UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 bMfl 73E 
 
 P 
 
 ISM 
 
 NATIONAL 
 
 AND 
 
 INTERNATIONAL 
 
 Sir CHARLES WALDStJ|i|^^T 
 
 ^1^ 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
BY THp SAME AUTHOR 
 
 ARISTODEMOGRAGY 
 
 FROM THE GREAT WAR BACK 
 TO MOSES, CHRIST AND PLATO 
 
 Cheap Edition (4s. 6d.) 1917. 
 
 " Few of the many books which the war has called forth merit more 
 careful consideration. ... His long and varied experience, his scholarship, 
 his residence in foreign countries, including Germany, give great Wcigiit to 
 his judgments on men and affairs. . . . We know no recently published 
 book which will do more to stimulate this social sense." — T/ie 'Junes. 
 
 " It would be a great mistake for practical politicians to brush aside 
 summarily proposals of this nature on the ground that they are unpractical, 
 and can only be regarded as the dreams of Utopian idealists. Not only 
 moralists and thinkers, but also the general mass of the public, are yearning 
 for the discovery of some means to prevent future wars and to relieve the 
 heavy burden of taxation due to the maintenance of enormous armaments." 
 — LoKD Cromer in 'Die Spectator. 
 
 " The distinguished author traces the causes of the war, formulates the 
 need of a fresh conception of morals, states the duty of the citizen in the 
 present crisis, and outlines a schemf' for an International Council, backed 
 by force, for the maintenance of peace. ... It is a reason for thankfulness 
 that the fruit of a mind so judicial, so well equipped, should be issued in a 
 cheap yet complete form." — Glasgozu Heraid. 
 
 WHAT GERMANY IS 
 FIGHTING FOR 
 
 Crown Ovo. Is. 6d. net. 
 
 " These papers show with absolute clearness the reasons for which 
 Germany provoked, and is still engaged in carrying on, the world's war, as 
 well as the undoubted responsibility, not only of the German Government, 
 but of the majority of the German people for the war." — 'Ike Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 " Sir Charles Waldstein's little book is calculated to give pause to those 
 sanguine people who imagine that the whole poison of Prussianism is 
 concentrated in the despotic circle." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Sir Charles Waldstein, tlian whom there are few living men better 
 qualified from knowledge of the German country, its statesmen and 
 publicists to form an opinion, here gives a succinct and closely reasoned 
 synopsis of the aims and evolution of German public opinion during the 
 war." — The People. 
 
 " His book constitutes an important war document." — Punch. 
 
 TO APPEAR SHORTLY 
 
 TRUTH : An Essay 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 BY 
 
 SIR CHARLES WALDSTEIN 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 I917 
 

 ,^ 
 
 
 fc . r . 
 
'' Humanity demands that the horizontal should supersede 
 its perpendicular subdivisions." 
 
 " He is the best cosmopolite 
 
 Who loves his native country best." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 " He loves his native country best 
 Who loves mankind the more." 
 
 '^ Periclean Athens^ the Renaissance in Italy, and the 
 Abolition of Slavery are as much our country as are 
 England, France^ Germany, and the United States." 
 
 " The aim of all education is to make ideals realities, 
 with power to guide our thought and action." 
 
 ^*^ After all, a man is religious in the degree in which 
 ultimate ideals are real to him." 
 
 3G52i5 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In the preface to my lecture on The English- 
 speaking Brotherhood (delivered in July 1898 at 
 the Imperial Institute, London, Lord Rosebery in 
 the chair, and reprinted in my book The Expansion 
 of Western Ideals and the World's Peace in 1899), 
 occurs the following passage : " My greatest fear 
 is that, from the nature of the subject and from 
 the special conditions which evoked my remarks, 
 I may not have been able on this occasion to give 
 proper emphasis to my positive and friendly feeling 
 for the European Powers that are essentially the 
 bearers of Occidental Civilisation. In urging the 
 coalition and combined action of England and 
 the United States, I have but seized the opportunity 
 offered of advocating the union of the two civilised 
 Powers who are best fitted by present circumstance 
 to draw nearer to each other, and who, from the 
 fundamental constitution of their national life, 
 are more closely related to one another than any 
 other two Powers in the civilised world. What- 
 ever negative attitude - may be manifest in this 
 lecture towards the other civilised Powers of the 
 European Continent is due to the fact that these 
 Powers have, by their recent action, shown them- 
 selves to be opposed to any closer union between 
 
 vii 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 the United States and Great Britain ; that by 
 several of their institutions, as well as by their 
 foreign and commercial policy, they are not yet 
 prepared for a more general federation of civilised 
 nations ; and that the prevailing spirit of Ethno- 
 logical Chauvinism among them is not only an im- 
 pediment to wider humanitarian brotherhood, but 
 is destructive of the inner peace and good-will 
 among the citizens of each nation. I feel so 
 strongly what I have said of this curse of Ethno- 
 logical Chauvinism that if it were possible to 
 create effective leagues and associations among the 
 civilised nations, and, moreover, associations with 
 a negative or defensive object, I should like to 
 urge the institution of a great Anti-Chauvinistic 
 League among the enlightened people of all 
 nationalities, to join together in combating this 
 evil spirit in whatever form it may manifest itself. 
 But I am not so visionary as to think that such a 
 league could be formed at the present juncture." 
 In the preface to the first edition of Aristodemo- 
 cracy, etc., published last year, it was stated : " The 
 war will, I venture to predict, prove to be the 
 swan-song of the older conception of nationality; 
 for it is the misconception of nationality which 
 has in great part produced it. Ultimately a new 
 conception of nationality and internationality will 
 be ushered in, in which loyalty to the narrower 
 relations will in no way prevent loyalty to the 
 wider. It will be the Era of Patriotic Inter- 
 nationalism. Not so very many years ago, as 
 human history goes, the Scotsman, for instance, 
 could not have conceived it possible to have 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 loyally upheld the interests of a great British 
 Empire, even at the sacrifice of Scottish local or 
 personal interests, as he is now prepared to do. 
 The same, I believe, will be true as regards the 
 wider international unit of the future in its relation 
 to the nations of to-day.'' 
 
 Sooner than the most sanguine among us dared 
 to hope, such a consummation has come within 
 the range of " practical politics." This has been 
 brought about chiefly by the Russian Revolution 
 and the action of democratic Russia, followed by 
 the adhesion of the United States to the cause 
 of the democratic Allies. The activity of the 
 American societies advocating the formation of 
 a League of Nations has greatly contributed to 
 educate the public mind all over the world. But 
 the most important advance in the history of 
 political thought among civilised nations has been 
 made in the definite pronouncements of policy 
 by the actual Government of Russia in con- 
 junction with the Committee of Workmen and 
 Soldiers in Russia who now direct the destinies 
 of that great and vigorous people. 
 
 The danger before us, anticipated by many of 
 us at the very beginning of the war, however, is 
 that this greatest Cause of modern history may be 
 jeopardised by its association with one of the 
 " old " political parties, the outcome of the mori- 
 bund conditions of days gone by, a party, more- 
 over, essentially based on purely economical issues 
 — the Socialist party. 
 
 The Socialist party belongs to the Bourgeois 
 regime of old, it is the revers de la medaille of 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 Capitalism, itself raising the possession of material 
 goods to the exclusive and commanding heights 
 dominating all political and social activities. 
 
 As long as every citizen of a free country is 
 never allowed to starve, as long as a minimum 
 living wage is assured to all workers willing to 
 work, as long as labour can formulate and con- 
 stitutionally contend for its just interests, the 
 subdivision and classification of citizens on the 
 grounds of material possessions is misleading and 
 antiquated. The determination of the franchise 
 on such grounds of " property," introduced into 
 the constitutions of ancient Athens and Rome 
 (though supplemented by other less material 
 conditions) has dragged on its artificial and 
 factitious vitality through the constitution of 
 modern democratic states in contradiction to 
 the true spirit of modern democracy. It has sup- 
 pressed and retarded the efficient introduction of 
 other qualifications which make for true and good 
 citizenship and for the development of the State 
 for the good of the community and the advance- 
 ment of mankind. This is not the place to formu- 
 late and to discuss these conditions of franchise. 
 Meanwhile, however, we protest against the sub- 
 division of mankind, of the citizens of free States 
 into the Labour Party and the Capitalist Party, 
 of the Proletariat (self-termed) and the Bour- 
 geoisie. With the exception of an infinitesimal 
 minority of idle people and selfish pleasure-seekers, 
 of old age pensioners and retired tradesmen and 
 professional men, we are all labourers and have 
 the full right to that title with all its duties and 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 privileges. Whatever our economic theories, which 
 can be fought out constitutionally within each' 
 democracy by constitutional means after this war 
 has ended in the downfall of Autocracy and of 
 Prussian Militarism and all it connotes, economical 
 questions can be discussed and decided upon 
 within each State. But we are at one with free 
 and high-minded Russia in its fight against the 
 peace-disturbing States who aim solely at the 
 expansion of their own power and possessions at 
 the expense of their neighbours. We are entirely 
 at one with all those in every country who, by 
 the inevitable logic of events, are being segregated 
 into the camp of Anti- annexationists in clear and 
 potent antagonism to the Annexationists, though 
 our aims do not exclude — in fact logically and 
 justly imply — Restitution and Reparation to those 
 who have been robbed. Above all are we at one 
 in our determination to secure peace for the 
 tortured nations of the civilised world and to aim 
 at a League or Federation of States which will 
 confirm and safeguard their own independence. 
 
 We protest against the Marxian monopoly of the 
 term International by a political party essentially 
 defined on the grounds of economical theories 
 which are far from being admitted by impartial, 
 dispassionate and truly scientific students of 
 political economy. The action of the German 
 Socialist Party at the Congresses of Stuttgart, 
 Copenhagen, Basle, and Brussels, and still more 
 since the war began, has shown how utterly in- 
 capable are all parties based upon purely economic 
 interests to safeguard and to advance the cause 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 of a wider humanity. The great movement 
 towards the League of Nations and International 
 Peace must be based upon broader and higher 
 principles of social values, and these social values 
 will, in the light of the great new movement in the 
 world, have to be revised and the old ones replaced 
 by new ones really and adequately expressive of 
 the moral consciousness of the civilised world. 
 
 Meanwhile we must revise our conception of 
 Patriotism as a great social virtue, eliminating 
 what is false and vicious, and preserving, enlarging 
 and strengthening its vitality as a passion which 
 makes for higher things, until International 
 Patriotism is effectively established among us. 
 This is the immediate aim of this book. 
 
 My thanks are again due to my wife and to 
 my friend, Mr. George Leveson Gower, for much 
 helpful criticism and many suggestions, and to my 
 step-daughter, Dorothy Seligman, for valuable 
 secretarial help. 
 
 Charles Waldstein. 
 
 Newton Hall, 
 
 Newton, Cambridge, 
 June 1917. 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 Since this book, including the Preface, was 
 written in the spring of this year, the progress of 
 the War has been disastrously checked by the 
 (let us hope) temporary paralysis of Russia. 
 
 The consequences have been most grave, and 
 might even have been catastrophic to the Western 
 Powers (though far from ensuring their ultimate 
 defeat), without the active intervention of the 
 United States. Now, in view of what I have said 
 of Russia {see p. 110) and the promise of this youth- 
 fully imaginative people in the untrammelled vigour 
 of its newly won freedom, that passage may now 
 appear paradoxical and the hopes there raised 
 seem devoid of all foundation. But in view of 
 these latter-day experiences it may sound yet 
 more paradoxical if the characterisation there 
 made of the Russian people is still maintained, 
 and if the results of their misguided action — 
 however fateful and tragic in the present crises — 
 are again ascribed by us to the dejauts de leurs 
 qualites. 
 
 The failure of Russia at this moment of a world- 
 crisis is mainly due to the want of public educa- 
 tion. In the first instance, however, it is to a 
 considerable degree caused by the influence of 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 " Socialism," as I have endeavoured to stigmatise 
 it in the Preface above. Instead of concentrating 
 the national effort on the great international 
 issue — the life and death struggle against mili- 
 tarism and autocracy — the Russian people were 
 primarily swayed by the vastly divergent, if not 
 directly antagonistic, interests and theories of 
 Anarchism, or Marxian socialism and class-warfare. 
 These have produced a state of internal anarchy 
 and lawlessness, have dissolved all discipline (and 
 indiscipline is, after all, absence of law), and this 
 condition has destroyed all power of resistance 
 to the militaristic enemy of the free world, free 
 Russia included.^ 
 
 Still, the primary cause of this Russian cata- 
 strophe is autocracy and not democracy. It is 
 due to the want of political education among the 
 Russian people, unprepared for the great task of 
 democracy to rule itself freely by law and social 
 order. ^ It merely illustrates the fact that, ulti- 
 mately, autocracy and not democracy produced 
 anarchy and the inefficiency of the Russian people 
 
 ^ We are informed that most of the deserters, who left the 
 Front open to the advances of the enemy, were peasants who 
 had been told that all the land was to be divided among them, 
 and were thus eager to secure their share of the spoils at home. 
 
 2 It will, by the way, be well for Herr Scheidemann to re- 
 member that, if Germany claims to possess a primacy of Kultur, 
 so predominant that it ought to be imposed upon the free States 
 of Europe by force of arms, the danger of ignorant anarchy 
 which as a deterrent he points to in Russia (in his speech of 
 August 2nd), whose people are utterly devoid of political educa- 
 tion, ought not to apply to his Germany. There ought there- 
 fore to be no reason why that great nation should not adopt at 
 once the forms of democracy prevailing in all civilised States 
 and ensure the expression and realisation of the true will of the 
 people. 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xv 
 
 in this crisis ; and that a people cannot be educated 
 to true democracy without hberty. For the cor- 
 ruption of the previous autocratic and bureau- 
 cratic rule had eaten so deeply into the Russian 
 people that, while, on the one hand keeping the 
 moujik and the mass of the people in absolute 
 ignorance, on the other hand the universal cor- 
 ruption of this bureaucracy had spread and 
 established all over the land traditions of mis- 
 government and illegality and had for the time 
 produced a national character unsuited to all self- 
 government, restraint and true public spirit. Such 
 ineptitudes and vices cannot at once be eradicated 
 and amended, as virtues cannot at once be en- 
 grafted on a nation, by a few eloquent speeches 
 and the enunciation of political theories. The 
 Russian crisis again proves — and this applies as 
 well to the defective political education of the 
 German people since the days of Bismarck — that 
 nothing will produce progress and prepare a nation 
 for true self-government but liberty itself. 
 
