(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.
(3) Holland, in its turn, both on account of its long independent existence, its strong national feeling and its peculiar experience as a commercial seafaring power, makes a third individual group. The populations immediately to the east of Holland in German territory speak a language of the same sort as the Dutch, and have the same social conditions and habits, but they have no desire to be Dutch, nor the Dutch to be incorporated with them.
(4) The Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, form an equally distinct unit, and are quite clearly divided into three separate national groups. And here we have two anomalies: A quite small belt of Denmark, much smaller than the total original extent of Schleswig-Holstein, annexed by Prussia fifty years ago, is really Danish, and maintains to this day its protest against the annexation. One may go so far as to say that this really Danish belt is no more than a tenth of the whole, but its protest is a proof of the vigour which national feeling has maintained against artificial political boundaries. On the other hand, the Finnish provinces of Russia are, in their articulate spirit, their governing class, their religion, and almost in their entire social life Swedish in tone. Norway is intact, neither suffering a portion of her population under alien rule nor pretending to govern populations alien to herself.
(5) The fifth great group is the German, and here there is so much complexity that what we have to say must only be taken very generally and roughly. But, roughly and generally, the German group is as follows:
All German-speaking men and women with the exception of:
(_a_) The bulk of the annexed provinces of Alsace-Lorraine (a matter of sentiment), and
(_b_) The German-speaking cantons of Switzerland (a matter of political boundaries).