Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: October 22, 2025
What men did not see then, and still for the most part fail to see, is that the human race can only work out these three ideas properly in a certain order. Democracy and nationhood may, as in the case of Italy, be acquired by a people at the same moment; but without the realisation of the national idea it is hardly possible to conceive of democratic government for any country.
Had not Indians also a common nationhood which, despite all racial and religious differences, could be traced back across centuries of internal strife and foreign domination to a period, remote indeed but none the less enviable, when they had been their own masters?
But in the end life proves itself stronger than iron bands. Germany was bound to make another attempt to reach complete nationhood. She is doing so now. Prussia fights for conquest, for world-power, and makes docile Germany imagine that she is fighting for these also; but what Germany is really fighting for, blindly and gropingly, is freedom and unity. She has indeed "to hack her way through."
African developments were even less fruitful than those in Asia and Latin America. Asians and Latin Americans generally had reached the level of self-identification necessary for statehood and national self-determination. Large parts of Africa living at pre-national levels of tribal identification, devoted their energies to the realization of nationhood.
Speaking in English, he said they had come to the holiest place in Ireland, holier to them than that sacred spot where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought them life, but Wolfe Tone died for them. Though many had testified in death to the truth of Ireland's claim to Nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that had made that testimony; he was the greatest of Ireland's dead.
Soon, however, the colonies grew to the strength and maturity of nationhood, and the mother-country speedily recognised the fact, and allowed no unworthy or ungenerous fears to restrain her from granting them the fullest powers, both of self-government and of federation.
The truth is that we have ceased to be a nation; we have forgotten nationhood, and have become a conglomerate of classes, parties, factions, and sects. That is the disease. The remedy consists in reconstituting ourselves as a nation. What is a nation? The inhabitants of a country constituted as one body to secure their corporate being and well-being.
No man has a right to say to his country, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. We have never attempted to fix the ne plus ultra to the progress of Ireland's nationhood, and we never shall." What the precise matter of offence may be one finds it difficult to discover.
But with the growth of Indian Nationalism, which often manifested itself at first in a revival of local and racial patriotism, there arose amongst the Sikhs a vigorous reform movement which aimed at rebuilding their nationhood on the solid foundations of the faith originally preached by their ten Gurus, or religious teachers, and the strict observance of the peculiar customs that were the badge of their faith.
We see that it follows no arbitrary rules of state or empire. It is a law unto itself: the law of mental attraction and community. The centres of passionate nationhood Poland, Finland, Ireland withstand all attempts at suppression. You cannot break a strong will to national independence by sledge-hammer blows.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking