ABSTRACT
AN important cause of international misunderstanding lies in the insistent demand of the human mind for formulæ in which to imprison the vague and uncertain complexities of national character. It is an attractive and easy approach to foreign politics to assume that the French are logical but shallow, the Germans methodical but sentimental, to associate every Englishman with inherent gifts for colonization and seafaring, to picture all the nations of the world in the form of that menagerie of creatures which are supposed to exhibit their various predominant qualities, and to substitute for each vast and shapeless aggregation of bewildered men and women some definite symbolical figure. It would, of course, be foolish to deny the existence of national character, indefinite though it may be, which forms within each nation a common basis for personal qualities of a most diverse kind. But since all commentators on mankind must generalize about a race from those few members of it with whom they chance to come in contact, and since they cannot with certainty isolate what is a truly national characteristic from the personal variation, they are peculiarly liable to error in their conclusions.
