The
feeling may have to strive against a crowd of purely political
considerations, and by those purely political considerations it may be
outweighed. But the feeling is in itself altogether simple and natural.
So again, the people of Montenegro and of the neighboring lands in
Herzegovina and by the _Bocche_ of Cattaro feel themselves countrymen in
every sense but the political accident which keeps them asunder. They
are drawn together by a tie which every one can understand, by the same
tie which would draw together the people of three adjoining English
counties, if any strange political action should part them asunder in
like manner. The feeling here is that of nationality in the strictest
sense, nationality in a purely local or geographical sense. It would
exist all the same if Panslavism had never been heard of; it might exist
though those who feel it had never heard of the Slavonic race at all. It
is altogether another thing when we come to the doctrine of race, and of
sympathies founded on race, in the wider sense. Here we have a feeling
which professes to bind together, and which as a matter of fact has had
a real effect in binding together, men whose kindred to one another is
not so obvious at first sight as the kindred of Germans, Italians, or
Serbs who are kept asunder by nothing but a purely artificial political
boundary.
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