It is impossible to over-stress the novelty of this form of patriotism in history. It is obviously bound up with the adoption of this passion by the masses of the populace, and seems to have been inaugurated in 1813 by Germany, who is apparently the real teacher of humanity in the matter of democratic patriotism, if by this word is meant the determination of a nation to oppose others in the name of its most fundamental characteristics.[16] (The France of the Revolution and the Empire never dreamed of setting itself up against other nations in the name of its language or of its literature.) This form of patriotism was so little known to preceding ages that there are countless examples of nations adopting the cultures of other nations, even of those with whom they were at war, and in addition reverencing the culture adopted. Shall I refer to the profound respect of Rome for the genius of Greece, though Rome had felt it necessary to crush Greece politically? To the respect of the conquerors of Rome, such as Ataulf and Theodoric, for Roman genius? And, nearer to ourselves, shall I mention Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of forbidding the German language?[17] In the past, nations displayed their sympathy for the culture of other nations with whom they were at war, or invited them to adopt their own. The Duke of Alba took measures to protect the learned men in the towns of Holland, against which he was directing his army; in the eighteenth century, the small German States, allied with Frederick the Great against the French, adopted more freely than ever French ideas, French fashions, French[18] literature; in the midst of the struggle with England, the Convention sent a deputation there to urge the English to adopt the French metric system.[19] The notion that political warfare involves a war of cultures is entirely an invention of modern times, and confers upon them a conspicuous place in the moral history of humanity. Another strengthening of national passions comes from the determination of the peoples to be conscious of _their past_, more precisely to be conscious of their ambitions as going back to their ancestors, and to vibrate with ‘centuries-old’ aspirations, with attachments to ‘historical’ rights. This Romantic patriotism is also a characteristic of patriotism as practised by popular minds (by ‘popular’ I here mean all minds governed by the imagination, that is, in the first place, society people and men of letters). I have an idea that when Hugues de Lionne desired for the nation the conquest of Flanders or when Sieyès wanted the Low Countries, they did not think they felt the soul of ancient Gauls reviving in them, any more than Bismarck thought (I am not talking of what he said) of reviving the Teutonic Knights when he coveted the Danish Duchies.[20]