Such a shift is to be seen in multiple in the German nation within the past half-century, when, for instance, the Hanoverians, the Saxons, and even the Holsteiners in very appreciable numbers, not to mention the subjects of minuscular principalities whose names have been forgotten in the shuffle, all became good and loyal subjects of the Empire and of the Imperial dynasty,--good and loyal without reservation, as has abundantly appeared.

So likewise within a similar period the inhabitants of the Southern States repudiated their allegiance to the Union, putting in its place an equivalent loyalty to their new-made country; and then, when the new national establishment slipped out from under their feet they returned as whole-heartedly as need be to their earlier allegiance.

In each of these moves, taken with deliberation, it is not to be doubted that this body of citizens have been moved by an unimpeachable spirit of patriotic honour.

No one who is in any degree conversant with the facts is likely to question the declaration that it would be a perversion, not to say an inversion, of fact to rate their patriotic devotion to the Union today lower than that of any other section of the country or any other class or condition of men.
But there is more, and in a sense worse, to be found along the same general line of evidence touching this sublimated sentiment of group solidarity that is called nationalism.

The nation, of course, is large; the larger the better, it is believed.