Morning journal and courier., 1884-12-11
Question of Nationality.
 Emile de Laveyle, in the Contemporary

Emile de Laveyle, in the Contemporary Re view7
 You meet with it everywhere in the duel empire. It is the great preoccupation of the kpresent, and it will be in fact the chief agent l n determining the future of the population ! ot the banks of the Danube and the Balkan I pe1insular You Englishmen cannot well undsrstand the full force of this feeling which is so strong in eastern countries. England is for you your country, for which
 you live, aAd for which, if needs, you die. This love of country is a religion which sur l wives even when all other faith or religion l has ceased to exist. It is the same in France. l H. Thiers, who, as ruf>, so thoroughly l grasped aitrlas:ons, never reslized the inn 1 mense force ot thtse aspirations of races, l which co1np16tely rearraneaa, hofore1,is eves ! t4lon map os Europe on the nationa1i117 foot iIoo Cayour and Bismarck were. boxay,ar | wal a1lre of this, and knew how to t.le | | adysYAge of this sentiment in creating q, Q : init of Italy and of Germany. One even- ino5ules Simon took me to call on M Thiers.
 | tue St. Honore who asked me to explain
 Fe Flemish movement in Belgium. 1 did
 Eo, and he seemed to consider the question 1 as most unimportant, quite childish, in fact and very much behind the age. He was at once both right and wrong. He was right because true union is one of minds, not of blood. Christ's saying is here admirably applicable: ssWhososver shall do the will of God the same is my brother and sister and
 mother" (St. Mark, iii, 35.) I grant that
 mixed nationalities which, without consider
 ation of diversity of language and race, rest,
 as in Switzerland, on an identity of historic.
 al "reminiscences, of civilization and liberty,
 are of a superior order; they are types and
 forerunners of the final fusion when all man
 kind will be but oue great family, or rather a federation. But M. Thiers, being ideal istic, like true or the French revolu-
 tion, was wrong in not taking things into account as they actually are, and the exigen- cies of the transitory situation. This awaken
 Ad question
 ing of nationalities is the inevitable out come of this development of democracy, of the press, and of literary culture An autocrat may govern twenty different peo- ples without in the least troubling himself as to their language or race; but if once as- sembhes be introduced everything is changed. Speech governs. Then what language is to be spoken? That of the people, of course
 Will you educate the young? It must be done in their mother tongue. Is justice to be administered? You cannot judge man in foreign language. You wish to repre- sent him in Parliament and ask for his votes; the least he can claim in return is that he may understand what you say. And thus by degrees the language of the multitude gains ground and is adopted in Parliament, law courts, and schools of every degree In Fin land, for instance, the struggle is between the Swedes, who form the well-to-do classes and live in the towns on the coast, and the rural population who are Films. When visit ing the country with the son of the eminent Enguist, Castren, who died in Asia while seeking out the origin of the Finn language I found that the latter was more spoken than Swedish, even in thu suburbs of large towns such as Abo and Helsingfors. All official inscriptions are in two languages. The in struction in the communal schools is almost 1 entirely in ths Finn tongue.