Mar. 29.
In such a cosmopolitan city as Shanghai the recent discussion in our columns between certain members of the Jewish community concerning their own nationality must have been of no slight interest to others. Is every man clearly recognizable as belonging to a well defined type of humanity? Many will object: to the notion that they can be labelled in this easy: wanner. As a well known philosopher remarked, even a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it heard us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing," it would say, "I am myself, myself alone.' So it is that an Englishman, for example, while very proud and fond of his country, likes to believe that if in spite of all temptations to belong to, other nations he remains an Englishman, it is at least partly due to his own free will and choice and that it is something to his credit. What is it then that constitutes the essence, as it were, of nationality? Is it the place of one's birth, or the moulding influences of education, religion and environment, or just physical heredity and nothing else? This is a very important question, for patriotism rests on nationality, and in these days every nation, no matter how small, is claiming the right of self determination.
It is said that the formation of a nation and the strength of. national feeling is almost wholly due to a common environment, in cooperation with common intellectual and moral capacity, which creates a community of interest, and, in proportion to the strength of this
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.