ncy which
is required either by its international position or by its national
purposes.

CHAPTER IX

I

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ITS NATIONAL PRINCIPLE

The foregoing review of the relation which has come to subsist in Europe
between nationality and democracy should help us to understand the
peculiar bond which unites the American democratic and national
principles. The net result of that review was encouraging but not
decisive. As a consequence of their development as nations, the European
peoples have been unable to get along without a certain infusion of
democracy; but it was for the most part essential to their national
interest that such an infusion should be strictly limited. In Europe the
two ideals have never been allowed a frank and unconstrained relation
one to the other other. They have been unable to live apart; but their
marriage has usually been one of convenience, which was very far from
implying complete mutual dependence and confidence. No doubt the
collective interests of the German or British people suffer because such
a lack of dependence and confidence exists; but their collective
interests would suffer more from a sudden or violent attempt to destroy
the barriers. The nature and the history of the different democratic and
national movements in the several European countries at once tie them
together and keep them apart.

The peoples of Europe can only escape gradually from the large infusion
of arbitrary and irrational material in their national composition.
Monarchical and aristocratic traditions and a certain measure of
political and social privilege have remained an essential part of their
national lives; and no less essential was an element of defiance in
their attitude toward their European neighbors. Hence, when the
principle of national Sovereignty was proclaimed as a substitute for the
principal of royal Sovereignty, that principle really did not mean the
sudden bestowal upon the people of unlimited Sovereign power. "The true
people," said Bismarck, in 1847, then a country squire, "is an invisible
multitude of spirits. It is the living nation--the nation organized for
its historical mission--the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow." A
nation, that is, is a people in so far as they are united by traditions
and purposes; and national Sovereignty implies an attachment to national
history and traditions which permits only the very gradual alteration of
these traditions in the