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