is whole build and rig than the Englishman's, who,
we see, is much imprisoned in his backbone.

It is difficult to surmise the exact meaning of being imprisoned in
one's backbone. The possession of plenty of backbone is generally held
to be a decided advantage. Emerson may have had special and
transcendental prejudices against strongly fashioned vertebrae.

The freaks of nationalism are as remarkable as the freaks of
internationalism. There is a constant interplay between the two, and the
ascendancy of the one or the other often seems strangely capricious.
Nationalism is weak where it should be strong, and rigid where common
sense would make it fluid. The painful position of most royal families
in time of war is an example of the readiness with which nations submit
to foreign rulership and influence. Thrones, one would think, should
represent the purely national spirit in its more intimate and sacred
aspect. Yet the abundance of crowned rulers, past and present, attached
by solemn selection or marriage, who are not by blood and tradition of
the people, shows the fallacy of this supposition. Napoleon was an
Italian who learnt French with some difficulty, and who was at first
hostile to the French and somewhat contemptuous of their ways. Marechal
Bernadotte--French to his finger-tips--became King of Sweden. Pierre
Loti, interviewing the charming and beloved Queen of the Belgians during
the present war, remembers that the martyred lady before him is a
Bavarian princess. The delicate and painful subject is mentioned. "It is
at an end," says the Queen; "between _them_ and me has fallen a curtain
of iron which will never again be lifted."

Prominent statesmen, who, one would also think, should be bone of the
bone of the nations for which they speak, have often been of alien birth
or of mixed racial composition. Bismarck was of Slav origin;
Beaconsfield was a Jew. The most picturesque example of such
irregularities of the national consciousness is perhaps the presence of
General Smuts in the War Cabinet. Once the alert and brave enemy in arms
against this country, he is now its trusted guide, philosopher, and
friend.

Writers whom posterity classes as typical representatives of the
national genius have often been of mixed racial strain, as were
Tennyson, Browning, Ibsen, Kant, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Longfellow, and
Whitman. The "bastards" of internationalism, so offensive to some
nationalist fire-eaters, are not produced