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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



ble deductions have been made, England 

 attained territorial unity centuries before 

 other nations. 



Furthermore, the geographical forma- 

 tion of the British Isles gave the English 

 from the first supremacy among the va- 

 rious peoples living in them. England is 

 the great plain sloping from the Welsh 

 Mountains to the Channel and the North 

 Sea, and was from the first capable of 

 supporting a population so much larger 

 than couW be maintained in the moun- 

 tains of Wales and Scotland or in the 

 bogs of Ireland that the ultimate pre- 

 dominance of England in the British Isles 

 has not been at any time in doubt since 

 the time of the Conqueror. 



The territorial integrity of England 

 was assured in the Middle Ages to an 

 ■extent to which the territorial integrity 

 of France and Germany has still to attain. 



The importance of this achievement is 

 apparent when we remember that until 

 territorial unity has become something 

 more than a figment of the imagination 

 the racial cohesion of the peoples who 

 are finally to become a nation by the at- 

 tainment of political consciousness of a 

 common aim and purpose cannot much 

 more than begin ; until the pieces are at 

 least assembled upon the table the com- 

 pletion of the picture will be impossible. 

 The early attainment of territorial unity 

 by England to a large extent explains the 

 early attainment of racial unity. 



the; ISNGLISHMAN IS TYLt PRODUCT OF 800 

 , YEARS OF WELDING 



Since 1066 there has been no consider- 

 able accession of racial elements, and the 

 varied peoples of Teutonic stock who 

 happened to be in England at that time 

 were compelled to amalgamate by their 

 close proximity to each other on a small 

 island, from which the Channel made it 

 difficult for them to emigrate. The 

 "true-born Englishman" who excited at 

 one time the derision of a pamphleteer 

 named Daniel Defoe is not less a reality 

 because he proceeded from the blending 

 of Saxons, Angles, Danes, and Normans. 



The greatest achievement of the care- 

 ful researches of the late Bishop of Ox- 

 ford into the constitutional history of 



England was the conclusive establish- 

 ment of the fact that by the close of the 

 thirteenth century the consciousness in' 

 the people of any difference in ancestry 

 had entirely disappeared. They were no 

 longer Normans, Saxons, Danes ; they 

 were all English. 



This racial unity, of which the English 

 people became conscious about 1307, did 

 not appear in other nations of Europe for 

 centuries. A study of the Hundred Years' 

 War has shown us only too clearly that 

 the war was less one between Englishmen 

 and Frenchmen than between northern 

 and southern France. The English kings 

 held for generations large sections of 

 France, not as Englishmen, but as French- 

 men, and waged against the French kings 

 far less an international conflict than a 

 feudal war in which the most powerful 

 vassals of the French king were leagued 

 together to compass his destruction. 



The rivalries of French parties made 

 the English successful, and the miracle 

 accomplished by Jeanne d'Arc was sim- 

 ply the uniting of all Frenchmen around 

 the Crown, and was, in the truest sense, 

 deserving of all the praise and attention 

 it has received since, for it portended 

 nothing less than the beginning in all 

 sections of the French people of a con- 

 sciousness of racial unity and national 

 purpose. 



During the succeeding century the Ref- 

 ormation in Germany and in the seven- 

 teenth century, the Thirty Years' War 

 demonstrate to the least informed a total 

 lack among the German people of any 

 consciousness of racial unity. The shad- 

 owy empire was Austrian, and the word 

 German itself, like the word Germany, 

 was a phrase and not a reality; indeed, 

 a word little used by men of the period. 

 Surely the fact that Englishmen began to 

 grow together and become conscious of 

 their common blood in the eleventh cen- 

 tury is a striking and important fact, ex- 

 plaining something of England's strength, 

 when we remember how long the Euro- 

 pean countries waited before beginning 

 the same process. 



The important results attained for 

 England by this early commencement of 

 national growth will be more appreciated 

 when we remember that nationality is the 



