Coming of Age

Nationalism was showing an encouraging maturity last week. In France the voters overwhelmingly backed De Gaulle's visions of national grandeur; in India 438 million people, speaking 14 major languages and over 800 dialects, closed ranks behind Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru against Communist aggression.

Both lands, for different reasons, were suffused with national pride. Under De Gaulle, Frenchmen have shaken off the apathy induced by defeat in war and decades of domestic bickering. Today France's industry is one of the sturdiest in

Europe, and Frenchmen are better clothed and fed and housed than ever in history.

Faced by the shock of war, Indians have shed illusion for the reality of a world where soft words are no substitute for bayonets when an aggressor strikes.

The force of nationalism, equally capable of good or evil, cannot be evaded in a world that since the war has seen the number of independent states rise from fewer than 70 to some 120. In the last two years alone, new nations have blossomed at the rate of one a month, ranging from countries as small as Cyprus (pop.

600,000) to Nigeria (42 million).

Spirit to Die For. Though nationalism of one sort or another seems ingrained in modern man, it is historically very young--dating from the 18th century American and French revolutions. In the ancient world, a man's loyalty was given to his city--Athens or Corinth or Sparta.

When Rome ruled most of the known world, its patriotic impulse still came from the Eternal City. The feudal lords of the Middle Ages gave their allegiance to king, not country, and French barons fighting on the side of invading English kings were considered faithful vassals, not collaborators. Writes Historian Carlton Hayes: "Nationality has always existed.

Patriotism has long existed, either as applied to a locality or as extended to an empire. But the fusion of patriotism with nationality and the predominance of national patriotism over all other human loyalties--which is nationalism--is modern, very modern." The revolutions in America and France established the principle that the citizens of any state, if dissatisfied with the conduct of their society, have the right and power to install new leaders. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted by Marquis de Lafayette, proclaimed that "the principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation: no body of men, no individual, can exercise authority that does not emanate expressly from it." It was this inspiration that motivated Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin in freeing the states of South America from the dead hand of colonial Spain, forged modern Germany out of a score of principalities, unified fragmented Italy with Cavour's leadership. Under this glorious banner, Irishmen and Poles and Czechs fought and died to achieve their nationhood. Its spirit was reflected in the name of the Irish revolutionary society Sinn Fein (We Ourselves).

Nationalists came to learn that their creed contained bad seeds as well as good.

The nation demanded supreme loyalty from its citizens, insisted on its superiority over other nationalities, fostered pride in the national character and destiny. Carried too far, these convictions played a part in World War I and in a perversion of nationalism, loosed the Nazi terror on the world, piling the earth with corpses.

Good or bad, it also caused the ruin of empires, and brought about the violent awakening of the subject continents of Asia and Africa.

Men have tried, and signally failed, to chain nationalism with such supranational organizations as the League of Nations and the United Nations. The League sundered on the rock of big-power indifference. The U.N. has shown a limited ability to marshal world opinion and to keep open the lines of communication between the many wrangling blocs. But the U.N. has never been able to force compliance on a great power. No nation, large or small, is prepared to surrender sovereignty, and control of its destiny, to any group of outsiders.

No Choice. Yet nationalism emerged considerably tamed from the blood bath of World War II. The threat of imminent Communist takeover drove the Western countries into a new sense of unity and interdependence. Consultation and cooperation helped soften the old national rivalries, and more pragmatic goals replaced the rhetoric and passion of the past. France, Britain and The Netherlands lost their overseas colonies, then found to their surprise that they did not waste away in the process; indeed, their economies became stronger than in the imperial days.

The concept of Europe's Common Market provided a device through which free nations might band together for common strength and yet maintain their sovereignty. In the process they could fulfill what Historian Hans Kohn enumerates as the modern nation's obligations to its citizens: 1) widespread education, 2) economic and social mobility, 3) emancipation of women, 4) industrialization, and 5) public welfare. Says an Italian Deputy: "It's possible to be a good Italian patriot and a European patriot too. You can love your family as well as your country. You do not have to choose."

Warlike Favor. To the new nations of Asia and Africa, nationalism has been a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it won them freedom, a curse because the Afro-Asian nationalists deeply believed the fallacy that independence automatically would bring with it efficient, humane and just government. They were also handicapped because they inherited territories whose borders had been artificially drawn by a parent imperial power. The borders often divided people who spoke the same tongue. More often, included within the state were rambunctious minorities who themselves wanted independence, such as the Shan and Karen tribesmen in Burma, and the Nagas in India.

Some Indians think that Red China may have done their nation a favor by its invasion: the war has forced such separatist-minded groups as the Tamils in the south and the Sikhs in the north to rally behind the central government.

Nationalism survives as a potent force even under Communism. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin replaced the Internationale with a nationalist anthem, pulled out all the stops in calling for the defense of "Mother Russia," and dubbed the conflict the "Great Patriotic War." The current rift between Russia and Red China, and the earlier split with Yugoslavia, reflect strong nationalistic as well as ideological differences.

Paramount Loyalty. As the Afro-Asian nations make their way along the slippery path of nationalism, they may well discover that it eventually leads them to federations, or to such combinations as today's European Common Market. Historian Arnold Toynbee argues: "Nationalism certainly doesn't fit into a world riven into ever larger groups. We can no longer afford to have many tiny states which may go to war with each other.

Nationalism is an anachronism--our paramount loyalty is to the human race." But Toynbee overlooks the basic human impulse which, so far at least, seems to find greatest satisfaction in a nation of common instinct and common creed.

Any form of world government seems an unlikely and perhaps even an undesirable possibility. The present answer may lie in loose regional groupings, which have a skeletal form in the unstable Arab League, the British Commonwealth, the French community of African nations.

Freely entered into by nations that still retain their own sovereignty, the regional leagues may finally fit the description of the great French historian, Ernest Renan, who maintained that a viable nation is a daily plebiscite of its people.

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