A Look Round at the World’s Peoples.

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11435, 3 February 1923, Page 13

A Look Round at the World’s Peoples.

Never in the recorded history of the world was there such an overturning of nations as we have seen in the last six years.

Governments have toppled down on every hand. Empires, old and great, have broken up into Republics. Fragments of Empires drew apart at the call of race and language, each claiming a separate life of its own, while other fragments reunited into new kinships, reviving ties dear to men centuries ago. From that first shattering of Empires at least sixteen new States were formed or old States were revived. Men who knew little of the story of the past were bewildered, and those who knew mo6t were surprised. Russia split at first into at least ten States; Turkey into four; Austria-Hungary into two. A few years have lessened the number of separate Governments, leaving the total still doubtful, but there are ten new countries either accepted into the League of Nations or knocking at its doors. Such rapid changes leave men wondering about the stability of nations. How and where will the processes of division and union end ? Which nations are now firmly established ? How old are the strongest and oldest ? Has the feeling of the sacredness of race more surprises still in store? An inquiry into the age of nations may steady our anticipations, and sort out the fresh groupings that have astonished the world. W e shall find some curious things in looking round. If we are thinking of ancient nations, how old is Egypt? Clearly she is not a nation 8000 years old, yet through all that time she has been in the van of life. Is India a nation? How old is the nation of Persia? Perhaps we must fix on some idea of what we mean by a nation, and here we will lay down this definition —that a nation is a group of people, or peoples, organised politically to govern themselves. Assuming this, what of the age of the nations around us. to-day?

Palestine is shaping under the British flag towards a form of independence probably quite as free as it enjoyed at any period of Hebrew history ; for the Jews were always sub iecfc politically to the sovereignty of conquering or neighbouring nations— Egyptians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, or Jitomans.

Georgia, again, is a State stumbling towards ’freedom, and basing! its demand on national rights which survived tilli the beginning of the nineteenth centifry, arid were only then surrendered to Russia to secure protection against the absorbing ambition of Turkey. Now Russia and Turkey are unitedly interfering with Georgia’s free choice. This land, south of the Causasian range, forms a natural corridor between East and West, through which advancing races have poured. Often has it been devastated by war: and obliged to bow the head to passing conquerors; but it has persistently emerged into a new sort of independence, and, like Persia, it has a literature of its own that tends to hold the race together. It was the Colchis of ancient Greece. India, though it has civilisations of its own that go back to remote periods, has never constituted a nation. Indeed the idea of separate nationhood has only grown in India out of the farrflung organisation of the British Raj, as we call the Government there. A feeling of the geographical unity of the peninsula enclosed by the Himalaya, Hindu Kush, and Suleiman Mountains has. arisen because Great Britain has treated the whole region as one for practical purposes. But India is not a natural aggregation. It contains a great medley of' races, languages, religions, centres of government, and a vast diversity of customs, and only the future can reveal what will' be the outcome of the movement for unity there. The modern nations of Europe, formed originally by migrations of masses of people from 2000 years down .to 400 years ago, or by conquest, have taken their present shapee either through the mixing of peoples much alike, or by breakings away from overbearing States which would not allow liberty for the free expression of national character. Only three European nations have an unbroken period of nationhood of over a thousand years. These three are France, England and Denmark. Scotland, Spain, and Norway can tell a story of 800 years; Poland and Bulgaria have lived as long, but have not been as free; _ while Hungary, Serbia, and Bohemia have a more chequered history almost as long, including periods of complete overthrow and depression. Sweden, Portugal, Turkey, and Switzerland are thirteenth and fourteenth century nations; Holland is sixteenth century; and Prussia, Russia, and Austria have undergone such changes that the birth-time of the modern nation is hard to fix. (To be continued.)