The processes of nationalization in Europe are of two kinds; on the one hand we see smaller nationalities being compounded into larger units; on the other we see large nationalities being disintegrated. We see fusion taking place and we see disruption. Which is Nature's method? All the great nationalities of Europe have been built up by fusion--Italy, Spain, France, Great Britain, and Germany. As the last named is the most recent and most clearly understood case of fusion we may glance at the means by which it was accomplished. The nationalities and separate states which were united to form the German Empire were derived from at least three stocks, each of which show well-differentiated physical characters. These human stocks were united by a common tongue. By war and conquest the empire surrounded itself--isolated itself--by a ring of enemies. The Germans carried their frontiers beyond the limits of their speech and set out to make Danes, Frenchmen, and Poles members of their own nationality. They sought to strengthen their national frontiers by tariff barricades. They linked themselves together by the multiplication of means of rapid transit and fostered the growth of a national or tribal spirit by active, persistent, and widespread tribal propaganda. The tribal spirit, which is an innate quality of every people, was roused to such a pitch that in the crisis of war the national or tribal bonds held; sixty millions of people acted as if they were members of a Highland clan. Even defeat, if it has loosened, has not broken the national bonds which were forged by the governing classes of Germany. In all these processes of national fusion, as in the formation of all trusts in the modern commercial world, the anthropologist observes that the operation commences from above and works downwards through the mass of the people. The governing class plays upon and fans into flame the tribal embers of the popular mind. It is altogether a different process which brings about the disruption of a nationality. Disruption has nothing to do with race; the nearer the blood relationship between two adjacent peoples the more likely is disruption to occur. We can find no better illustration of this truth than when we cross the Baltic from Germany to Scandinavia. The people of Norway and Sweden are of the same racial composition; they have many interests in common; union should have given strength. Yet after a partnership which lasted for less than a century, they agreed to separate. In this case the movement came from below; a tribal feeling which swept through the people of Norway compelled a disruption. All the natural inherited forces in a people tend towards disruption. Only when reason takes the helm can these natural disruptive forces be overcome and the process of fusion be effected. BRITISH NATIONAL PROBLEMS