 But liberty is not licence. " It removes ob- 
 stacles to ensure freedom of natural growth " ; 
 but this does not mean that such removal of 
 obstacles is to promote the rule of ignorance, 
 selfishness and lawlessness. Liberty is a method 
 but not an aim. It is, in fact, the only method 
 through which civilised society can ultimately 
 attain its higher aims. It ensures freedom of 
 motion; but this movement may tend forward 
 or backward, upward or downward, or round and 
 round in mad and senseless mazes. Movement 
 must therefore lead to a definite and approved 
 
xvi POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 goal — which is the Best. The familiar antithesis 
 between Liberty and Authority, between freedom 
 of growth and stagnation — or, at best, oscilla- 
 tion — the one moving, the other fixed, is a false 
 antithesis leading to the fatal fallacy of all political 
 theory. There are other limitations to liberty 
 besides authority, namely, true democracy, which 
 means the liberty to choose your authority, which 
 again implies a living and moving process : this 
 life and movement constitute the history of 
 organised and civilised society, of wider political 
 bodies, of nations and States. If the " liber- 
 tarian thinks of history in terms of progress and 
 sees in it a continuous removal of hindrances to 
 free life ; while the authoritarian emphasises the 
 coercion throughout and believes that this changes 
 its form rather than its essence," ^ the aristodemocrat 
 sees in the process of history the " libertarian " 
 struggle to remove " authoritarian " hindrances 
 to the realisation in each period of its ideals of 
 the best life, communal and individual. 
 
 Thus liberty pushed to the extreme and by itself 
 leads to lawlessness and anarchy, as authority leads 
 to autocracy or the fixed rule of the few. But 
 democracy fills the whole ground between them; 
 and true democracy is aristodemocracy, the liberty 
 to choose the best authority — itself not fixed, but 
 moving and progressing with life. A State pos- 
 sesses the best constitution in the degree in which, 
 while safeguarding the equal rights of all its citizens, 
 
 ^ See G. Lowes Dickinson, The Choice Before Us, p. 63. 
 Many of these remarks are in criticism of the views expressed in 
 that book. 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xvii 
 
 it prepares, ensures, facilitates and accelerates the 
 Rule of the Best. 
 
 But we are then forced to face the grave, the 
 all-important, question of all politics : How is this 
 Best in the organisation and government of 
 society or groups and communities of individuals, 
 of nations, and States, to be attained? But here 
 (a fact to which I have referred in the Preface 
 above) I hesitate to enunciate boldly my answer 
 to the question just put, for fear of laying my- 
 self open to the charge of Utopianism. For, 
 however reasonable and logical a plan of social 
 and political reform may be, however much it 
 may appeal to the understanding and to the 
 normal approval of thoughtful and just men 
 and women, the greater our experience of actual 
 life, public and private, the more do we realise 
 the power of things that are, of contending inter- 
 ests, of the claims of vested interests, of the 
 urgency of the actual as opposed to the imaginary 
 however admittedly just — in one word, the power 
 of all that is summarised in the word Practical as 
 opposed to the Theoretical. We then hesitate 
 and even retreat from our position and relinquish 
 our convictions for fear of being stigmatised as 
 fantastic dreamers or frivolous prattlers instead 
 of judicious and conscientious men of judgment 
 and action. Yet I myself have seen — even in a 
 span of twenty years, two great ideals, which I 
 had ventured to enunciate and to uphold, which 
 at the time were barely admitted even into the 
 outskirts of practical politics, penetrate, by the 
 force and weight of their own truth and the rush 
 b 
 
xviii POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 of the world's events, into the innermost centre of 
 the actual politics of modern States, so that they 
 now become the determining factors in the shaping 
 of the world's destinies. They thus affect not 
 only the life of future generations, but the lives of 
 living men of the present day. The one is the 
 alliance between Great Britain and the United 
 States (which a few years ago, some of us urged 
 tentatively as a hope for future generations) ; the 
 other, a just and basal condition of this alliance, 
 is the wider alliance of the leading democracies of 
 the world to ensure peace and to establish a League 
 of Nations. With this experience before m6, I 
 now venture to formulate an answer to the ques- 
 tion, as to how in the constitution of democracies, 
 and by the activity of their citizens, the Rule of the 
 Best can be assured as a proposition of practical 
 politics, without fear of being thought fantastic or 
 frivolous. 
 
 The first answer which suggests itself, and which 
 no doubt actuated such men as Sir Thomas More, 
 Erasmus and Colet, is, that such a reformation 
 of the world or of definite States can only be 
 brought about by the education of the people 
 concerned, and that there is no other road to 
 salvation. Only when the individuals who con- 
 stitute a nation are, as a mass, educated up to the 
 standard which enables them to realise what is 
 truly good for them and society as a whole can 
 this good be effectively realised in the common 
 life of the community, the State and society at 
 large. No political enactment or change of con- 
 stitution will effect such a reformation unless the 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xix 
 
 seed fall upon the fertile ground of an intelligent 
 and moral people. 
 
 There is no doubt much wisdom and truth in 
 this contention. But what is here forgotten or 
 ignored is, that the education with which we are 
 concerned is the free and intelligent practice of 
 every individual citizen to enact and to modify the 
 laws which he, in common with his fellow-citizens, 
 makes, and that it is in the exercise of this very 
 function that he is to be educated. This can only 
 be done by the use of his best judgment and by the 
 practice and function itself, in freely contributing 
 his .share to the making of these laws. The applica- 
 tion of the absolute principle of laisser-jaire in any 
 given State with " authoritarian " restrictions, will 
 never lead to the production and education of free 
 citizens, and will not include in its activity and 
 life the essential element of progress. It is there- 
 fore indispensable that the constitution itself, 
 while providing the necessary element — necessary 
 as well for education as for immediate practice — 
 in the form of the franchise, should educate the 
 free citizen to be able to choose the best, while, 
 as far as possible, ensuring and regulating his 
 choice in the desired direction. In so far a con- 
 stitution can be framed or modified in order that 
 it should perform this all-important function in 
 the political life of free nations. 
 
 The vital conditions of such a constitution 
 
 would be that, while safeguarding and reasserting 
 
 the principle of liberty, it should direct this 
 
 moving power of all political life into the channels 
 
 which are most likely to ensure the best choice 
 62 
 
XX POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 on the part of the voter; while, by means of 
 this civic performance and free privilege, it re- 
 acts upon his political education and increases his 
 effective power of selecting the Best. 
 
 Though, as we shall see, there need be no re- 
 traction of universal suffrage, and the principle 
 of liberty be thus safeguarded, there will in fact 
 be a limitation in order to ensure, favour and to 
 encourage the choice of the Best. This will, how- 
 ever, in no way mean the introduction of a new 
 principle into democracy. The most democratic 
 constitutions in existence, and even those of any 
 socialistic scheme devised for the future govern- 
 ment of mankind, have included or will include 
 some principle of limitation . to the franchise. 
 Children, in fact all minors, lunatics and criminals 
 are already so excluded. This limitation therefore 
 already implies or admits the principle of the choice 
 of the Best, though it be on the negative side, in 
 excluding what, on the face of it, is inferior if 
 not bad. In most democratic constitutions in the 
 past, including our own, there has been an '* aristo- 
 cratic " limitation and a principle of selection for 
 the franchise, but (as has been stated in the Pre- 
 face) the selection and distinction have been based 
 on the economical factor of property or wealth. 
 It needs no further argument to show that this 
 plutocratic principle is repugnant to the political 
 and moral sense of modern man. 
 
 Now, in our own day in the momentous intro- 
 duction of Woman Suffrage, we are already warned 
 that some equally irrational and unjust limitation 
 of age beyond majority, or of residence or property 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xxi 
 
 may be chosen. But there is some hope for those 
 who think as I do, that the practical problem of 
 introducing and defining the principles of suffrage 
 for women may ultimately lead in practical 
 politics to the establishment of rational and just 
 principles of selection and limitation into the 
 franchise of every democratic State as a whole, 
 a hope which before this great historic event would 
 never have been thought possible of realisation. 
 
 The only just and rational principle of differentia- 
 tion which will accord with the modern political 
 and moral convictions of civilised peoples is educa- 
 tion, or rather the manifest and directly active 
 results of education. But we must at once make it 
 clear, t^hat such education does not mean learning. 
 For, apart from our a 'priori reasons on the effect 
 of science and learning by themselves as a direct 
 preparation for social and political activity, our 
 recent experience in respect of the German nation 
 and the political influence of its learned professors 
 shows the futility of such training in ensuring 
 political judgment and independence of action. 
 Moreover, the results of stereotyped and fossilised 
 learning and its tests, as applied to the active 
 political life of the Chinese Empire, give the same 
 warning in this direction. 
 
 The education required, and the practical re- 
 sults to be obtained, must themselves be social 
 and political. It is furthermore essential that the 
 tests for the possession o£ such qualifications must 
 be simple, practical and democratic in spirit. The 
 principle, not so much of limitation as of differentia- 
 tion and selection determining the franchise, must 
 
xxii POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 be that already admitted in the practical dis- 
 cussion of various democratic legislatures, namely, 
 of proportionate representation. Free citizens 
 would not be deprived of the franchise excepting 
 on principles already admitted in the exclusion 
 of minors, lunatics and criminals, in order to safe- 
 guard the community against the rule of crass 
 ignorance and folly. Now, with the introduction 
 of compulsory national elementary education into 
 every civilised democracy, there could be no hard- 
 ship or grievance or any reversal of the demo- 
 cratic principle if the simple tests of the " leaving " 
 examinations from these national schools were to be 
 applied as a condition of the grant of the franchise. 
 Crass illiteracy can hardly be upheld by anybody, 
 nor can the illiterate who fails to make use of 
 the opportunities offered to every citizen consider 
 himself wronged if he is excluded from contri- 
 buting to the legislation of his neighbours as well 
 as of himself. He practically remains a minor if 
 not a mentally deficient or criminal. But such 
 elementary education must emphatically include 
 in its school curriculum two subjects : so-called 
 civics and modern ethics. In an elementary 
 form every boy or girl in the country must be 
 instructed in the essential outlines of the consti- 
 tution of the country and the duty of the citizen, 
 as they must also be instructed in the code of 
 individual ethics regulating the moral life of a 
 definite community in a definite period. Though 
 this will in no way produce statesmen or saints 
 and directly ensure political efficiency or moral 
 uprightness, it will in the aggregate save the masses 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xxiii 
 
 from the crass ignorance of politics prevailing at 
 the present moment, as it will raise the standards 
 of social morality throughout the nation. 
 
 At the end of the course of school-teaching in 
 these elementary schools there is to be a " leav- 
 ing " examination, where especial prominence is 
 to be given to elementary civics and ethics. An 
 ordinary pass in such elementary training will be 
 a condition for the franchise imposed upon every 
 citizen when he has maintained his majority. 
 There will be no repudiation of truly demo- 
 cratic principles if those who fail to pass such an 
 examination should not be eligible to vote, any more 
 than our present refusal to admit minors, lunatics 
 or the feeble-minded constitutes an undemocratic 
 repudiation of true liberty. 
 
 In England our age has not unfrequently been 
 called the " Age of Examinations," and the phrase 
 " the curse of examinations " has often been used 
 with some justice by those who have the higher 
 interests of true science and learning at heart as 
 well as the unfettered development of the indi- 
 vidual mind and the encouragement of individu- 
 ality and genius. On the other hand, it must not 
 be forgotten, that if examinations are an evil, they 
 are to the same degree a necessary evil ; and that 
 the advantages derived from them far outweigh 
 the disadvantages which they entail. They do 
 universally and ultimately encourage the diffu- 
 sion of accurate knowledge and the raising of 
 standards of mental training and efficiency, and, 
 above all, they assert and realise the principle 
 of justice as opposed to injustice and partiality. 
 
xxiv POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 In the case of public and official work, without 
 them the doors would again be opened to ignor- 
 ance and favouritism, however many brilliant 
 exceptions the practice of previous days may 
 have produced in the unfettered success of great 
 individuals or of the favoured classes. More- 
 over, examinations can be improved in their true 
 testing capacities as well as simplified and made 
 thoroughly practical in their application to the 
 educational life of the community. 
 
 Corresponding to our advance from primary 
 to secondary education, there would have to be 
 introduced together with the proper teaching in 
 these subjects, higher " final " examinations in 
 advanced civics and ethics. The ignorance of even 
 the most favoured classes, owing to their deficient 
 education, of even the rudiments of the laws and 
 practices in the ordinary working of the British 
 Constitution is, when tested, beyond all belief. 
 Without considering the more complicated and 
 theoretical aspects of our legislative and adminis- 
 trative life, it would be a revelation to the inquirer 
 if he discovered how many people amongst the 
 most highly educated classes are in no way 
 conversant with the system of local government 
 and national administration, nor with the relation 
 between these two divisions of public life ; and 
 how very few there are who could give a clear 
 and accurate account of what some may vaguely 
 apprehend. Even the purpose, nature and dis- 
 tribution of local, national and federal taxation, 
 in which we are all definitely concerned through 
 the strongest appeal to our own material in- 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xxv 
 
 terests, are understood but by a comparatively 
 small number ; while there are still fewer who could 
 give a clear account of such principles and prac- 
 tices. Surely something is radically wrong in the 
 training of citizens in a democracy when such 
 ignorance prevails ; and this is especially so when 
 we realise that the country is ruled by the people 
 themselves. 
 
 It is therefore not only desirable, but urgently 
 necessary, that the civic life of our great demo- 
 cracies should be supplemented by the preliminary 
 training in the constitutional practice of the country 
 and that further encouragement be given to the 
 acquisition of thorough knowledge of the political 
 theory and practice of every democracy. While 
 increasing the fitness of the citizen properly to 
 use his right of franchise, it would also prepare the 
 intelligent voter himself to become an intelligent 
 and efficient legislator and administrator. 
 
 The recognition and encouragement of such in- 
 creased political fitness should consist in the grant- 
 ing of an additional vote, over and above the 
 elementary franchise open to every citizen; and 
 this democratic privilege would be acquired by 
 the passing of the secondary standard of educa- 
 tion especially in higher civics. Beyond a more 
 thorough knowledge of the British Constitution 
 such civics might even include some familiarity 
 with the important constitutions of other countries, 
 as well as international relationships, interests and 
 ideals. Though questionable, it may be found 
 desirable that the further educational progression 
 (always including a corresponding advance in the 
 
xxvi POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 study of civics) from the school to the university 
 or technical high-schools, when realised in the final 
 testing examination, might lead to the conference 
 of yet another additional vote. 
 
