It was long ago remarked by
the German historian Bernhardi that Great Britain was the first country
in Europe to revive in the modern world the conception of the State. The
feudal conception identified the State with the monarch. The English
revolution of 1688 was an identification of the State with the Nation.
But the nationalisation of the State, of which the example was set in
1688 by Great Britain, was carried out much more thoroughly by France in
the period that followed the revolution of 1789; and in the great
conflict which ensued between France and the European States the
principal continental opponents of France were compelled to follow her
example, and, in a far greater degree than has ever happened in England,
to nationalise the State. It is to that struggle that we must turn if we
are to understand the present condition of Europe and the relations of
Great Britain to the European Powers.
V.
THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR
The transformation of society of which the French Revolution was the
most striking symptom produced a corresponding change in the character
of war.
By the Revolution the French people constituted itself the State, and
the process was accompanied by so much passion and so much violence that
it shortly involved the reconstituted nation in a quarrel with its
neighbours the Germanic Empire and Prussia, which rapidly developed into
a war between France and almost all the rest of Europe.
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