According to the British scholar Frederick Hertz, writing in 1943 at the peak of World War II, national aspirations are composed of four elements: a striving for national unity, a striving for national freedom, a striving for separateness, distinctiveness, individuality, originality, or peculiarity, and a striving for distinction among nations. Hertz considered this last element, the striving for distinction among nations, to be the strongest of all four aspirations and to underlie them all—but as he conceded, ‘the striving for distinction among nations, for honour, dignity, prestige and
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