 Besides thus confirming the principle of demo- 
 cratic justice in this progression in the franchise 
 and contributing to the consequent efficiency of the 
 government of the state, such practice would (as 
 I hinted above) re-act upon the advance of national 
 education, raise its standards and increase its 
 practical effectiveness for the whole people. For 
 it would directly furnish a reward for all progress 
 in intellectual, moral and political education, and 
 would certainly end in raising the economic and 
 industrial efficiency as well as the social and poli- 
 tical standards of the nation as a whole. ^ 
 
 Beyond these tests conveying increased greater 
 voting power upon the free citizens of a country, 
 there will be other sources of such increase and 
 advancement, namely, through the " Honours " 
 conferred by the State. Such Honours will no 
 longer be hereditary, nor will they be bought with 
 money. On the initiative of Lord Selborne I am 
 
 1 While I have always been a most convinced opponent of 
 German militarism, I have always realised, that there was one 
 redeeming result of this cursed and barbarous survival in 
 modern life, besides the physical training which it confers upon 
 the mass of the people who in Germany have but little oppor- 
 tunity for such development. This boon is the long-established 
 Ein-jdhrig freiwillige examination, by the passing of which 
 examination the conscript German can reduce his military 
 service to one year. These examinations mark a high standard 
 of proficiency. Though not wholly due to them, the spread of 
 higher education and consequent industrial and commercial 
 efficiency of modern Germany is, to a great extent, due to this 
 one very effective stimulant to education among the people. 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xxvii 
 
 gratified to see that, at the very moment that 
 I am writing these Hnes, a definite and renewed 
 attempt is being made in the House of Lords to 
 check, and even to eradicate, such abuses in the 
 conferring of Honours. The Honours here con- 
 templated by us are to consist in the additional 
 vote, or votes, conferred upon the citizen who has 
 done good service to the State, or has attained dis- 
 tinction and eminence in whatever w^alk of life 
 might conduce to the welfare and progress of 
 society. Not only statesmen and public servants, 
 soldiers and sailors, but philanthropists and men 
 eminent in Science, Learning and Art, as well as 
 the leaders of Industry, Commerce and Labour, are 
 thus to be distinguished and rewarded ; and such 
 rewards are to increase and be cumulative as each 
 recipient advances in achievement, eminence and 
 continuous work in his useful career. There will 
 thus be not only three-vote men but even ten-vote 
 men ; nay, there is no reason why, towards the 
 end of a great career, there should not be a hundred 
 or even a thousand- vote men. This progression in 
 public recognition and stimulation would be one 
 of the most important duties of the State, and 
 the distinctions conferred would be effectively ad- 
 mitted by the public with the unconditional moral 
 approbation of every free citizen. While ensuring 
 and accelerating the predominance of what is best 
 in the body politic, this function of the State would 
 be distinctly democratic ; for such Honours would 
 not be hereditary and would be within the reach 
 of every citizen. Moreover, they would directly 
 react upon the education of the people and would 
 
XXX POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 neutrals, that they have passed beyond the sphere 
 of argument. At all events, there can be abso- 
 lutely no doubt that Germany has had for many 
 years an All-Deutsche party, the professed and 
 published programme of which has been military 
 aggression and vast enlargement of Germany's 
 territory and power all over the world ; as the war 
 party (united, if not identical, with it) has for years 
 openly looked forward to, and toasted in officers' 
 messes the " Tag,'' in which such a war should 
 be waged on land and sea. Now, though we have 
 had " jingoes " among us, no evidence has yet 
 been forthcoming to show that the objects of this 
 warlike minority in our midst were anything but 
 defensive. 
 
 The pacifist who corresponds to the denotation of 
 that word, as I have given it, refuses to fight in such 
 a defensive war and wilfully refuses to see that, 
 if his example were to be followed by the whole 
 nation, it would in no way cause the enemy to 
 desist from his aggression, but would spell the 
 complete victory, and the final establishment over 
 the world, of Prussian militarism. While con- 
 sidering himself a law-abiding citizen, he is like 
 the man who will stand by in complete passivity 
 and see a murder or a robbery committed without 
 in any way lending his help to maintain the laws 
 of his country, which have hitherto protected him 
 and those nearest to him. Surely such a man has 
 practically made himself an abettor of the crime, a 
 particeps criminis. To maintain — or even to be- 
 lieve — ^that in arguing against militarism he is jus- 
 tifying his conception of Pacifism is like preaching 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xxxi 
 
 against tyranny and autocracy to convinced and 
 professed " libertarians " and democrats in order 
 to uphold extreme anarchism. To argue thus 
 would be "to carry coals to Newcastle" when the 
 real object is to favour incendiarism. 
 
 Now, such views and arguments have produced 
 what is called the Conscientious Objector. Let me 
 at once state in all sincerity not only that we must 
 admit and insist upon freedom of conscience, but 
 also that in every civilised and free State we must 
 resist all forms of persecution. This conviction 
 on our part not only enables, but forces us to 
 sympathise to a considerable degree with the sincere 
 conscientious objector, to deplore all encroach- 
 ments upon liberty of conscience and to resist 
 all persecution directed against this freedom of 
 conscience. In no civilised modern state profess- 
 ing liberty and ensuring freedom to its citizens can 
 an Inquisition arise or be maintained. No man 
 should be penalised or persecuted for the beliefs 
 which he holds. But we cannot admit that he has 
 the absolute and indiscriminate right to publish 
 all and every one of such beliefs, if they can be 
 proved definitely and clearly to be against " good 
 policy " and the maintenance of order and peace 
 in the community. An absolute and unrestricted 
 admission of such a right could at once be shown 
 to lead to absurdity. A set of criminal maniacs 
 whose beliefs, in the form of religious tenets, con- 
 vinced them that it was the will of God to exter- 
 minate the sinful human race, and who therefore 
 preached wholesale murder, could not be allowed 
 to carry on their religious propaganda even in the 
 
xxxii POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 freest of countries which effectually upholds freedom 
 of conscience. Nevertheless, I will admit that when 
 a religious sect, the aims of which emphatically 
 conform to the moral consciousness of a wider 
 orgarujti Society or State, includes among its 
 artic4^Bf faith the prohibition to kill under any 
 conditions or to take part in a war, such a religious 
 faith must be respected by every State that has 
 admitted them as citizens, and a member of such 
 a sect, who has been a member before the out- 
 break of war, ought to be exempt from military 
 service in so far as it involves the taking of life. 
 This is especially incumbent upon every State that 
 has not had compulsory military service before 
 the outbreak of war. It is distinctly an arguable 
 point whether this also applies to those countries 
 whose laws include universal military service with- 
 out any restrictions. Much can be urged even in 
 these cases against such an encroachment on the 
 freedom of religious conscience. Still it might be 
 argued in favour of compulsion even in these cases 
 that the professors of such religious faiths, with 
 the foreknowledge they had concerning the even- 
 tualities of war, were free to emigrate from that 
 country. In our own case, however, I maintain 
 that it would be wrong and decidedly inequitable 
 to force the citizens, who had professed such a 
 faith and had in every respect been admitted as 
 citizens, to join in the act of killing which their 
 religion forbids. But I know of no religion which 
 enacts a prohibition to save life even at the risk of 
 losing one's own. If this be so, I also maintain 
 that when, in a clearly defensive war, every con- 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE xxxiii 
 
 scripted soldier risks his life, there is no reason in 
 law or justice why one whose religion forbids him 
 to take life should not be enrolled among that 
 portion of the army whose work it is to save life. 
 I cannot, with every attempt to be just aM^even 
 generous, refrain from maintaining that ^Hwho 
 refuses to do this may be justly branded as a 
 coward. 
 
 But it might also be maintained that " Con- 
 scientious Objection " without being based upon 
 religion, may be grounded upon political convic- 
 tion which ought to be equally respected. Yet it 
 is well for such " objecLors "to remember that 
 every deliberate act — including the most illegal — is the 
 result of '^conviction'''' ; hut, if it he illegal, the 
 degree of its deliheraieness increases its criminality. 
 Those who believe (as we all do) that war is in itself 
 a crime and an anachronism might maintain that it 
 ought in action to be resisted by every one who 
 firmly holds this faith. Their convictions, I believe, 
 should be respected before the outbreak of war. 
 But when war emerges from the preparatory and 
 potential stage and actually comes upon us ; when 
 it is an undeniable fact which no amount of reason- 
 ing, logic and morality can dissolve or counteract ; 
 the whole position is essentially altered. Christian 
 Scientists, so-called, though also constituting a 
 religious sect, do not believe in the reality of 
 disease and carry their belief into the practice of 
 life. So long as it remains a belief it cannot be 
 interfered with by the State. But if the com- 
 munity finds it necessary to issue sanitary enact- 
 ments in order to combat an actual disease which 
 
xxxiv POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 
 
 endangers the existence of the whole community, 
 the Christian Scientist has no right to refuse to 
 conform by taking the precautions enjoined, and 
 by actively fighting the disease in order to increase 
 public security, even if he does not believe in it 
 himself. In such a case it is right that he be forced 
 to obey the law. Whatever we may believe with 
 regard to the iniquity and folly of war, when it 
 comes upon us as a great disease, we must all join to 
 combat it, and the law designed for this purpose 
 may force us to comply with its enactments. He 
 who in spite of these (in our own opinion) irrefut- 
 able and just arguments, nevertheless believes that 
 he ought to resist (and his convictions may be abso- 
 lutely sincere) must resign himself to become a 
 martyr to his convictions. We must admit such 
 action as we admit the action arising from con- 
 viction in many cases in which public security 
 forces us to counteract it, without bitterness and 
 even with pity, but decidedly not with the respect 
 which we reserve for those deeds which respond 
 to our best judgment and our moral ideals. We 
 cannot forget that there are cases in which highly 
 conscientious actions turn into an act of folly; 
 and tragedy merges into comedy even though it 
 be tragi-comedy. 
 
 C. W. 
 August, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface 
 
 Postscript to Preface 
 
 PAGE 
 Vll 
 
 Xlll 
 
 I. Introduction 1 
 
 II. Progression from Proximate to Ulti- 
 mate IN THE Causes of the War . 3 
 
 Assassination of the Archduke. Austria and Serbia 4 
 
 Teuton and Slav. German Weltpolitik . . 5 
 
 Defence of Smaller Nationalities ... 5 
 
 ""\^an-German World Dominion and Prussian 
 
 ^ Militarism ...... 9 
 
 Autocracy and Democracy .... 12 
 
 _____jjjrhe Fight of Humanity against Nationalism . 13 
 
 President Wilson's Address .... 14 
 
 III. The Psychology of German Patriotism 
 
 AND the War 20 
 
 "Why Germany thus went to War. Finality of the 
 
 State ....... 20 
 
 National Mentality and the National Will . . 26 
 
 Chauvinism and Patriotism .... 27 
 
 The Influence of National Interests ... 28 
 
 '--" Racial and National Pride .... 33 
 
 National Arrogance ..... 36 
 
 IV. False Patriotism 39 
 
 Reasons for National Pride .... 41 
 
 The Exaggeration of National Characteristics . 45 
 
 England ....... 46 
 
 France ....... 56 
 
 Germany ... ... 67 
 
 The American Gentleman .... 72 
 
 Episode on Differ-ent Shadings of Hospitality . 75 
 
 XXXV 
 
xxxvi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V. Corporate Inferiority . •. . .87 
 
 Race Corporateness ..... 96 
 
 VI. The Ascending Scale of Corporate 
 
 Duties 101 i 
 
 True National Patriotism .... 104 
 
 International Patriotism . . . ; . 109 
 
 Epilogue 113 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 Introduction 
 
 There have been many causes for this war, 
 immediate and ultimate. I shall try to show in 
 this essay that among the latter, i. e, the ultimate 
 causes, German so-called patriotism, in the form 
 of the corporate pride of the individual German 
 citizen, has ultimately been most effective in 
 producing this war. If this has been the sinister 
 effect of patriotism, admittedly a high social 
 virtue, evolved by the development of the human 
 being and human society, we are bound to revise 
 our idea of patriotism in the light of our tragic 
 experiences, and we are driven to look more closely 
 mto the real meaning and import of nationalism 
 m itself and its relation to what might be called 
 internationalism. We are of necessity driven 
 further in our inquiry into a critical examination 
 of the origin, meaning, aims and history of all 
 corporate bodies as such ; and we shall ultimately 
 find that the right of existence of such corporate 
 bodies must be constantly tested in the light of 
 the original purposes which called them into 
 
 B 
 
*2 
 
 PATBIOTISM 
 
 being — their ideals. If this is not done, we shall 
 find that there is an inherent tendency in the very 
 nature of corporateness which makes for deterio- 
 ration, has a lowering effect upon the personal 
 and social morality of the individuals who com- 
 pose it, so that the individuals, as well as the 
 corporate body as a whole, become unsocial and 
 in so far immoral in their influence upon human 
 society. We shall find that their existence is 
 only justified in so far as they serve the original 
 purpose for which they were called into existence, 
 in so far as their activity tends towards the 
 realisation of their ideals. 
 
II 
 
 Progression from Proximate to Ultimate 
 IN THE Causes of the War 
 
 In all sociological and political studies we 
 frequently, if not always, find that out of small 
 beginnings arise great things. The murder of the 
 Austrian Archduke and his consort led to this 
 world war. As there is the logic of numbers and 
 of thought, so is there the logic of events. The 
 true student and philosopher is bound to link up 
 this logic of events with the logic of thought, and 
 thus to arrive at ultimate truth. We shall find 
 that the smaller and narrower desires, motives 
 and ideas which force mankind to immediate 
 action, lead us on to greater and wider ideas, to 
 basic principles of human motives and human 
 action, of which the immediate manifestations, 
 that are at first most prominent and limit our 
 horizon of vision and experience, are merely the 
 surface symptoms. The real and efficient causes 
 which led to such actions are to be found deeper 
 down in human nature ; they are thus common to 
 all the human beings partaking of this nature, 
 and, in a wider range of human activity, they direct 
 the collective action of great nations and of alliances 
 of States. 
 
 3 
 
4 PATRIOTISM 
 
 These considerations emphatically apply to the 
 history of this great war. The more we consider 
 it in all its aspects, the more thoroughly we pursue 
 the logic of events and of human motives from the 
 more immediate to the more ultimate causes, the 
 more shall we find that the logic of events step by 
 step forces us on from the immediate causes of 
 official State-action down to the common basic 
 principles of human psychology in individual man 
 and in the collective psychology of the people 
 who constitute the State and the nation. 
 
