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Nationality! What is it?

“When the scholar Casaubon was taken to the great hall of the Sorbonne and was told by his guide that on that spot discussions had been going on for several centuries, he asked ‘Qu’a-t-on décidé?’ An equally pertinent question may be asked in the present instance without it being possible to elicit an absolutely satisfactory reply. It is, indeed, no easy matter to explain in epigrammatic form an idea so complex as that of Nationality. Definitio est negatio.” So writes Lord Cromer in the introduction to Arnold Toynbee’s “The New Europe.”

Nationality is one of those strangely elusive mystic forces which men may discuss at length, and yet fail to define in succinct sentences. Like electricity, its force may be felt; its appearance described; its sources traced; but, when we attempt to pin it down with a definition, it escapes. And yet a clear knowledge of the subject is imperative, for the forces of nationality have always had an important part in establishing the fortunes of mankind and, besides, are inextricably bound up in the underlying causes of the war.

While we cannot define nationality satisfactorily, we can set forth the factors that usually, but by no means always, enter into it.

1. Ethnical identity,

2. Identity of language,

3. The unity of religion,

4. Common economic interests,

5. Habitation subject to common geographical conditions,

6. Common history and traditions,

7. A uniform theory of government.

Canadians have a special interest in nationality and are under a special obligation to study it. Not only as participants in the war is it our duty to bear intelligently a part of the world’s problem of nationalities; but, in addition, we have to shoulder responsibility for right thinking in a domestic problem of nationality. Let us not refuse to acknowledge the gravity of our own situation. There are within Canada two nationalities, squarely opposed on issues which men have always considered fundamental. Canadians who are descendants of the men and women of the Old French Régime, complain that they have been deprived of legitimate claims to national expression in a state dominated by those who, mainly of English, Irish, and Scotch parentage, speaking the English language, may be called, although, of course, not quite correctly, English-Canadians. The issues have to be squarely met. Peace is not obtainable so long as each group adheres to its present temper of “My own side, right or wrong.” That is the highway towards destruction. Prejudice must be cast away and things seen as they are, if the country is to have harmony instead of dissension—and worse. And, as the old proverb runs, “Spiders might make silk if they could live in harmony with each other.” Fortunately, there is now a voluminous literature on the relations of nationalities arising out of the war, from which we may get a light upon Canadian affairs and obtain a much-needed perspective.

At first sight, allegiance to a common state appears to be the test of nationality; and in that sense the word is probably most frequently used. But the word nationality should not be confused with the word nation in the sense of a state. The state is the casing; the nationalities are the encased. The distinction is vital to an understanding of our subject. “What is a nation?” the great Kossuth asked a Serb Member of the Hungarian Diet. “A race which possesses its own language, customs, and culture, and enough self-consciousness to preserve them,” replied the Serb. “A nation must also have its own government,” answered Kossuth. “We do not go so far,” said the Serb, “one nation can live under several different governments, and again several nations can form a single state.” “Both the Magyar and the Serb were right,” comments the editor of “War and Democracy,” who relates the conversation; “though the latter was speaking of ‘nationality’ and the former of ‘nation’.”

Have the French-Canadians then a nationality? That must be first decided. The existence of nationality must be established beyond the shadow of doubt; for the mechanism of State ought not to be burdened with the duty of recognising two nationalities without adequate cause. The case for dual nationality must be clear and sound; its claims are not to be acknowledged merely for the asking. Let us then submit, not the claims of the French-Canadians as they have been presented, but the facts as revealed by history and common knowledge, to the tests which have been laid down in the literature of the subject.

