CHAPTER II.
THE NATIONAL IDEA IN EUROPE, 1789-1914 Europe, what of the night ?-- Ask of heaven, and the sea, And my babes on the bosom of me, Nations of mine, but ungrown.
There is one who shall surely requite All that endure or that err: She can answer alone: Ask not of me, but of her.
Liberty, what of the night ?-- I feel not the red rains fall, Hear not the tempest at all, Nor thunder in heaven any more.
All the distance is white With the soundless feet of the sun.
Night, with the woes that it wore, Night is over and done.
A.C.SWINBURNE, _A Watch in the Night._ Sixty-two years ago reaction reigned supreme in Europe after the great national and social uprisings of 1848, and England looked on passively while the hopes of freedom were crushed in Bohemia, Hungary, and Italy.
Mazzini, the noblest of Italian patriots, the most prophetic soul among nineteenth-century nationalists, selected this moment of profound despair to publish an essay, entitled _Europe, Its Condition and Prospects_, which, burning with the passion of an inextinguishable faith, pierced the veil of the future and foreshadowed in an almost miraculous fashion the situation which faces Europe and England to-day.

Nothing printed in this country since the war broke out expresses more clearly the real issues of the mighty conflict and the part our country is called to play in it than the following words, in reference to the unredeemed peoples of Europe, uttered by the great Italian more than half a century ago: "They struggled, they still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all.

They speak the same language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they demand to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the great pyramid of history.

It is something moral which they are seeking; and this moral something is in fact, even politically speaking, the most important question in the present state of things.

It is the organisation of the European task.