rganization of the surrounding states. The historical
process in which each of the European nations originated included, as
an essential element, the action and reaction of these particular states
one upon the other. Each nation was formed, that is, as part of a
political system which included other nations. As any particular state
became more of a nation, its increasing power of effective association
forced its neighbors either into submission or into an equally efficient
exercise of national resistance. Little by little it has been discovered
that any increase in the loyalty and fertility of a country's domestic
life was contingent upon the attainment of a more definite position in
the general European system; and that, on the other hand, any attempt to
escape from the limitations imposed upon a particular state by the
general system was followed by a diminished efficiency in its machinery
of national association.

The full meaning of these general principles can, perhaps, be best
explained by the consideration in relation thereto of the existing
political condition of the foremost European nations--Great Britain,
France, and Germany. Each of these special cases will afford an
opportunity of exhibiting a new and a significant variation of the
relation between the principles of nationality and the principles of
democracy; and together they should enable us to reach a fairly complete
definition of the extent to which, in contemporary Europe, any fruitful
relation can be established between them. What has already been said
sufficiently indicates that the effective realization of a national
principle, even in Europe, demands a certain infusion of democracy; but
it also indicates that this democratic infusion cannot at any one time
be carried very far without impairing the national integrity. How far,
then, in these three decisive cases has the democratic infusion been
carried and what are the consequences, the promise, and the dangers of
each experiment?

III

NATIONALITY AND DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND

It has already been observed that England was the first European state
both in mediaeval and modern times to reach a high degree of national
efficiency. At a period when the foreign policies of the continental
states were exclusively but timidly dynastic, and when their domestic
organizations illustrated the disadvantages of a tepid autocracy, Great
Britain had entered upon a foreign policy of national colonial expansion