 Assassination of the Archduke. Austria and 
 
 Serbia 
 
 For the purposes of this essay, we need not enter 
 into the detailed account or discussion of the 
 political causes which led to the war and to the 
 first stages of its prosecution. These questions 
 have been subjected to abundant and searching 
 inquiry and are, or ought to be, the common pro- 
 perty of all thoughtful and unprejudiced people 
 among belligerents and neutrals. But, in the 
 light of our inquiry, it must be pointed out that 
 we cannot accept, and remain satisfied with, the 
 explanation of this most momentous event in the 
 world's history, by the enumeration of its more 
 proximate causes, such as, in the first instance, 
 the assassination of the Archduke, or, in the second 
 instance, the struggle between the powerful 
 Austrian Empire and the small Serbian Kingdom 
 leading to the attempted suppression of Serbian 
 independence and national development, which 
 
TEUTON AND SLAV 5 
 
 was regarded by the Austro-Hungarian Empire 
 as threatening its own inner national security and 
 the legitimate expansion of its power. 
 
 Teuton and Slav, German Weltpolitik 
 
 Driven still further afield, we may realise that 
 the war was, with some justice, regarded as the 
 struggle between Teuton and Slav, represented 
 on the one hand by the powerful German Empire 
 and on the other by the equally powerful Russian 
 Czardom. The moment Germany is introduced it 
 becomes clearly manifest to all competent students 
 of contemporary politics that the real aggressive 
 factor in this war is, and has been for years, the 
 German Empire and its national aspirations. We 
 are driven far beyond the struggle of Slav and 
 Teuton interests in the south-east of Europe to 
 the proper estimate of the influence of Pan-German 
 Weltpolitik, which affects practically every estab- 
 lished State and nationality in the civilised world 
 with whose actual possessions and existence these 
 aspirations must conflict and into whose national 
 existence and security they enter. 
 
 Defence of Smaller Nationalities 
 
 But before leaving the immediate and original 
 focus of the war at its beginning, i.e. the Balkan 
 States in the south-east of Europe, a new and 
 wider principle of universal policy obtrudes itself 
 on the consciousness of the whole world involved 
 in the struggle, namely, the principle of the inde- 
 pendence and the right of existence of the smaller 
 
6 PATRIOTISM 
 
 nationalities and States. The Balkans have been 
 the most typical and illustrative centres for the 
 actual and practical application of the principles 
 governing smaller nationalities. On the other 
 hand, it is a grave mistake to believe that they 
 furnish the clearest exposition of these principles, 
 because these several Balkan States, as regards 
 the question of nationality, are so far from clearly 
 defining it, that, on the contrary, they produce 
 the most confusing tangle in the perception of the 
 idea of nationality itself. Race, language, religion, 
 topographical configuration of the country in 
 relation to these and to what are called political 
 boundaries, past history, present politics, commer- 
 cial and industrial interests — all are merged and 
 intertwined, unite and conflict in such a highly 
 confusing degree that the attempt at a definition 
 of a nation and a State presents in these districts 
 the most insuperable difficulties. 
 
 The nature and claims of these smaller Balkan 
 States make it therefore almost impossible for us 
 to arrive at a clear conception of what we mean 
 by " the smaller nationalities " in this connection 
 for the maintenance of which in their integrity 
 we are thus prepared to fight. The principle of 
 nationality as underlying the moral justification 
 for the existence of the several Balkan States, 
 which were formerly wholly, and recently partially, 
 under the domination of the Turkish Empire, 
 cannot be the same as the political and moral 
 justification for the solidarity and the independence 
 of, for instance, Switzerland, Belgium or Canada, 
 not to mention many greater States. These 
 
DEFENCE OF SMALLER NATIONALITIES 7 
 
 smaller nations and States, as now constituted 
 and politically developed for many generations, 
 are made up of two or more races, which can be 
 clearly distinguished on ethnological grounds and 
 which differ in language and religion. The sense 
 in which the term and the concept " nationality " 
 are frequently, if not generally, used as a moral 
 and political claim for the solidarity and inde- 
 pendence of the State, can certainly not be applied 
 in these cases. Yet there can be no doubt that we 
 should all be ready to fight in support of the 
 independence of these States if they were threatened 
 by one of the " expanding " greater Powers. Do 
 we really sympathise, and are we justified in 
 sympathising with, the so-called " national " 
 claims and ensuing sanguinary conflicts of the 
 Greeks, the Bulgars, the Serbians, the Wallachians 
 or Roumans, the Albanians, and the Moham- 
 medan Turkish residents in these several countries ? 
 Is it a sufficient guide to sanguinary antagonism 
 to count how many people in each district speak 
 the Greek language or one of the differing branches 
 of the Slav tongue or the Roumanian, Albanian 
 or Turkish languages, how many worship in the 
 several differing churches or attend the schools 
 attached to them which correspond to these several 
 " national subdivisions," — not to enter into the 
 most confusing and doubtful inquiries with regard 
 to their racial, ethnological origin? And having 
 counted and constituted a doubtful majority of 
 one element over the other, is this enough to justify 
 the most heinous persecution and constantly recur- 
 ring murders of individuals or of collective bodies 
 
8 PATRIOTISM 
 
 throughout the Balkans for so many years pre- 
 ceding this war? Surely the cause of freedom 
 and justice rests upon other, vastly different and 
 far securer foundations than these ! 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever the claims for national 
 freedom and development of each one of these 
 several so-called nationalities in that part of the 
 world may be, one fact, however, emerges clearly 
 from the conflict; namely, that their larger and 
 more powerful neighbours, simply because of their 
 greater bulk and power, have no right to rob 
 them of their independence and to absorb them 
 into their own body politic. This moral and 
 political conviction of civilised mankind has grown 
 still firmer and clearer when, in view of the pro- 
 fessed aims of Pan-German militarists, it became 
 abundantly clear that the national existence of 
 peaceful and highly developed smaller Western 
 European States, firmly established in their inde- 
 pendence through a glorious and beneficent history 
 in the past and fruitful civilising national activity 
 in the present — such as Switzerland, Belgium, 
 Holland, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries 
 — were threatened with absorption or domination 
 by the powerful Teutonic Empire on the ground 
 of its justifiable expansion and its economic and 
 intellectual superiority. When finally, by a 
 flagrant and cynically admitted breach of inter- 
 national treaties and obligations, Belgium was 
 overrun by the German army with the ensuing 
 orgies of cruelties and atrocities, the moral and the 
 political consciousness of the whole civilised world 
 and, more directly, of the British Empire and the 
 
PAN-GERMANISM AND MILITARISM 9 
 
 British nation, was stirred to single-minded pro- 
 test and active conflict against this flagrant breach 
 of political justice and morality. The result has 
 been that the principle of the defence of the smaller 
 nationalities has, especiafly in the consciousness 
 of the British people, been pushed to the very 
 forefront of the causes and the aims of this war, 
 and might thus claim to be its central and ultimate 
 cause and object. 
 
 Pan-German World Dominion and Prussian 
 
 Militarism 
 
 When thus, through the logic of events and of 
 thought, it became clearly established that the 
 really efficient cause of this great world war was 
 to be found in the desire for the expansion of 
 German World Empire, most clearly and un- 
 equivocally set forth by the programmes of the 
 All-Deutsche Partei, systematically developed in 
 all its aspects and phases with a methodicity 
 characteristic of this highly intellectual people, 
 the Allied beUigerents, as well as most of the 
 neutral Powers, clearly put Teutonic aspirations 
 and aggression into the forefront of the causes of 
 the war, and were aware of the more ultimate 
 object for which they were fighting. Meanwhile, 
 the Germans on their side, from the Kaiser and his 
 Chanceflor down to the humblest publicist and 
 journalist, have unremittingly endeavoured to 
 prove to themselves and to the world that theirs 
 was a defensive and not an offensive war.i But, 
 
 1 See Wimt Germany is Fighting for, by the same Author. 
 
10 PATRIOTISM 
 
 in their definition of the term " defensive " as 
 regards a State or an Empire, they have included, 
 as the essential factor, the free and full develop- 
 ment of the actual and potential power of the 
 state. In the case of Germany, this meant expan- 
 sion. Now this natural " and therefore moral," 
 development and expansion of German imperial 
 power predemanded and implied military and 
 naval security as well as industrial and commercial 
 expansion corresponding to the growing power 
 and wealth of that great Empire. By facile, and 
 apparently logical, arguments they could naturally 
 proceed in their endeavour to persuade their own 
 people and the outside world that they were 
 justified in attacking whatever thus threatened 
 their military and maritime security and free 
 expansion. This applied to their Eastern as well 
 as to their Western boundaries. It has thus 
 been easy for them to show that as Belgium 
 (" the military gateway into the heart of their 
 own country ") was thus threatening their security 
 from the military point of view, they were not 
 only justified in invading this neutral country 
 (whose neutrality and independence they had 
 themselves guaranteed) the moment the war 
 began, but they have since then maintained, and 
 do so even at the present moment, that the military 
 and economic control of this country must in some 
 form or other remain in their hands. The same 
 would apply to certain districts in the north- 
 east of France; and the same applies, for pur- 
 poses of their maritime security, to the coast-line 
 of Belgium and northern France. In the East, 
 
DEFENSIVE AND OFFENSIVE WAR 11 
 
 quite apart from the Baltic provinces of Russia, 
 from Poland and Galicia, the security of their 
 expansion, in conjunction with the Austrian 
 Empire, demanded the control of the districts 
 leading through the Balkans to the sea and to 
 Asia Minor, where, by means of the Bagdad 
 Railway, they should gain undisputed access to 
 the eastern seas. They claimed that by the 
 aggressive action of the Entente, which they termed 
 the " encircling policy of the Western Powers and 
 of Russia," this military and economic security 
 of expansion was threatened, and that therefore 
 they were justified in waging this defensive war. 
 Though events have proved that the majority of 
 the German people were actually convinced by 
 these flagrant sophistries, no right-minded people 
 among the Allied nations, or even among the 
 neutrals, could be deceived by them. 
 
 But such a policy could not have been adopted 
 by the people or even formulated publicly as a 
 policy, still less could it have been actually carried 
 into effect with such wonderful constraining 
 promptitude and method as the inception of this 
 war and its prosecution in every phase have proved, 
 had it not been for the militaristic and bureaucratic 
 system of Prussia grafted upon all the other States 
 of the German Empire during the last fifty years. 
 This militaristic and bureaucratic system which 
 also underlies and directs the conception of the 
 State was formulated and firmly fixed by the 
 intellectual leaders of the German people, from 
 the University professors down to the elementary 
 schoolmasters. Without Prussian militarism, its 
 
12 PATRIOTISM 
 
 aims and ideals, and without its thorough systematic 
 organisation, the attempted reahsation of Pan- 
 German aspirations could not have been carried 
 into actual life — in fact, could not have been 
 conceived or formulated within the nation at 
 all. 
 
 At an early stage of the war it was therefore 
 clearly recognised by all the allied peoples through- 
 out the world that this conflict was really waged 
 against Prussian militarism and all that it implied. 
 More and more the proximate causes to which we 
 have just referred receded to the background, and 
 this wider general cause, to be found in the con- 
 ception and organisation of the State for its supreme 
 and ultimate end, was recognised to be the real 
 cause for which we were fighting. 
 
 Autocracy and Democracy 
 
 Here again, however, the logic of events and of 
 thought has drawn us deeper down and further 
 afield. For we ourselves and the world at large 
 soon realised that the fundamental and efficient 
 difference between us in this fight against mili- 
 tarism and the conception of the Prussian State, 
 was the fight, not only between the military 
 and civil ideas of the State as opposed claimants 
 with opposed interests and aspirations, but was 
 to be found in the conception, and directly 
 in the constitution, of the different States them- 
 selves. Militarism stands and falls with autocracy. 
 The State whose power becomes the end to which 
 
AUTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY 13 
 
 the life and liberty of the citizens is subservient, 
 necessarily establishes a class, the military class, 
 the ruling class in the nation, who again require 
 the unity of command and direction in the person 
 of a War Lord. This conception of the State is 
 of course the direct opposite of the democratic 
 conception. And thus in this latest phase in the 
 history of this world-war, the struggle has been 
 formulated anew as the struggle between autocracy 
 and democracy. Again the logic of events has 
 stepped in to supplement, and to harmonise with, 
 the logic of thought ; and, in the downfall of 
 Russian Czardom, has removed the one discordant 
 element from the unity of aims and ideals among 
 the Allies, so that the true convictions of the 
 nations constituting this great alliance, long since 
 felt by the peoples themselves, could be truthfully 
 formulated and proclaimed. 
 
 The Fight of Humanity against Nationalism 
 
 Finally, the advent of the United States of 
 America into the arena of this great world-conflict 
 has made this wider and more ultimate formula- 
 tion of the essence of the conflict clearer and more 
 real through the active adhesion of the great 
 democracy of the West. But, while thus aiding 
 the world to realise more clearly its own great 
 aims and ideals, this, the most important and 
 significant historical event of the whole war, has 
 carried us beyond this last formulation to the 
 endeavour to realise more effectively the wider, 
 fundamental aims for which we are fighting. 
 
14 . PATRIOTISM 
 
 President Wilson's Address 
 
 The momentous and historical address of Presi- 
 dent Wilson to Congress clearly illustrates this pro- 
 gression in the logic of events and of thought, and 
 it will thus ever remain as a political, literary and 
 human document, the most authoritative expres- 
 sion of this great moral process in the history of 
 mankind. Attaching his generalisations chiefly to 
 the fall of autocracy in Russia, he thus formu- 
 lates the struggle as at first the Conflict between 
 autocracy and democracy, and defines the activity 
 of each in a contrast which implies their essential 
 opposition leading to a struggle which justifies war 
 in general and this war in particular. 
 
 Autocracy the Foe to Peace 
 
 " Self -governed nations do not fill their neigh- 
 bour States with spies or set in course an intrigue 
 to bring about some critical posture of affairs which 
 would give them an opportunity to strike and make 
 a conquest. Such designs can be successfully 
 worked only under cover where no one has a right 
 to ask questions. 
 
