ALFRED ECKHARD ZIMMERN

If nationalism were the world's ruling passion, could the British Commonwealth, with its manifold variety of peoples, have been held together?

A nation is not a linguistic unit. The English-speaking peoples, whether under the Union Jack or not, are, with one exception, not English; neither are the German-speaking Swiss and Austrians German, nor the French-speaking Swiss and Belgians and Canadians French.

Internationalism, properly understood, is not contact between states; nor is it contact between super-nationalists and cosmopolitans who have torn themselves loose from affiliation with their nation. It is at home neither round the green table of the diplomatists nor "above the melee" with the minority minds. True internationalism is contact between nations in their highest and best and most distinctive representatives and manifestations.

Every nation has a home. The sentiment of nationality cannot gather simply round an idea or a memory or a program or about some function or status, such as a priesthood or an aristocracy or a Legion of Janissaries.

… the great mischief-maker Lenin

A nation is not a territorial unit. There are probably more Irishmen outside Ireland, more Norwegians outside Norway, more Jews outside Palestine, perhaps also more Scotsmen, Slovaks and Letts outside Scotland, Slovakia and Latvia than in the compact area of territory with which their national sentiments are related.

A nation is a body of people united by a corporate sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite home-country.

… the great mischief-maker Lenin

Every nation has a home. The sentiment of nationality cannot gather simply round an idea or a memory or a program or about some function or status, such as a priesthood or an aristocracy or a Legion of Janissaries.

If nationalism were the world's ruling passion, could the British Commonwealth, with its manifold variety of peoples, have been held together?

Internationalism, properly understood, is not contact between states; nor is it contact between super-nationalists and cosmopolitans who have torn themselves loose from affiliation with their nation. It is at home neither round the green table of the diplomatists nor "above the melee" with the minority minds. True internationalism is contact between nations in their highest and best and most distinctive representatives and manifestations.

A nation is a body of people united by a corporate sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite home-country.

A nation is not a linguistic unit. The English-speaking peoples, whether under the Union Jack or not, are, with one exception, not English; neither are the German-speaking Swiss and Austrians German, nor the French-speaking Swiss and Belgians and Canadians French.

A nation is not a territorial unit. There are probably more Irishmen outside Ireland, more Norwegians outside Norway, more Jews outside Palestine, perhaps also more Scotsmen, Slovaks and Letts outside Scotland, Slovakia and Latvia than in the compact area of territory with which their national sentiments are related.