MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
MLEO A114ERY, in a lecture which he delivered recently to the United Nations University Centre, had some important things to say upon the theme of " British Links with Europe." He possesses many special qualifications which entitle him to speak upon a subject which, in our present state of nervous apprehension, has become a " delicate " subject. He is in the first place a patriot who believes that our English way of life is on the whole the most satisfactory method yet devised for conducting the relations between man and man. He is in the second place a pioneer in the concep- tion of Commonwealth, and since the distant days when he was one of Lord Milner's young men, he has devoted his great energies of heart and mind to the theory and to the practice of the great new experiment in imperial relations which was inaugurated by the Statute of Westminster. He is in the third place a good European, who has studied the lives and languages of many European countries, and has convinced himself that the expression " European culture " is no mere phrase, but a vital and vivifying fact. In the fourth place, he is a humanist who believes that the evolution of mankind has been marked by three main stages of progression, namely, the Christian Ethic, the Roman doctrine of the sanctity of contract, and the Greek conception of the freedom and beauty of the individual intelligence. And in the fifth place he is a man who throughout his life has been concerned with public affairs, and who, in positions of minor or major responsibility, has been able to observe to what extent institutions affect, or are affected by, human nature, and to what extent events determine theory or theory determines events. The opinions expressed by a man of such qualifications upon the correct relation between nationalism and internationalism are im- portant opinions. And since his lecture obtained but scant publicity at the time, I may be allowed to summarise and to comment upon some of the points which he made.
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