 " Cunningly contrived plans of deception or im- 
 pression, carried, it may be, from generation to 
 generation, can be worked out and kept from 
 light only within the privacy of Courts, or behind 
 the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow 
 privileged class. They are happily impossible 
 where public opinion commands and insists upon 
 full information concerning all the nation's affairs i 
 
PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS 15 
 
 " A steadfast concert for peace can never be 
 maintained except by the partnership of demo- 
 cratic nations. No autocratic Government could 
 be trusted to keep faith with it or observe its 
 covenants. There must be a league of honour 
 and partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat 
 its vitals away. Plottings by inner circles, who 
 would plan what they would and render an account 
 to no one, would be corruption seated at its very 
 heart. Only free people can hold their purpose 
 and their honour steady to the common end and 
 prefer the interest of mankind to any narrow 
 interest of their own. 
 
 *' Does not every American feel that assurance 
 has been added to our hope for the future peace of 
 the world by the wonderful, heartening things that 
 have been happening within the last few weeks in 
 Russia? Russia was known by those who knew 
 her best to have been always in fact democratic 
 at heart in all vital habits, in her thought, and in 
 all intimate relations of her people that spoke of 
 their natural instinct and their habitual attitude 
 towards life. 
 
 " The autocracy that crowned the summit of her 
 political structure, long as it had stood and terrible 
 as it was in the reality of its power, was not in fact 
 Russian in origin, character, or purpose, and now 
 it has been shaken, and the great, generous Russian 
 people have been added in all their naive majesty 
 and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom 
 in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a 
 fit partner for a league of honour." 
 
 Still, to use again his own words in the memorable 
 
16 PATRIOTISM 
 
 passage in which he accepts the challenge to enter 
 the war, he says : 
 
 Challenge Accepted 
 
 " We are now about to accept the gage of battle 
 with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if neces- 
 sary, spend the whole force of the nation to check 
 and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are 
 glad, now that we see facts with no veil of false 
 pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate 
 peace of the world, for the liberation of its peoples 
 — the German peoples included — the rights of 
 nations great and small, and the privilege of men 
 everywhere to choose their way of life and 
 obedience. The world must be safe for democracy. 
 Its peace must be planted upon trusted founda- 
 tions of political liberty. 
 
 " We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
 conquests and no dominion. We seek no indem- 
 nities for ourselves and no material compensation 
 for sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but 
 one of the champions of the rights of mankind, and 
 shall be satisfied when these rights are as secure as 
 fact and the freedom of nations can make them." 
 
 Yet it will be noted that, though he again re-echoes 
 the formulation of the conflict between autocracy 
 and democracy when in this passage he avers that 
 " the peace of the world must be planted upon 
 trusted foundations of political liberty," the entire 
 speech, not only in definite passages, but in the 
 whole of its tenour and tone and its summary import 
 and meaning, carries us a step further afield from 
 
NATIONALITY— INTERN ATIONALITY 17 
 
 the constitutional liberty of citizens in each country 
 and nation to a wider field of a common humanity, 
 in which the several nations are but units. The 
 inherent selfishness bred by autocracy, the repudi- 
 ation of all morality, individual as well as collective 
 and political, which necessarily follows the con- 
 ception of the autocratic state, in which the aims 
 and ideals of individual citizens end in complete 
 subordination to the State itself, to its security, 
 its prosperity and its expansion in power, lead him, 
 and through him the world at large, to formulate 
 anew the chief and ultimate factors in this struggle 
 as being a struggle for the welfare of humanity as 
 opposed to the self-sufficient and self-seeking interest 
 of each State and each nationality. It is not 
 therefore only the difference between the form of 
 government and the distinct constitutions of the 
 several nations, but the conflict between the rights, 
 interests and ideals of the separate nations with 
 those of humanity — the conflict of nationality 
 and internationality. It will thus be seen that, 
 running through this great speech as the leit-motij 
 of the whole symphony, we leave the minor theme 
 of Autocracy and Democracy, and enter the wider 
 moral harmony of nationality and internationality 
 — " the principles of peace and justice in the life 
 of the world as against selfish autocratic power." 
 These are again secured by the moral principles 
 evolved by man in the aeons of his struggles and 
 development; and the morality which guides the 
 conduct of man must in the future be applied to 
 the conduct of nations. 
 
 To quote President Wilson again — " Our object 
 c 
 
18 PATRIOTISM 
 
 now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace 
 and justice in the Hfe of the world as against 
 selfish autocratic power, and to set up amongst 
 really free and self-governed peoples of the world 
 such a concert of purpose and action as will hence- 
 forth ensure the observance of these principles. 
 
 *' Neutrality is no longer feasible, or desirable 
 where the peace of the world is involved and the 
 freedom of its peoples and the menace to that peace 
 and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic 
 Governments backed by organised force which is 
 controlled wholly by their will and not by the will 
 of their people. 
 
 "We have seen the last of neutrality in such 
 circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age 
 in which it will be insisted that the same standards 
 , of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall 
 be observed among nations and their Governments 
 that are observed among individual citizens of 
 civilised States." 
 
 The conception of this moral and social evolution 
 in the development of mankind, establishing for it 
 its highest common ideals, is expressed in the term 
 " civilisation." As President Wilson begins his 
 impeachment of Germany with the definite pro- 
 test against its policy of unrestricted submarine 
 warfare against neutrals as well as belligerents 
 with the words, " German warfare against com- 
 merce is a warfare against mankind; it is a war 
 against all nations," so he ends his great speech 
 with the words — 
 
 " Civilisation itself seems to be in the balance ; 
 but right is more precious than peace, and we shall 
 
CIVILISATION 19 
 
 fight for the things which we have always carried 
 nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right 
 of those who submit to authority to have a voice 
 in their own government, for the rights and Hberties 
 of small nations, for the universal dominion of 
 right by such a concert of free peoples as will bring 
 peace and safety to all nations and make the 
 world itself at last free. 
 
 '' To such a task we can dedicate our lives, our 
 fortunes, everything we are, everything we have, 
 with the pride of those who know the day has come 
 when America is privileged to spend her blood and 
 might for the principles that gave her birth, and 
 the happiness and peace which she has treasured. 
 God helping her, she can do no other." 
 
Ill 
 
 The Psychology of German Patriotism and 
 
 THE War 
 
 Why Germany thus went to xvar. Finality of the 
 
 State 
 
 Now the German conception of the State and of 
 international niorahty and international ideals — 
 at least in so far as it has manifested itself in con- 
 nection with this war — begins and ends with the 
 duty to the State. We may at once admit that 
 there exist a large number of German citizens — let 
 us hope even a majority — who do not, in their 
 better moments or even throughout their lives, 
 subscribe to these principles of public morality. 
 But the fact remains, that the activity of the 
 German Government, as representing the German 
 people, in producing and in carrying on this war, 
 has made manifest this distinctive conception of 
 public and private morality. Their leaders of 
 general and political thought, whose teachings have 
 been as widespread as they have been effective, 
 have formulated and preached to the people at 
 large these doctrines of political morality. In the 
 schools the children have been taught that the 
 supreme duty and the highest aims in the lives of 
 all German citizens is to add to the power of the 
 .State. No doubt some further moral justification 
 
 20 
 
FINALITY OF THE STATE 21 
 
 for this power has been added by admitting the 
 symboHc conception of all the moral aspirations 
 of humanity at large in the term " civilisation," 
 translated into their vaguer term of Kidtur. Kultur 
 is readily adjusted to convey no further meaning 
 than the actual state of civilisation of each distinc- 
 tive nation, irrespective of the common and ulti- 
 mate idea of human civilisation as a whole. They 
 have thus readily made themselves believe that, 
 as their Kultur was undoubtedly the highest and 
 the best among all civilised nations, it sufficed 
 for them to advance their own Kultur, and even 
 forcibly to engraft it upon that of other nations, 
 to satisfy the demands of a higher morality. 
 When once this is admitted, the direct advance- 
 ment of Kultur in itself need no longer be held 
 before the active consciousness of the people, and 
 it will be enough to insist upon the unrestricted 
 advancement of the power of the German State 
 which carries with it ipso facto the advancement 
 of German Kultur, which again, according to them, 
 is the highest Kultur and the best for humanity. 
 It would then become impossible to make any 
 concessions or sacrifices to other nations in order 
 to safeguard their Kultur or even in favour of the 
 general civilisation of mankind, should it con- 
 flict with German Kultur and with the advance- 
 ment of the power of the German State. But 
 those who now dominate the national consciousness 
 of the German people, who have victoriously 
 directed its mentality before the war and since its 
 inception, cast aside '' even this last shred of 
 Kultur torn from the banner of German romanticism 
 
22 PATRIOTISM 
 
 and idealism, which is dragged down and thrown 
 into the dust-heap of useless rubbish." The 
 truthful and cynical confession of these principles 
 is best represented by the article of Dr. Karl 
 Mehrmann on " Kultur oder Int cress enpolitik '* 
 {Das Grosser e Deutschland, January 27, 1917) — 
 
 " We have been very profligate with the use of 
 the word Kultur in the War. One cannot free 
 oneself from the suspicion that, in constantly 
 holding before our own eyes and those of others our 
 mission of culture, we endeavoured to provide 
 ourselves with some moral support, as if we had 
 thought it necessary to justify ourselves in the eyes 
 of neutrals, and as if we had lived in the delusion 
 that we should thereby make an impression upon 
 our adversaries. One might suspect that we had 
 quailed at our own courage, when, without having 
 declared war, we fell upon Belgium. The words 
 ' necessity knows no law ' sounded so courageous. 
 Still, it was only the courage of the political defen- 
 sive, not that of diplomatic offensive. A more 
 active statesmanship, filled more with the pluck to 
 come to grips with the foe (' On to Him ! ' — Ran an 
 den Feind !) would, from the outset, have under- 
 stood better how to place the guilt on the shoulders 
 of the adversary and to put him in the wrong — even 
 ' neutral ' Belgium. From that day onward our 
 policy could not free itself from this plea of neces- 
 sity (Notstandsgefiihl). It has not yet been able 
 to free itself from the scruples of private morality. 
 Even unexpressed the hope predominated to return 
 home from the great catastrophe with ' ^ white 
 
GERMAN KULTUR 23 
 
 waistcoat ' (Weiszer Weste). If Bismarck had 
 dreamed that his dehcious phrase in praise of 
 Wissmann would some day be used to justify a 
 diplomacy which is more than passive, apologetic 
 rather than masterful, he would at once have 
 protested against the possibility of such a misuse of 
 his words. . . . Our nation, as a whole, did not 
 go to the Front with the idea and the intention 
 of protecting the greatest treasures of humanity. 
 With sound instinct it knew, without a long process 
 of thought, what it had to defend : wife and child, 
 the feeble who remained at home, the work in the 
 home, production of food and munitions, our 
 thriving wealth, what had already been won and 
 would be won in the future, the right to share in all 
 the possibilities of further development. If you 
 wish to call this ' Kultur,' well and good. You 
 may as well call it honour and greatness, our present 
 and our future. In one word, it was the instinct 
 of national self-assertion which in those unforget- 
 table August days of 1914 rallied to the flag those 
 millions in fulfilment of the duty to which they had 
 sworn joyfully and in free self-sacrifice. It was 
 selfishness in its noblest form; and I only regret 
 that not a German but a perjured Italian has 
 given it its correct name : Holy Selfishness. A 
 small group of sentimental natures could, from the 
 easy-chairs of clubs, feel at most a shiver when the 
 features of this giant struggle for national inde- 
 pendence appeared before them. They, ' sicklied 
 o'er with the pale cast of thought,' had to support 
 the weakness of their national instinct with the 
 crutches of cosmopolitan phrases. Already in 
 
24 PATRIOTISM 
 
 peace time the inventors of the so-called Kultur 
 Politik diluted the immediate vitality of the 
 national passion for self-assertion with a tincture 
 of thought, with the conception of a struggle for 
 universal human ideals. 
 
 " Let them do this if it brings them consolation 
 or pleasure, but they must not pollute the original 
 purit}^ of true national sentiment with the infiltra- 
 tion of vague thought. They had no right to 
 awaken the belief in foreign countries that their 
 pallid war aims were also those of the great national 
 community which was struggling for its existence 
 and its future. They ought not to have been 
 allowed to divert the national will from the natural 
 course of its national interests and power into the 
 direction of general ideals of civilisation, thereby 
 enfeebling the natural display of our strength, and, 
 consciously or unconsciously, inoculating German 
 policy with their own sentimentality, from which, 
 according to the words of Von Bethmann Hollweg, 
 the Imperial Government had freed itself. For 
 the present, when it has been universally recognised 
 that England is our enemy, the danger has been 
 diminished. But the desire to carry on Kultur 
 Politik, which emanated from the group round the 
 late Professor Lamprecht, has infected the radical 
 left, and is biding its time to venture again into the 
 light of day. Thus for the protagonists of Interes- 
 sen Politik, Frederick the Great's warning has its 
 value to-day as before : ' Always on guard ! ' 
 . . . National policy must be the policy of facts 
 (National Politik ist Real Politik). What really 
 hides behind the words Kultur Politik is frequently 
 
REAL POLITIK 25 
 
 and generally nothing else than the current Pacifism. 
 The age of Bismarck appeared to have entirely 
 done away with this sentimental rubbish. But 
 the latter years of peace have enabled it again to 
 come to the surface ; and at home, during the 
 apparent exhaustion of the first winter campaign, 
 it acquired in certain circles a new lease of life. It 
 flourished most in the first months of 1915, and 
 increased in its growth, in those strata in which it 
 had always existed, during the w^hole of last year. 
 But out in the trenches, where our youths have 
 flung their lives into the fight singing ' Deutschland, 
 Deutschland iiber Alles,' the cosmopolitan mist 
 was swept aw^ay. At home there are still shreds of 
 this banner floating about and bedimming the clear 
 vision of national interest. When Scheidemann 
 sent the message out into the w^orld, that what is 
 French should again be French, and what was 
 Belgian again Belgian, the Paris Journal could 
 conclude, from its point of view, that German 
 policy w^ould sacrifice its national interests to those 
 of the world. But we, the great majority at home, 
 and the compact Front out there, protest that 
 German soldiers should not give their blood in order 
 that it should become a fertiliser for culture to 
 those who hate us from the bottom of their hearts. 
 Those who have fallen died for their homes and 
 the greatness of their nation. And when the peace 
 which will follow this War is once weighed before 
 the tribunal of history, may it then be in the scales 
 of our own culture which demands wider space in 
 order to develop its faculties. Some day peace 
 will come, and the States and the nations will again 
 
