... composite or heterogeneous nation and of the fortunately evolving heterogeneous empire is that of the British nation in the past and the British Empire in the present,—successfully, but, fortunately, with a qualification; for it is subject to the perils of a mass of problems yet unsolved. 1 The British nation has been composed of an English-speaking Anglo-Norman England, a Welsh-speaking Cymric Wales, a... is only now and under another form and other circumstances than its other members that Page 325 some kind of unity with the whole, still precarious and with the empire, not with the British nation, is becoming possible, although even yet it has hardly begun to be real. 2 What were the determining circumstances of this general success and this partial failure and what light do they shed... unity; it is the sentiment of the impossibility of true union that separates, not the mere fact of difference. The geographical necessity of union was obviously present in the forming of the British nation; the conquest of Wales and Ireland and the union with Scotland were historical events which merely represented the working of this necessity; but the unity of race and past association were wholly ...
... muscular self-control which should be put down to its credit. A sense of humour is an obstacle to success in life and the British nation has always avoided or controlled it, especially since the union with Scotland. It is, indeed, since the Scotchman became a member of the British nation that the great development of England as an Empire has taken place. Now the Anglo-Indian Defence Association hails largely ...
... Breton and Provenҫal and Alsatian in France, the Welsh in England may cherish the signs of their separate existence; but the attraction of the greater living unity of the Spanish, the French, the British nation has been too powerful to be injured by these persistences. The nation in modern times is practically indestructible, unless it dies from within. Poland, torn asunder and crushed under the heel... there have been instances in the evolution of the nation in which the political unity preceded and became a basis for the psychological as in the union of Scotch, English and Welsh to form the British nation. There is no insurmountable reason why a similar evolution should not take place on a larger scale and an imperial unity be substituted for a national unity. Nature has long been in travail of ...
... and earth-life. It may be argued that all nations and peoples are a mixture' of various races and foreign strands which are gradually, soldered and unified together in course of time. The British nation, for example, is built upon a base of Celtic blood and culture (the original Briton), to which were added one by one the German (Angles and the Saxon), the Danish, the French. But what is to be... question is asked, as sometimes it has been suggested, from certain significant and striking similarities, that ancient Greece incarnated in modern France and that there is a Roman stamp in the British nation. The possibility may not be altogether ruled out of court. But still it must be understood that the two phenomena are not quite identical, there is a difference in nature and kind. Rebirth in the ...
... booted feet, Remonstrate mildly, praise and pray and cry, Page 267 "Have sympathy, great Minto, or we die"? If he'll not hear, let then our humble oration Travel with Gokhale to the British nation. To be industrious, prayerful, tearful, meek Is the sole end for which we meet this week. Yet are there men, misunderstanding whites, Who much misconstrue these our holy rites Deeming it a ...
... and on those who commanded it shall fall the Divine Vengeance. It will not come to that, for Heaven has not as yet deprived the British Government so utterly of its reason as to command or the British nation as to condone such an outrage. But the possibility of it should have no terrors for men vindicating their legal rights & the small measure of freedom the laws have allowed to them. The words Bande ...
... makes even wise men mad; full of passionate repining at their "more than Egyptian bondage", exasperated by bureaucratic reaction, despairing of redress at the hands of the British Government or the British nation, they are advocating an extreme attitude and extreme methods in a spirit of desperate impatience. The Extremist propaganda is, therefore, a protest against misgovernment and a movement of despair ...
... in the affairs of the world, which makes for the strengthening of the idea of a free world-union as the ultimate solution of international problems. The fourth is the definite recognition by the British nation of the qualified principle of free nationality in the inevitable reorganisation of the Empire. Page 529 This development took two forms, the recognition of the principle of Home Rule ...
... guarantee of success. The nation has accepted the near fulfilment of his great aim as its own political aim, the one object of its endeavour, its immediate ideal. The Government of India and the British nation have accepted complete self-government as their final goal in Indian administration; a powerful party in England, the party which seems to command the future, has pronounced for its more speedy ...
... better organised. I am God's favourite and can never come to harm." And so the old drama is staged again and acted till it reaches the old catastrophe. The historic madness has now overtaken the British nation in the height of its worldwide power and material greatness. In Egypt, in India, in Ireland the most Radical Government of modern times is bracing itself to a policy of repression. It thinks ...
... the co-existence of all these diversities. The Indian Nation has itself admitted that the English nation has been built out of various races, but he has not stated the full complexity of the British nation. He has not observed that to this day the races which came later into the British nationality keep their distinct individuality even now and that one of them clings to its language tenaciously ...
... their benevolent and booted feet, Remonstrate mildly, praise and pray and cry, "Have sympathy, great Minto, or we die"? If he'll not hear, let then our humble oration Travel with Gokhale to the British nation. To be industrious, prayerful, tearful, meek Is the sole end for which we meet this week. Yet are there men, misunderstanding whites, Who much misconstrue these our holy rites Deeming it a ...
... alone made the outrage possible. For the last century the British have been dinning into our ears the legend of British justice, British honour, British truth. The belief in the justice of the British nation or of British Magistrates is dead. Generated by liberal professions it has been killed by reactionary practice. The belief in the personal honour and truth of individual Englishmen has somehow ...
... of the Loyalist gospel can be found in the need of British Imperialism to justify itself to the liberalised sentiment of the nineteenth century and to the Puritanic middle-class element in the British nation. The question then arises, has this theory any firmer root? Is it anything more than a convenient theory? Has it any relations Page 362 with actual facts or with human experience ...
... co-existence of all these diversities. The Indian Nation has itself admitted that the English nation has been built out of various races, but he (N.N. Ghose) has not stated the full complexity of the British nation. He has not observed that to this day the races which came later into the British nationality keep their distinct individuality even now and that one of them clings to its language tenaciously ...
... Now, I should like to put before you my views on the subject as it strikes me taking everything into consideration at the present moment. The British Government and Parliament, and more so the British nation, have been for many decades past brought up and nurtured with settled notions about India's future, based on developments in their own country which has built up the British constitution, functioning ...
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