Ethnical identity, the French-Canadians have, and an identity rare in its solidarity. At the date of the Conquest, there were only some sixty thousand French in Canada—we may assume about thirty thousand of each sex—and mainly from their mating have been reared the nearly three million French-Canadians of to-day. Nor is that all: this ethnical identity goes back far beyond the settlement of Canada; for, as we shall see later on, the parent-stock came mainly from the same districts in Northwestern France. There has been comparatively little intermarriage with the other ethnical groups in Canada; we may regret the fact, but it has made for race solidarity. What peoples to-day have a better preserved ethnical identity? There is certainly nothing like it on this continent, and nothing more striking on the European Continent. France has within its boundaries three well-defined races, as has Germany. The population of the United Kingdom is made up of several races, and much of the mixture is of comparatively recent compounding. The Jews are frequently held up as an example of race identity, but not even they have kept their blood purer than have the French-Canadians during the last three hundred years.

The French-Canadians have also a complete identity of language—another rare thing in the experiences of nationalities. To-day all the citizens of France are Frenchmen, and yet there are thousands in Northwestern France who speak a language more Celtic than French; the Corsicans are of French nationality, but my friend, M. Santini, tells me their tongue is more like that of Italy than of France. There are Alsatians and Lorrainers who, proclaiming themselves of French nationality, speak nothing but German, as did their fathers before the days of ’71. There is a Swiss nationality, much of it in Switzerland; and yet there are French, German, and Italian languages in Switzerland, all of them recognised in law, and a fourth which is unrecognised. When the German-speaking Swiss comes to America he is not a German, but, on the contrary, always a Swiss and proud of it. The Jews are said to have a nationality, but have only the thread of a common language; they speak the polyglot tongues of commerce. To-day the subjects of King George inhabiting England, Scotland, and Wales, may be said to have a common dominating nationality, and yet one out of every ten Welshmen speaks no English, and thousands of Scotsmen tenaciously cling to Gaelic. There is a nationality in Ireland which, violently distinctive, is, curiously enough, compelled to denounce England, its arch-enemy, in England’s language. There are Americans of the United States and Canadians of the non-French districts who have not mastered the tongues common to the group to which they belong, and yet proclaim themselves of its nationality. Again, in our testing, have we found the French-Canadians distinctive in homogeneity?

This brings us to that great influence in the relations of mankind, religion. Mohammedanism has been called a nationality, as has Judaism, so closely are men bound together by the ties of church. Before the Reformation, religion was an even more important force than language, than race itself, in holding men together. National distinctions are modern when compared with religious distinctions. Religion was once the distinguishing group characteristic everywhere, and remains so to-day in India and several Eastern countries. Religion is still the deciding group factor in some sections of the Western world, as in South America, where the natives, on relinquishing their pagan religions for Christianity, are admitted into the fellowship of the dominant group.

A force for unity, religion is also a force for dissension. A brief survey will show that in few nationalities is there a common Church. The Germans claim for themselves a high degree of nationality, yet 60 out of every 100 Germans are Protestants, while the remaining 40 are Roman Catholics, and bitter has been their opposition. France has a splendid nationality, yet is hopelessly divided on the subject of religion. The same may be said for Italy and Portugal. England has its divisions, as have Belgium and the United States. Spain is mainly Roman Catholic, but contains a large dissenting population. In Ireland, religion is practically the dividing line between the nationalities. With the French-Canadians, there is practical unanimity, for almost to the last man, woman, and child, they worship God at a common altar. While most nationalities are surviving in spite of religious dissensions, the French-Canadian nationality has within itself the strength that comes from approaching things spiritual in a common way, has the esprit de corps that comes from the association of its members in the wide range of charitable and social activities which in all communities and under all religions are conducted under the direction of churches.

For three hundred years, the French-Canadians have had a common history and common traditions; for a hundred years and more they have been the exclusive guardians of those traditions. Theirs are the glorious voyages of Champlain, the discoveries of La Salle and La Vérendrye, the battles of Frontenac and Dollard and the martyrdoms of Bréboeuf and Lalement; theirs, the memory of free life in a wilderness and dangers from a savage foe. That cannot be forgotten—and there are other things that are remembered: the struggles of past and present to maintain the French language and French culture on the North American Continent: in early days against the American colonists who revolted from Great Britain, and later against the English-Canadians who would have all within the country welded into homogeneity.