26 PATRIOTISM 
 
 live together. It is not our business now to see 
 that those who desire to destroy us shall be able 
 to collect the ruined fragments of their national 
 life in order to build up anew their Kultur. We 
 need but one thing : namely that boldly and openly, 
 hand in hand with our Allies, we set to our work. 
 Out of the polyphony of the wills of nations there 
 is formed what God hears as the harmony of 
 humanity. The more the voice of our people 
 joins in the chorus of national interests the more 
 pleasing will the song be to God. Through might 
 to culture, and through culture to might ! The 
 beginning and the end is Might ! " 
 
 National Mentality and the National Will 
 
 After all, even in autocratic countries it is not the 
 formulation of political aims by governments or 
 publicists which express the national mentahty 
 and the national will. In spite of the distinctive 
 German conception of the State and the supreme 
 submersion of the individual, it is de facto not true 
 that such an ultimate conception of the final goal for 
 individual action in the lives of individual citizens is 
 the efficient guide to the action of the individual and 
 collectively of the whole people ; and this is so in 
 spite of the peculiar and unique power of theoretical 
 abstraction which we may assign to German men- 
 tality and in spite of all the pedagogic efforts that 
 have for so many years been made in order to 
 force these abstractions into the mentality of the 
 young and into the political consciousness of its 
 adults. Whatever the unity and solidarity of the 
 
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 27 
 
 State in theory or in practice, the individual citizen 
 remains with his freedom and his responsibiUty 
 of action. Whether he has much real power 
 (in so far as his constitution enables him to elect 
 the members of the Reichstag) in directing national 
 activity and policy or not, it is, after all, he who 
 produces the bureaucrat and the soldier, he and his 
 fellow- citizens constitute the nation, submit to the 
 autocrat and fight his battles. It is he who ulti- 
 mately will dethrone the autocrat and alter the 
 constitution of the State in accordance with his 
 interests, his reason and his will. The German 
 people remain responsible for the action of the 
 German Government. The German people act in 
 accordance with their own national character, 
 their national psychology, which is the collective 
 psychology of the individuals who constitute it. 
 It is what the German of to-day really is, however 
 he has been made what he is, which determines 
 German national character : the action of the 
 German leaders militaristic and otherwise is his 
 action. When we come down to the bed-rock of 
 human conduct in the great policy of a nation, we 
 must study the psychological motive which under- 
 lies the action of the people themselves. Thus in 
 determining the true and efficient causes of this 
 war, we are driven to inquire how ha^s the modern 
 German become what he is ? 
 
 Chauvinism and Patriotism 
 
 In " Aristodemocracy " (Chapters II, III and 
 Appendix I) I have endeavoured to show that it 
 
28 
 
 PATRIOTISM 
 
 was the rise of German Chauvinism which was in 
 the main accomitable for the present war, and I 
 endeavoured to contrast the older Germany with 
 the newer, in order to show how these nefarious 
 characteristics of Chauvinism arose and were 
 developed. In my definition of Chauvinism, in 
 contradistinction to patriotism, I maintained that 
 patriotism was the love of one's own country 
 and people, and Chauvinism the hatred of other 
 countries and peoples. But the interesting and all- 
 important question remains : how does patriotism 
 degenerate into Chauvinism ? What is true patriot- 
 ism and what is false patriotism ? And finally, 
 what is the moral remedy for this perversion of a 
 virtue, admitted to be such in the whole history 
 of mankind, the prevention of the process of 
 moral degeneration to which not only the German 
 nation has been and is prone, but which may attack 
 and has attacked all nations, though Germany has 
 suffered from it in its most virulent form ? 
 
 The Influence of National Interest 
 
 Now, in many cases and among large masses 
 of the German people this chauvinistic attitude 
 of mind may have been produced by pure un- 
 adulterated selfishness and the dominance of social 
 instincts by the more or less conscious personal 
 interests and the material ends to be gained. It 
 has thus often been pointed out that the material 
 interests of the great munition industry directly 
 and immediately led to war, or at least to the en- 
 couragement and direct cultivation of the war-like 
 
MATERIAL INTERESTS 29 
 
 passions and the cultivation of all activities which 
 make for war; and it has been shown by many 
 writers, with some approach to convincing demon- 
 stration, that such has been the set policy and the 
 designed activity of all concerned in such industries, 
 immediately or remotely. It is undoubtedly 
 true that this industry, centring round the Krupp 
 Works and similar large industrial establishments, 
 had placed Germany in the forefront of that 
 industry throughout the world, and that the people 
 employed in these industries not only represent 
 an appreciably large proportion of inhabitants 
 numerically, but a still larger one in their qualitative 
 significance and importance as regards wealth and 
 financial and industrial influence. They again 
 react upon the widespread, flourishing and most 
 powerful metal industry of the country. 
 
 Furthermore, the phenomenal advance and ex- 
 pansion of German trade, of mining, manufacture 
 and of commerce, with the direct intervention and 
 assistance of the State and the new system of 
 State-aid or State-partnership in all industrial or 
 commercial enterprises, evolved by Germany since 
 her victory in the Franco -Prussian War, have 
 clearly defined the collective interests of national 
 German industries in their distinctness from those 
 of other nations, until competition has ended in 
 antagonism and conflict, and has clearly brought to 
 the consciousness of the people the opposition 
 between their collective national interests and those 
 of other nations. This growth of feeling and pas- 
 sion, grouping round the national interests, which 
 permeate the activity of so large a proportion of 
 
30 PATRIOTISM 
 
 the people in their daily occupations, is not merely 
 confined to the employers and the leading repre- 
 sentatives of these industries, but has been made 
 clear to the employed as well, down to the unskilled 
 labourer. It has thus affected the mentality, and 
 strongly modified even the theoretical economic 
 principles of the German socialistic associations 
 of labourers, the mass of the Socialist party, as has 
 become clearly manifest in the action of German 
 Socialists, hitherto the chief upholders of the 
 Marxian International, immediately before and 
 since the beginning of this war and down to the 
 present day. 
 
 Still further afield, we must note the fact that, 
 as the German travelled abroad, not only in 
 Europe, but in distant parts throughout the 
 Colonial possessions — ^in which, by the way, 
 through what he might be justified in considering 
 the accident of history, the sister nations were so 
 much richer than his own country — not only did 
 the clerk and commercial traveller, the mining 
 expert and the engineer realise how many lucrative 
 posts and commercial or industrial occupations 
 were open to his competitors of other nations in 
 their flourishing and growing Colonies, but these 
 experiences also came home to the more aristocratic 
 classes as well. The travelling representative of 
 the aristocratic classes, the scions of the nobility 
 and of the prolific Junker classes, realised, not 
 without envy and bitterness, how, especially in 
 England and throughout the British Empire, the 
 sons of the upper and middle classes filled so many 
 well-paid posts in the civil and military administra- 
 
LOSS OF NATIONALS 31 
 
 tion of the numerous British colonies and depend- 
 encies, which offered them a successful career and 
 contributed to the wealth of the Mother-Country. 
 Finally, it must be remembered in this connec- 
 tion, that the position of the German emigrant and 
 his relation to his Mother-Country have greatly 
 altered since the foundation of the German Empire 
 after the Franco -Prussian victories. In former days 
 the German settler in the United States, in South 
 America and in all other countries, in most cases, 
 if not in all, left his ow^n country and chose a foreign 
 home in which to found a new life for his family, 
 because he was clearly dissatisfied with the political, 
 social or economic conditions of his own country. 
 He left it with the clear and set purpose of thus 
 denationalising himself. Furthermore, there was 
 no active and positive influence, emanating from 
 the country which he had left, to feed and to 
 strengthen his national allegiance to the country 
 of his birth and to encourage in him the national 
 pride which, to some extent, must underlie national 
 patriotism. Like the citizen of ancient Rome, 
 wherever the subject of the British crown travelled, 
 and to whatever distant parts of the world his 
 interest or pleasure may have carried him, he was 
 not only made actively and continuously aware 
 of his allegiance to his native land, but he was 
 strengthened in his feeling of allegiance and of 
 pride by the sense of security and gratitude 
 which the protection of his flag afforded him. 
 He knew that any manifest case of persecu- 
 tion or injustice committed against a citizen in 
 foreign parts would be resented and righted with 
 
32 PATRIOTISM 
 
 all the power at the command of his Mother- 
 Country. The British fleet was ubiquitous and 
 could reach the most distant and powerful male- 
 factor who threatened the freedom of a British 
 subject. On the other hand, the German emigrant 
 before 1870, who had been a subject of one of the 
 smaller dukes or grand-dukes or one of the free 
 cities or even of the King of Bavaria or Saxony — 
 nay, the King of Prussia — could not thus be con- 
 stantly made aware of the power and protection 
 of his native land, even if he had not left as a 
 political refugee, casting from his feet the dust of 
 a country where freedom was unknown, and 
 determined to live his life loyally under the institu- 
 tions responding to his political and social con- 
 science. He could have no such feelings for his 
 Mother-Country, and was not made aware of its 
 continuous presence in his mind and in his heart 
 by the protection it afforded him. No unit of the 
 Bavarian, Saxon, Baden or Oldenburgian fleet 
 could follow him to distant parts of the world and 
 see that justice was done him. Thus his complete 
 national absorption into the new country and 
 nation of his choice was facilitated and confirmed ; 
 and the mother-country completely lost her emi- 
 grants for all national purposes. 
 
 Compared with other nations, the Germans 
 thus realised the great disadvantage from which 
 they suffered in the emigration of their citizens 
 into foreign lands. Since the German Empire has 
 taken its place in the very first line of Powers of 
 the world, it is but natural that this impediment 
 to the increase and expansion of its national feeling 
 
RACIAL AND NATIONAL PRIDE 33 
 
 and pride should have grown, and with it, the 
 desire not to lose completely the citizens who left 
 its shores and to retain them in effective national 
 touch with the fatherland. Experience has shown 
 them, however, that this could not be done satis- 
 factorily by acquiring Colonies of their own and 
 directing thither the main stream of their emigra- 
 tion; though they have not yet realised, what 
 the British Empire has learnt through the continu- 
 ous experience of its history, namely, that the 
 principles of freedom and self-government pre- 
 valent at home must be extended in a still more 
 widened form to her distant Colonies and posses- 
 sions. Were Germany to be successful in her 
 Colonial expansion, she w^ould have first to cast 
 off her autocratic form of internal Gk)vernment; 
 then to resign her expectations of using the foreign 
 Colonies as milch-cows in support of her own 
 national life at home ; and finally, to confer freedom 
 and self-government upon her colonial descendants. 
 Now, the result of all these immediate causes of 
 self-interest, in producing the morbid degeneration 
 of German patriotism alias Chauvinism, has led 
 to the establishment and growth of what I have 
 called " German Strebertum,^^ which I have defined 
 and endeavoured to follow in its growth and 
 influence in Aristodemocracy , as being one of the 
 effective causes of this war. 
 
 Racial and National Pride 
 
 No doubt all these currents of influence appeal 
 to the immediate personal and material interests 
 
 D 
 
34 PATRIOTISM 
 
 of individuals and larger groups. But there 
 remains the mass of the German people not thus 
 directly and consciously affected or benefited by 
 such material interests, who have still developed 
 in themselves this morbid form, this hypertrophy 
 of so-called patriotism. To put it epigrammatically, 
 this war has been caused by the song, " Deutschland, 
 Deutschland iiber Alles." 
 
 The history of this song of Hoffmann von Fal- 
 lersleben is interesting and significant.^ There is 
 no doubt that what the poet meant, and what the 
 poem meant for the Germans of former genera- 
 tions, was the expression of pure patriotic altruism, 
 the submission of the selfish interests and narrower 
 lives to the wider life and prosperity of the State. 
 It thus resembles the patriotic songs of all nations 
 and of all times as far back as the Psalmist's vow : ^ 
 
 ^ We may here be reminded that we also have our " Britannia 
 Rules the Waves,'' written by James Thomson in the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century. But it was designed to formulate 
 the maritime destiny of this Island-realm and as a challenge 
 to its enemies who threatened its freedom. The second line 
 repeats and emphasises the vow that " Britons never will be 
 Slaves."' This freedom from without is supplemented by the 
 idea of liberty within. The second and third verses run — 
 
 " The nations not as blessed as Thee 
 Must in their turn to tyrants fall ; 
 Whilst thou shalt flourish great and free, 
 The dread and envy of them all. 
 
 Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; 
 All their attempts to bend thee down 
 Will but arouse thy generous flame, 
 And work their woe and thy renown." 
 
 2 The hatred of Babylon finds vent in the last verse : " Happy 
 shall be he that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against 
 the stones." It marks the lower stage of civilisation and 
 
DEUTSCHLAND tJBER ALLES 35 
 
 " If T forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand 
 forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, 
 let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; if 
 I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." But 
 since the advent of the Pan-German spirit, it no 
 longer marks the relationship between the citizen 
 and his own State and the sacrifice of his own 
 desires to its welfare; but the relation of the 
 German Empire to the other States, its rivals, 
 and therefore its enemies. It has become the 
 lyrical expression of German Weltpolitik and of 
 the lust for world dominion, and, when sung by 
 the street arabs of Berlin, as well as by the German 
 youths rushing from their trenches to hurl them- 
 selves upon their foes, it means " the German 
 State above all other States, the rule of Germany 
 over the world." This change of spirit marks 
 the change from the older Germany to the newer 
 Germany since 1870.^ 
 
 morality in the times of the Psalmist, which, in modern times, 
 has only found its parallel in Germany's various hymns of 
 hate. 
 
 ^ It will be noted that the poem, written in 1841, extolled, 
 besides the love of country and its higher humanitarian ideals, 
 the political unity of the German people, disunited among its 
 separate — at times antagonistic — thirty-eight states and princi- 
 palities. Unity, Right and Freedom were to be the watchwords 
 for this united Germany. In a rough, though literal, translation 
 it runs thus — 
 
 " Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles, 
 
 Ueber Alles in der Welt 
 If fraternally and faithful, 
 
 Firm we forge its binding ring — 
 From the Maas unto the Memel, 
 
 From the Etsch unto the Belt — 
 Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles 
 
 Ueber Alles in der Welt. 
 
36 PATRIOTISM 
 
 National Arrogance 
 
 It is the spirit of so-called national patriotism 
 which degenerates, on the one hand into national 
 pride, and on the other into national envy and the 
 
 German Women, German Honour, 
 
 German Wine and German Song, 
 They must keep and hold forever 
 
 Their true ring both firm and strong. 
 Stirring us to noble action 
 
 All our years and days live-long — 
 German Women, German Honour, 
 
 German Wine and German Sono; ! 
 
 "•o 
 
 Unity and Right and Freedom 
 
 For the German Fatherland ! 
 Let these mark our great endeavour. 
 
