From the PREFACE.
Lectures I-VIII of this series were delivered at Cambridge in the Michaelmas Term of 1915; and Lectures LX and X are based on those which I delivered in December last to the Historical Associations at Birmingham and Bristol. My aim throughout has been historical, namely, to study the varied manifestations of Nationality among the chief European peoples, before attempting to analyze or define it. That I have sought to do in Lecture VIII. It is noteworthy that only in recent times has Nationality become a conscious and definite movement. Apart from the writings of Machiavelli, where that instinct figures dimly, it was not (I believe) treated by any writer before the year 1758. Then an anonymous Swiss brought out a book entitled Von dem Nationals tolze (Of National Pride), in which he discussed its good and bad characteristics. I have no space in which to summarize his work; but at some points it breathes the spirit of Schillers Wilhelm Tell, the inner meaning of which I have sought to portray in Lecture III.
I began these studies several years ago, and early in 1916 was about to complete them. Most of my conclusions have not been modified by the present war; but the questions discussed in the later lectures arise out of that conflict. There, as elsewhere, I hope, my treatment has been as objective and impartial as present conditions admit. Lack of space has precluded a study of the lesser national movements in Europe and of all similar movements outside of Europe. I regret this latter omission because the growth of Nationality in the United States and the British Commonwealths is developing a wider and cosmopolitan sentiment which makes for peace.
At present, however, we are confronted by Nationality of the old type; and to pass it by with sneers as to its being antiquated does not further the international cause. A careful study of past and present conditions is the first requisite for success in the construction of the healthier European polity which ought to emerge from the present conflict; and criticisms of German Socialists such as will be found in Lectures IX and X, are, I believe, necessary if mankind is to avoid a repetition of the disastrous blunders of July, 1914.
The sense which I attach to the words race, people, nation, nationality, nationalism, is, briefly, as follows: For the reasons stated in Lecture VIII, I have rarely used the word race, and then only as a quasi-scientific term. The word people I have generally used as implying a close sense of kinship; nation as a political term, designating a people which has attained to state organization; nationality (in the concrete sense) as a people which has not yet attained to it; but I have nearly always referred to Nationality, in the ideal sense, namely, as an aspiration towards united national existence. In Lecture IX I have used Nationalism to denote the intolerant and aggressive instinct which has of late developed in Germany and the Balkan States....