believed."
1 Lehre vom modernen Stoat (sth ed. of Allgemeines Staatsrecht, 1875), i., p. 92.