 Brothers, with our heart and hand. 
 Unity and Right and Freedom, 
 
 May these pledge our happy band — 
 With these pledges of our fortune 
 
 Flourish German Fatherland ! " 
 
 And now mark the transition. Only eight years after 1870 
 (in 1878) Felix Dahn writes another national song, which I 
 here give in the excellent translation by Mr. William Archer 
 (in 501 Gems of German Thought) : — 
 
 " Thor stood at the midnight end of the world. 
 
 His battle-mace flew from his hand ; 
 ' So far as my clangotous hammer I've hurled 
 
 Mine are the sea and land ! '■ 
 And onward hurtled the mighty sledge 
 
 O'er the wide, wide earth, to fall 
 At last on the Southland's furthest edge. 
 
 In token that his were all. 
 Since then 'tis the joyous German right 
 
 With the hammer lands to win — 
 We mean to inherit world-wide might 
 
 As the Hammer- God's Kith and Kin." 
 
 Then follows the whole literature of Pan-German Welt-Politik. 
 
NATIONAL ARROGANCE 37 
 
 hatred of those who appear to be more favoured 
 by Fate. This overweening national pride is the 
 psychological inheritance conferred upon the Ger- 
 man people with the establishment of the German 
 Empire in 1870, fostered and intensified by the 
 growth of its prosperity, its rapid accession to 
 economic affluence and eminence, and especially 
 by the growth of its military power. The Germans 
 have come to believe that theirs is the first 
 nation in the world, and that their characteristic 
 civilisation — their Kultur — is the highest in the 
 world. They must not only become the most 
 powerful, but they must be recognised by the rest 
 of the world as being first in power. The new- 
 ness of this experience, and the rapidity with which 
 this eminence was attained, produced a national 
 inebriation among the people which caused them 
 to lose their mental balance, not only as regards 
 private conduct and taste, but also as regards 
 their public aspirations, and the set purpose of 
 self-assertion corresponding to the dominance of 
 their material power. It galled them individually 
 and collectively that, as an Empire, they should 
 in any way be at a disadvantage, or inferior to, 
 any of the other great nations of the world. Their 
 attitude of mind in this respect corresponds to 
 that of the parvenu in ordinary life. The man 
 who has rapidly or suddenly acquired great wealth, 
 the nouveau riche, is not satisfied with this acquisi- 
 tion in itself, but he must display his wealth and 
 power in order that his improved position, and the 
 prominence which wealth gives, should be recog- 
 nised by his neighbour. The realisation of this 
 
38 PATRIOTISM 
 
 social aim becomes one of his chief incentives, one 
 of the ruling passions of his life.^ 
 
 ^ It is well to remember that virtue and vice are here in close 
 proximity to one another. The sense of honour may easily 
 degenerate into ambition, vanity and arrogance. The G^erman 
 words Ehrgefuhl (self-respect) is closely related to Ekrgeiz 
 (ambition). The love of honour may imperceptibly merge into 
 the craving for honours. 
 
IV 
 
 False Patriotism 
 
 This element in the national psychology of the 
 Germans, their national arrogance and pride and 
 their fixed determination to assert their domina- 
 tion and to enforce its recognition upon others, 
 is perhaps among all others the truly effective 
 ultimate cause which has led to this war. In 
 other countries and with other people, in accordance 
 with their individual peculiarities and conditions 
 of life, it has the same tendency to produce these 
 catastrophic upheavals of humanity. German 
 national pride, fanned to passionate heat by con- 
 scious or unconscious envy, is supported negatively 
 by their ignorance of other peoples and nations, 
 their characters and virtues, and positively by the 
 manifest suddenness of their own prosperity and 
 power. Ignorance and self-infatuation are the 
 pabulum for the microbe of Chauvinism. So rapid 
 and all-pervasive is the growth of this microbe 
 that it eats into the heart of patriotism and absorbs 
 the soul of nationalism. 
 
 The worst of it is that such purely national 
 pride is the most effective link which, in our com- 
 mon life, binds together into corporate unity the 
 masses of the people in the several States all over 
 
 39 
 
40 PATRIOTISM 
 
 the world. It is not only the expression of the 
 love of home, the love of the native country as the 
 wider home, the love of the family and of the 
 people who dwell in these homes ; but it is the con- 
 sciousness of the difference and distinctiveness of 
 all those who come from such a home or are 
 associated with it, and the claims to distinction 
 leading to pride, which are based upon the mere 
 fact of belonging to it, which underlies such a 
 conception of patriotism. It is not so much duty 
 and love, as privilege and hatred or contempt of 
 others, which fill the heart and mind of such 
 " patriots." They establish a claim to their own 
 superiority on the ground of their sharing a collec- 
 tive attribute with others. They are proud to 
 be Englishmen, or Germans, or Frenchmen, Ameri- 
 cans, or Italians, and have no doubt that, as 
 such, they possess a superior claim to distinction 
 to that of members of another State, people, or 
 race, class or occupation. And this pride seems 
 justified in their eyes irrespective of the absolute 
 claim which any of these countries or nations 
 have to superiority in all that makes for the 
 higher social being, and even whether the State 
 itself as a body acts rightly or wrongly, nobly, 
 or ignobly. It need hardly be insisted upon that 
 this is the wrong conception of patriotism. But, 
 nevertheless, it will be found that it is not only 
 widespread beyond Germany in every civilised 
 and uncivilised country, but that in this lower 
 form it is most effective in modifying the conduct 
 of people all over the world, and is so constant 
 and continuous in its effectiveness, that it enters 
 
GROUNDLESS NATIONAL PRIDE 41 
 
 into the daily life, as well as into the very sub- 
 stratum of social consciousness, in every country 
 and among all people. 
 
 Reasons for National Pride 
 
 Now, when men and women assert a moral 
 and social claim on the ground of their being 
 descendants of one race or of one people, or citizens 
 of one State, it is well for them to remember that 
 thev share this honour with a vast number with 
 whom it would in no way be a matter of pride to 
 them to be associated. The Englishman who 
 bases his self-esteem and his claims to considera- 
 tion and approbation, respect and admiration 
 from others, solely upon the fact that he is an 
 Englishman, must remember that on this ground 
 by itself 24,352 convicted criminals (11,699 convicted 
 in 1915), murderers, thieves and felons, 935,660 
 vagrant paupers and tramps, 214,160 lunatics, 
 feeble-minded and irresponsibles (registered as 
 such) have the same claims for self-approbation, 
 respect and admiration of others. Apart from 
 those who are thus manifestly and admittedly the 
 rejected refuse of society, there are, no doubt in 
 every country, England not excepted, millions 
 of men and women whose claim to moral and 
 social considerations we, as Englishmen, would in 
 no way wish to share. As a matter of fact, the 
 number of those with whom collectively we should 
 desire to be associated, as representing the human 
 type which we admire, will of necessity be very 
 limited and comparatively but a small proportion 
 
/ 
 
 42 PATRIOTISM 
 
 of the aggregate number of citizens of any State. 
 (When we consider national types at all, there 
 presents itself to our mind some conception or 
 image of the good type or the bad type, and we 
 discriminate between the two. Now, though un- 
 doubtedly national types can thus be identified 
 in their national distinctiveness, owing to the 
 physical and moral characteristics which are 
 produced by the long and very complex process 
 of national history and organisation, the more 
 we look into the matter and study these essential 
 differences, the more we shall find that the physical, 
 moral and social characteristics which these highly 
 complex and variable conditions produce, are in 
 themselves the touchstone to our approval or 
 disapproval of the national type ; and furthermore 
 we shall find that the greater our approval, and 
 that the higher each type rises in our estimation, 
 the more common to the whole of humanity in its 
 best forms will these admirable qualities become'^ 
 p'he more the members of each separate nationality 
 and State approach to the ideal of the perfect 
 man, the idea of the gentleman, the closer will 
 they be to the same high type in every other 
 nationality, the less will they obtrude their purely 
 national distinctiveness. It is not a hasty 
 generalisation to say, that the true gentleman is 
 the same all over the world) Still the aggressive 
 patriot is not satisfied with' resting his claims to 
 distinction and approbation upon these social 
 qualities of the individual human being as such, 
 but essentially and emphaticall}'^ upon the general 
 national difference. The reason for this is to be 
 
ITS DEGENERATIVE INFLUENCE 43 
 
 found in his unsocial, selfish instinct to establish 
 and to confirm differences rather than similarities, 
 in order, upon the ground of such differences, to 
 exclude others and to satisfy his instinct of anta- 
 gonism and of hate and not his passion of humanism 
 and love. As I have put it elsewhere {The Jewish 
 Question, 2nd ed. p. 12) : — 
 
 " Many people must have somebody to be 
 jealous of and to hate to preserve the normality 
 of their generally diseased emotional nature ; and 
 though not all of these require the intensity of an 
 individual object for such disapproval or hatred, 
 there are but few who would forego the luxury 
 of a ' pet aversion ' expressed in the general 
 terms of a social group or a nationality. National 
 prejudices are natural to us so long as nationalities 
 assert themselves ; and I venture to say that every 
 nationality becomes distasteful and offensive 
 when it becomes obtrusive. 
 
 " To use a trite simile : mutton and beef are good 
 meat, with each its own quality; but mutton 
 which asserts its own flavour too strongly be- 
 comes ' sheepy ' and beef becomes ' beefy ' — both 
 offensive to the palate. Especially when seen in 
 their own country, an Englishman, a Frenchman, 
 a German, an Italian, or an American are fine 
 types of humanity. But an Englishman (especially 
 abroad) who continually causes the British lion to 
 roar, who speaks of ' foreigners,' who asserts 
 his national costume, manners, and habits in and 
 out of place — a John-bullying Englishman — can 
 be very offensive. A very French Frenchman, 
 
44 PATRIOTISM 
 
 who maintains the appearance and manner of his 
 boulevards, grasseye^s his r's in speaking of gloire, 
 bows gracefully and says pretty things full of 
 esprit, may be irritating if he be not amusing in a 
 manner which he would resent were he conscious 
 of the effect produced in others. We do not call 
 this French, but Frenchy. A German who with 
 tight trousers, generally angular clothes and 
 manners, claps his heels together, raises his glass 
 of beer or wine, and, in a military or would-be 
 burschikose style, talks of the Vaterland and its 
 glory, of German Gemuthlichkeit and Treue, pro- 
 duces an effect in which ungenuineness is mixed 
 with coarseness. So with the Italian who gesticu- 
 lates and rolls his eyes and reminds us, if not of 
 the organ-grinder, at least of the primo tenore of 
 a second-class opera; so, too, with the American, 
 whether from the State of wooden nutmegs or from 
 the far West, who constantly spreads the eagle 
 and waves the Stars and Stripes, and with acrid 
 nasality descants upon the advantages of elevators 
 and ice-water, and w^hose manifest ideals are 
 * smartness ' or shrewdness and push. The offen- 
 siveness of such national characteristics will be 
 admitted. But he who bases his general sympathy 
 or antipathy upon such isolation, upon the carica- 
 tures he may have heard of or read of, without 
 a deeper knowledge of the national life in its 
 natural setting, without a wide experience of indivi- 
 duals typical of the nation, without some knowledge 
 of the past history and the national genius of a 
 people, will certainly lay himself open to a charge 
 of folly, in which the sense of truth has not been 
 
COMMON TO ALL NATIONS 45/ 
 
 higlily refined, to omit for the moment the moral 
 aspect of such hasty judgment." 
 
 The Exaggeration of National Characteristics 
 
 What I there endeavoured to put, nearly thirty 
 years ago, in a more or less epigrammatic form 
 might require further enlargement in view of its 
 important bearing upon the main thesis of this 
 essay, (if, as I venture to believe, the production 
 of national pride, as a consequence of the develop- 
 ment of what is supposed to be the virtue of 
 patriotism, is one of the most effective ultimate 
 causes of this war, we must drive it home to the 
 understanding and the convictions of all people, 
 that this form of pride is in no way justified ; and 
 also that it is common to all nationalities, and 
 may in them, as it has with the Germans, lead 
 to far-reaching and disastrous consequences when 
 other conditions of national life favour such acute 
 outbursts of national disease.'; 
 
 yi should like, by recalling ^he actual experience 
 of every intelligent reader, to bring home to him 
 as convincingly and vividly as possible the un- 
 reality of his claims to national pride in so far as 
 they are entirely based upon his sharing with his 
 fellow citizens or subjects the mere physical attri- 
 butes of having been born among one group of 
 people and within a definite, accidentally circum- 
 scribed, region of the earth ; and that these acci- 
 dents are of themselves and in themselves not 
 enough to confer upon him a distinction worthy 
 of admiration and justifying his pride. . 
 
46 PATRIOTISM 
 
 England 
 
 Let us recall the individual whom we have met 
 in life who most closely approaches the highest type 
 of what we should call the English gentleman — 
 he who has his correlative in the type of the " lady." 
 We gratefully recognise in him all the sturdy, 
 manly and refined qualities which we can trace 
 back through his parentage to the influence of his 
 home, the centre of mature and unostentatious 
 culture, favoured and impressed upon him by his 
 outdoor life of sport and all the spirit of man- 
 liness and of fair play which it produces, and upon 
 which it is based. 
 
 These qualities are further softened and mel- 
 lowed by the spirit of hospitality which is insepar- 
 ably interwoven with the life of an English home. 
 To this spirit of manliness and independence, which 
 is ruled by an all-pervading sense of justice and 
 fair play, the traditions and the actual organisation 
 of his school education and his school life have con- 
 tributed to no small degree. He has not been 
 affected by the lower outcrops and the less com- 
 mendable traditions established in the history and 
 development of our peculiar public school system, 
 and the other destructive varieties of our school 
 education. But what they have undoubtedly 
 given him are the traditions of moral and social 
 self-reliance, of independence and self-government, 
 above all, of fairness and justice, which the organ- 
 isation and the living practice of our schools have 
 evolved to such an exceptional degree in our 
 distinctive national education, and to which our 
 
THE ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 47 
 
 success in every phase of our national history can 
 to a great extent be ascribed. 
 
 The very fixedness of tradition and insistent 
 conformity in the organisation of our pubhc 
 schools have established the almost tyrannical 
 dominance of custom to which nearly everybody 
 submits. But, in their turn, these dominant 
 traditions may have produced a narrowness and 
 one-sidedness, a dogmatic provincialism and in- 
 adaptiveness, a want of sympathy and of mental 
 self-detachment, which result in the usual, and 
 perhaps inevitable, defauts de nos qualites ; and 
 these again may have justly evoked the disap- 
 proval, if not the dislike, of the foreigners with 
 whom we come in contact. 
 