A few years after the Conquest, when the United States had established its power in the New World, the French of France gave up their fitful dreams of prestige in the New World. France closed her American book and opened a new one, and wrote “Africa” on the title page. Deserted, the French-Canadians grew up in the New World, accepting the theory of government and the economic conditions of their neighbours, but otherwise remaining islanders in a sea of continental Anglo-Saxon-Americanism. Insularity breeds stubbornness; it gave the Englishman his bull-dog tenacity. Like the Englishmen of England, forcing their nationality upon none, the French-Canadians are of one mind to hold fast to common traditions, and are inspired with common aspirations for the present and the future. That resolve is the stronger because of the oppression to which they believe they have been subjected, none the less oppression because it has been not of massacres as in Russia, but of slurs of inferiority, limitations in the schoolroom, the courts of justice and the halls of legislation, as in Germany.

Nationality has been called group personality, a group soul; in English it is “the spirit of England,” in German “die Deutsche Seele,” in France “l’âme de la France,” in Belgium “l’âme Belge.” Renan has called nationality “a soul and a spiritual principle, the resultant of a long historic past, of sacrifices and efforts made in common, and of a united will and aspiration in the present; to have done together great things in the past, to be minded to do great things in the present.” The definition is good, and yet it leaves much unsaid of this strong, elusive, human force. In “Towards a Lasting Settlement,” one of the interesting English war books, an attempt has been made to define nationality: “It stands for the cultivation of those national habits of life and thought which are dearer to us than others because they are in a fuller sense ‘our own’—just as family customs and family words have a peculiar savour for us, creating, as they do, a whole atmosphere, and calling up, without any need of explanatory speech, a hundred common memories and familiar ties.”

In these attempts at definition the united will to preserve is regarded as essential. That there is little French or little Spanish nationality in the United States to-day—as we are so often reminded in Canada—is because there was no will to preserve. If there be no Scotch nationality in the United Kingdom to-day, or only a remnant, it is because of lack of will to preserve; if there be a Celtic nationality in Ireland, it is because there has been and is, a will to preserve. And in Quebec, in Ontario, and Manitoba, the French-Canadians have displayed a tenacious will to preserve. The will to preserve: that is the force which must be constantly borne in mind by the student who would unravel the skeins of nationality.

No matter the test to which it is submitted, the French-Canadian nationality emerges. It has a Church with sermons and services in a distinctive language, a literature, a daily press; in short, self-consciousness and the means to preserve it. It may be fairly said to have attained the status of a national culture. The events of the war have made men keenly conscious of the importance of nationality and precise in their analysis of it. Among those who have followed the subject closely, is Arnold Toynbee who, in “The New Europe,” tells us: “National culture means the conscious will to enjoy and increase this heritage through the medium of some particular language. It follows that a national culture, whenever it manifests itself, is as elemental a force as a national democracy, and that to fight against it is to fight against God. No alien culture may dispute its title.” Strong words these, and remember they are not mine; they are the words of an Englishman versed in the conflicting forces of nationality, and applied to conditions such as we find in Canada.

But in seeking to limit French-Canadian culture in Ontario, in Manitoba, or in any other section of the country once French, we are not only fighting “against God,” as Toynbee puts it—a pretty large order—but also against the principle of freedom which Great Britain has said should regulate the lives of a people made British by the fortunes of war.

Books of Reference

Charles Roden Buxton and others, Towards a Lasting Settlement.Macmillan.

C. Delisle Burns, The Morality of Nations.Putnam.

J. Holland Rose, Nationality in Modern History.Macmillan.

Arnold Toynbee, The New Europe.Dent.

Arnold Toynbee, Nationality and the War.Dent.

Freidrich Nauman, Central Europe.Knopf.

Felix Adler, The World Crisis and Its Meaning.Appleton.

Ramsay Muir, Nationalism and Internationalism.Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Sydney Low and Others, The Spirit of the Allied Nations.Black.

Hugo Münsterberg, Tomorrow.Appleton.