Another element in this constitution of a nationality is language. A common language is a much weaker element of nationality than tradition, as we see in the case of Belgium, which is almost equally divided between Latin-speaking and Teutonic-speaking people; and in the case of Switzerland. But it is none the less a strong thing; nowhere is it stronger than in the case of Poland. While, upon the other hand, you have exactly the opposite in the case of Irish national feeling; in the case of German-speaking Lorraine and Alsace; and you might very well have had a similar case in Bohemia where there is now a strong national feeling backed by a national Slav language, though that language was artificially revived comparatively recently. Yet another factor is religion, and it is a most powerful one. It creates, for instance, a gulf between the Catholic and the Orthodox Slav, and it creates an awkward complexity in the problem of those Slavs whose religious ritual is Greek, but who are yet in communion with Rome. It is impossible to attribute numerical value to each of these various factors, or to say that language everywhere counts for so much, religion for so much, etc. We have to take each particular case and judge it as it stands. And if we do that with an impartial judgment upon the real national feeling, we get some such list as the following, for the Continent alone. (1) The French, who within their own boundaries are perfectly united; although certain districts (a little group in the Pyrenees and another little group in Western Brittany and another in the extreme north-east) speak a language of their own. To this French group should be added the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which were annexed by the Germans in 1871. Alsace and Lorraine have enjoyed great material prosperity under German rule; the metal industry of the North has been immensely developed, and in a dozen other ways the German administration has increased their wealth, and has added to their population serious elements of German sympathy. But take the provinces as a whole and there is no doubt that their re-union with France is still the passionate desire of the great majority among them. (2) Belgium is again undoubtedly the example of a separate--though less united--national group in whose individual feeling religion plays a great part, but still more historic existence through nearly a century as an independent State (during which century Belgium has vastly increased its population and its wealth), and for much more than a century the separate existence of the district as the Southern Netherlands as distinct from Holland.