MOREOVER, I think we have learned to-day as never before the evils of a too narrow nationalism. I believe as firmly as ever that a sane nationalism is necessary for all true peace and prosperity, but I think we all agree to-day that an artificial nationalism, which manifests itself in a barren separatism and in the manufacture of artificial differences, makes for neither peace nor prosperity.
Believe me, this question is not trivial; it goes to the very root of the future not only of Scotland but of Britain and of the Empire. Britain cannot afford, the Empire cannot afford, I do not think the world can afford, a denationalised Scotland.* In Sir Walter Scott’s famous words, If you un-Scotch us, you will make us damned mischievous Englishmen.* We do not want to be, like the Greeks, powerful and prosperous wherever we settle, but with a dead Greece behind us. We do not want to be like the Jews of the Dispersion — a potent force everywhere on the globe, but with no Jerusalem.*
abridged
‘Let us get rid also,’ said Buchan, ‘once for all, of the absurd argument that because Scotsmen are successful in England and in the Empire and take a large part in their maintenance, it does not matter what happens to Scotland. It is not with what Scotsmen outside are doing that we are concerned, but with Scotland herself. That argument misses the whole point. Many people believe, rightly or wrongly, that there is a danger of Scotland sinking to the position of a mere Northern province of England.’
In a letter to A. J. Croker at the Admiralty, dated March 19th, 1826. The exact phrase was ‘you will find us damned mischievous Englishmen.’ See ‘The Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott’, by John Gibson Lockhart.
Buchan was a member of the Zionist cause, committed to the establishment of a national homeland for the Jewish people in what was at this time British Mandatory Palestine. But the State of Israel was another sixteen years away, and international recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel still controversial when the USA took the first steps towards it in 2018.