lands had been united
with the Protestants of the Northern Provinces in desperate war against
the tyranny of Spain; and though only Holland finally achieved
independence, her people could scarce forget their long brotherhood with
the Catholic South. And now Holland was a republic, her people were
self-governing! Looking with prophetic vision into the future, we may
assert that this was only the first step toward a broader union of all
the nations when every man shall be self-governing, and hence all shall
be equal and united and progressive. But for its own time at least the
freedom of Holland was a sharp influence toward division among the
people of Europe, toward the establishment of differences, the growth of
national as opposed to universal brotherhood.

There was, to be sure, an earlier republic in Europe, Switzerland. But
the Swiss maintained themselves by their isolation, their remoteness
from other nations and from one another in their bleak mountain valleys.
The Dutch, on the contrary, inhabited a flat sea-coast; they were
traders; their very existence depended on intercourse with other lands.
Hence they had to be ever alert in defence of their hard-won freedom.
The spirit of nationality, of patriotism grew strong within them. At one
time they had been members of the German empire; at another, subjects of
France, of Burgundy, of Spain. Now they were Hollanders, a distinct
nation by themselves, and an example to all others of what a united land
of men might do.

France also had learned a stronger sense of nationality from her
hero-king, Henry IV. Always, through all his religious wars, he had
insisted that he was king of all Frenchmen, both Catholic and
Protestant, and would be a father to them all. He withdrew his
Protestant army from besieging Paris when the surrender of the city
seemed certain, abandoned his triumph "lest Frenchmen starve."
Englishmen, too, in the age of Elizabeth, had learned to regard
themselves not only as different from but as far superior to men of
other races. Spain both by her victories and by her sufferings had
opened a gap between her people and others. Only Germany, through her
very importance and vague imperial predominance over the surrounding
lands, failed to find within herself that necessity for union which made
other kingdoms strong.

By this internal division Germany was now plunged into the awful tragedy
of the Thirty Years' War, a partly political, partly religious conte