es it. Mr.
Chesterton has well described it as a sacrament. It is a silent oath, an
invisible mark. Life receives from it a particular colour. It is felt as
an influence in action and in emotion, almost in every thought. In
freedom it sustains conduct with a proud assurance of community and
reputation. Under oppression, it may fuse all the pleasant uses of
existence into one consuming impulse of fanatical devotion. It has
inspired the noblest literature and all the finest forms of art, and
chiefly in countries where the flame of nationality burned strong and
clear has the human mind achieved its greatest miracles of beauty,
thought, and invention.

Nationality possesses that demonic and incalculable quality from which
almost anything may be expected in the way of marvel, just as certain
spiky plants that have not varied winter or summer for years in their
habitual unattractiveness will suddenly shoot up a ten-foot spire of
radiant blossom abounding in honey. Partly by nationality has the human
race been preserved from the dreariness of ant-like uniformity and has
retained the power of variation which appears to be essential for the
highest development of life. With what pleasure, during our travels, we
discover the evidences of nationality even in such things as dress,
ornaments, food, songs, and dancing; still more in thought, speech,
proverbs, literature, music, and the higher arts! With what regret we
see those characteristics swept away by the advancing tide of dominant
monotony and Imperial dullness! The loss may seem trivial compared with
the loss of personal or political freedom, but it is not trivial. It is
a symptom of spiritual ruin. How deep a degradation of intellect and
personality is shown by the introduction of English music-hall songs
among a highly poetic people like the Irish, or by the vulgar corruption
of India's superb manufactures and forms of art under the blight of
British commerce! You know the Persian carpets, of what magical beauty
they are in design and colour. When I was on the borders of Persia in
1907 the Persian carpet merchants were selling one kind of carpet with a
huge red lion being shot by a sportsman in the middle of it to please
the English, and another kind decorated with a Parisian lady in a motor
to please the Russians. From those carpets one may realise what the
English Government's acquiescence in the subjection of Persia really
involves.

No subject race can entirely escape