 Still, the typical virtues resulting from our system 
 and our traditions of school education have been 
 and are undoubtedly produced among us. In the 
 case of our perfect specimen of the English gentle- 
 man, however, these peculiar limitations and dis- 
 qualifications have been removed by the fact that 
 he has extended his intellectual and moral sympa- 
 thies and modified his manners through foreign 
 travel or through reading, both of which have 
 enabled him to understand and to realise fully the 
 life and the characteristics of other countries and 
 peoples as well as other ages, and to admire them 
 through the best examples of other nations, their 
 lives and thoughts as well as their tastes. In so 
 far his whole nature has been widened and made 
 more pliant, his intellectual sympathies and his 
 tastes as well. As a consequence of this spiritual 
 enlargement, his manners and bearing have also 
 
48 PATRIOTISM 
 
 been softened and made more gracious. While 
 thus manifesting in his character and in his con- 
 duct towards others, even in the Hghtest and most 
 subtle forms of social intercourse, this wider sense 
 of humanity and of sympathetic considerateness in 
 the refinement and courtesy of his dealings with 
 people at home, he is spontaneously capable, with- 
 out manifest effort or artificiality of manner, to 
 adapt himself to the customs and traditions of the- 
 various peoples and classes with whom he is thrown 
 into contact while travelling abroad. And this con- 
 cession to the laws and the rules of conduct and 
 dominant traditions — even fashions — of the coun- 
 tries and the people among whom he for the time 
 being finds himself, is in no way made at the cost 
 of the complete submersion of his own individuality 
 and identity, without in any way compromising 
 the valid standards of his own home traditions 
 which have been fixed and which survive in him 
 in their own moral validity throughout his life. 
 He thus always retains that native dignity and self- 
 confident reserve which spring from the unasserted 
 assurance of the rightness of one's own inner 
 standards, and the honest and undiluted fulness 
 of living up to these standards, of being wholly 
 oneself. 
 
 ^ If I were asked to select, from among the most 
 characteristic national attributes of the best Eng- 
 lishman, the one which I considered the most 
 distinctive, I should say that it is self-reliant 
 dignity of character and deportment. Here again 
 there is, of course, the danger of producing les 
 dejaids des qualitis. There is a danger of dignity 
 
HIS SELF-RELIANCE AND FAIRNESS 49 
 
 and reserve gradually degenerating or hypertro- 
 phizing into aloofness and, through conscious ex- 
 clusiveness, into unsocial inconsiderateness, if not 
 selfishness. But our most gratifying representa- 
 tive of this best type is, in his growth and develop- 
 ment, free from such excrescences, and his personal 
 dignity and self-reliant trustworthiness do not 
 exclude a powerful emanation of chivalrous kindli- 
 ness and sympathetic grace' and considerateness, 
 which make him in essence and in manner the most 
 gracious and affable of companions among others 
 who differ from him, among strangers and especi- 
 ally among foreigners, while dwelling among them.: 
 He is, above all, never manifestly conscious of his 
 ow^n distinctive individuality, virtues or privileges, 
 and he is the last man, wiien abroad, to assert his 
 national distinctiveness, or to rest his claims for 
 distinction upon his national insularity. 
 
 Now, what are the feelings of such an Englishman 
 when, while travelling abroad, he comes upon one 
 of his countrymen of a far different type — the 
 aggressive " patriot " ? What are his feelings 
 when such a man claims to be his nearest associate 
 as a human being, as a social being, on the ground 
 of the dominant ties of national solidarity; and 
 what must he believe or say to himself when he is 
 asked to admit that, on the grounds of this national 
 consanguinity, and on these grounds alone, rest 
 the claims to collective national effort leading to 
 an antagonistic attitude, actual or potential, to- 
 wards all other peoples and nationalities, ultimately 
 to the set purpose of bloody conflict in which the 
 chief immediate aim is to slay as many of one's 
 
50 PATRIOTISM 
 
 fellow men as possible, and to do as much harm 
 to the whole people and the eouiltry which have 
 become one's enemies ? 
 
 The Englishman whom our friend thus meets 
 with a sense of repugnance and shame, in the rail- 
 way, the hotel, at a social gathering or in the streets 
 abroad, in his looks, manners and speech at once 
 proclaims loudly and blatantly that he is an Eng- 
 lishman and nothing else and nothing more. By 
 every act and word and even gesture he also 
 proclaims on every occasion that " Britain rules 
 the waves," that the English are the first people 
 of the world, and that there can be no doubt what- 
 ever that this is true; whoever denies the truth 
 of this must be a liar or an idiot. He does this 
 deliberately, cold-bloodedly, and with full and 
 ever-conscious conviction. He is not disturbed in 
 his mental balance by a wild fit of national emotion 
 and enthusiasm, or by the excitement and nervous 
 strain of some unhinging momentary experience, 
 such as the misery in grappling with the completely 
 foreign customs and conditions which he does not 
 understand, with the superadded ignorance of the 
 language of the country, which naturally produces 
 an intense longing for the familiar conditions 
 prevailing in his own home. Such outbursts would 
 be intelligible and partly pardonable. We can, for 
 instance, forgive the British paterfamilias, worried 
 into the white heat of desperation through his Utter 
 inability to master the material conditions of 
 foreign travel, for the exclamation which came 
 from the bottom of his heart. Fat and perspiring, 
 mopping his bald head, and helplessly casting his 
 
THE PROVINCIAL ENGLISHMAN 51 
 
 eyes about for support, he stands on the crowded 
 and busthng platform of the Naples railway station 
 at the critical moment when several express trains 
 arrive together, and belch out on to the platform 
 a mass of indiscriminate humanity and mountains 
 of luggage. People are rushing to and fro, jostling 
 each other, porters relentlessly pushing luggage 
 through the crowds, screaming and gesticulating in 
 between, and, over all this turmoil and noise, the 
 shouts of the officials announcing the impending 
 departure of the trains, urging the travellers to 
 speed their departure, and intensifying the hurry 
 and the jostling. Dropped into the midst of this 
 intense babel of confusion, our helpless and porter- 
 less paterfamilias stands, surrounded by his wife 
 and children, the latter of all ages, and by a mass 
 of heavier luggage on the ground and the most 
 varied specimens of lighter luggage in the hands of 
 every member of the family, helpless, utterly unable 
 to stem the tide of confusion which sweeps around 
 them, unable even to call for the assistance or 
 sympathy of a human soul ; until, at last, with a 
 final mopping of his brow, he jumps on the largest 
 of the trunks, waves his hands above his head and 
 bursts forth into one cry of despairing interroga- 
 tion : "Is there anybody here who speaks Gawd's 
 language? " 
 
 Under these trying circumstances we can for- 
 give him this unjustified assumption that his own 
 native language is the peculiar vernacular adopted 
 by the Divinity. We may add, by the way, that, 
 though the passion necessarily aroused by this 
 terrible war may account for the almost insane 
 
52 PATRIOTISM 
 
 unhinging of mental balance among the German 
 people, this is not enough to justify the deliberate 
 and terribly grotesque pronouncement of a host of 
 German ministers of religion, scholars and publi- 
 cists, who systematically and emphatically maintain 
 that there is a sjDecial German God who has con- 
 ferred upon the German people the mission of 
 " healing the diseased nations of mankind," — 
 calmly transcribing Geibel's momentary lyrical 
 effusion by the physical conquest of the world in 
 war which justifies every form of cruelty and 
 atrocity in its prosecution. Yet such assertions 
 have been deliberately made in print and in sermons 
 and speeches, and have been collected by Dr. Bang 
 in his book Hurrah and Hallelujah,^ 
 
 There is a redeeming pathos in the distressful 
 patriotic outburst of that harried British pater- 
 familias which appeals to our sympathy as well as to 
 our sense of humour. But nothing of the kind can 
 be said for the ordinary type of travelling Briton, 
 the boisterously aggressive Englishman of what- 
 ever class. He asserts his nationality in his dress, 
 his manner of wearing it and the occasions on which 
 he wears it, whether it clashes with the custom 
 of the country in which he is sojourning or not. 
 His own manners are awkward and often boorish, 
 and in conflict with those of the people among 
 whom he is dwelling. He naturally assumes that 
 his dress and manners are the best and most 
 appropriate to all occasions, and he is moved to 
 unrestrained hilarity by the difference in dress and 
 
 ^ Since this was written Mr. William Archer has published his 
 501 Gems of German Tliought. 
 
HIS INSULARITY 53 
 
 manners of the people whose country he is visiting. 
 Of course he is quite unacquainted with the lan- 
 guage of these people, and his unfamiliarity with it 
 also moves him to contempt. His grotesquely 
 unconscious stupidity and ignorance of the world, 
 and the position which he and those like him ought 
 in due proportion to hold within it, is illustrated 
 by the Frenchman of the same type of criminally 
 stupid provinciality, who, having been settled for 
 many years as a successful lace-merchant in New 
 York, turned to one of his customers (who fortu- 
 nately was familiar with the French language) in 
 despairing indignation at the inability of some 
 other customers who failed to understand his French 
 and grossly inadequate English jargon, with the ex- 
 clamation, " Me voild vingt ans dans ce sacre pays, 
 et ne on me comprend pas encore ! " Our ordinary 
 travelling Briton's object ionableness is not pal- 
 liated by such a touch of humour. It does not 
 even possess the sublime pugnacity of character, 
 redeeming the ignorance of the warlike British 
 tar, who, after having severely handled an ob- 
 jectionable Spaniard with whom he had come to 
 blows, and interrogated for his reasons by the 
 Magistrate at Gibraltar, replied, " What are you to 
 do with a blighter who calls a 'at a * Sombrero ' ? " 
 I must complete my list of illustrations of this 
 militantly ignorant national provincialism and 
 patriotic arrogance, by an experience of my own. 
 When returning from America on one of the great 
 ocean liners and conversing with an officer of one 
 of our services (which, fortunately, has very few 
 specimens of such mental inferiority in its distin- 
 
54 PATRIOTISM 
 
 guished and efficient body), he assured me that he 
 had formed a very low opinion of the American 
 nation, while travelling in the United States, and 
 his abuse of them grew in intensity with the degree 
 of ignorance which he displayed about the American 
 people and American society of all classes. As a 
 climax to his diatribe, he ended with the pathetic 
 protest against their use of the English language, 
 with the words : " And what do you think of 
 people who call a biscuit a cracker? " 
 
 This type of aggressive Englishman is disgusted 
 with the food (which plays such an important part 
 in his life) which he has to eat. Seated before 
 a most exquisitely prepared dish by a French 
 Cordon Bleu, or some provincial bourgeois inn- 
 keeper's wife (who could perhaps instruct the best 
 English cooks, not only with regard to the tasti- 
 ness, but also the economy of the art of cookery), 
 he reviles it as " foreign kickshaws," and, with 
 pathetic longing, recalls the various constituents 
 of his ordinary English fare, from roast-beef to 
 pork-chops, from the thick gravy soups, in contrast 
 to the French consommes, to hot mulligatawny, from 
 the infinitely varied forms of preparing potatoes 
 and other vegetables to the monotonous reiteration 
 of the vegetables boiled in water, from their artistic 
 combinations of sauces to the monotonous gravy, 
 culminating in white " bookbinder's paste," and 
 ending in bread-sauce. Even when asking for a 
 simple cup of tea, he recognises the flagrant in- 
 feriority of the race among whom he is doomed to 
 tarry by being presented with a glass of pale sherry- 
 coloured Russian tea, or, outside Russia, yet similai: 
 
HIS NARROW ARROGANCE 55 
 
 in colour, with some exquisite quality of China 
 tea imported overland by the caravan route, be- 
 cause it differs essentially from the dark brew, 
 often boiled for a long time, which he is accustomed 
 to drink at home. If he be of a superior class, 
 and one who has enjoyed the advantages of public 
 school education, he carries with him not so much 
 the good standards and customs of living and 
 deportment evolved by each one of these schools, 
 but he applies them all with pitiless absoluteness 
 to the differing life of foreign peoples and, indis- 
 criminately, to the social classification within each 
 one of these foreign nations. He does this abroad, 
 as at home the Eton, Winchester, Harrow and 
 Rugby man or boy asserts the validity and domin- 
 ance of his own customs and standards against the 
 rival large school, and, still more markedly, against 
 the code of morals and manners and the social 
 types evolved by the school to which " Stalky & 
 Co." belong, who, by the master brush of the great 
 literary artist, Mr. Kipling, have been portrayed 
 with all their distinctive qualities as well as with 
 their repulsive and highly dangerous faults. At 
 home, and especially abroad, we may meet in all 
 walks of life, not excluding those which demand, 
 nay, absolutely require, the most wide-minded 
 experience of the world, sympathetic imagination 
 and adaptive deportment — even in our diplomatic 
 service — men who are, and will ever remain " public 
 school boys " and nothing more. Constantly using 
 the finally condemnatory attribute of " bounder " 
 towards their fellow-subjects at home (even if it 
 be only in anticipatory self-defence), they use it 
 
56 PATRIOTISM 
 
 with the greatest readiness and frequency with 
 regard to all manner of people abroad. So absolute 
 is their conception of the validity of these standards 
 in the unadulterated provincialism evolved by each 
 one of these smaller social and educational centres 
 that, besides exacting unconditional acceptance, 
 they cannot even conceive of the world outside 
 and abroad being ignorant of their nature and laws. 
 The gracefully attractive instance of this mental 
 attitude is illustrated by the story of the small 
 lower-form Eton boy who ran away from his school, 
 but was caught and brought back from Datchet. 
 " How did you manage to escape ? " he was asked 
 by his master on his return. '' Oh, sir, I disguised 
 myself ! " " And how did you do that ? " "I put 
 my collar inside my waistcoat and buttoned my 
 lowest waistcoat button." 
 
 Many of these types of objectionable Britons 
 whom we may meet abroad may be members of 
 superior social classes, who have had the best 
 educational opportunities in their bringing up. 
 We need not dwell upon and further enlarge our 
 list of the grossly objectionable and assertive 
 classes of travelling Englishmen, who, from the 
 foreign setting in which they stand out in their 
 coarse and ignorant vulgarity, fill the true English 
 gentleman with shame and with disgust. 
 
 France 
 
 Whoever has had the privilege of meeting abroad, 
 or of living among, men and women of the best 
 breeding and highest refinement in France, must 
 
THE FRENCH GENTLEMAN 57 
 
 have realised that the world has hardly evolved 
 more attractive specimens of social beings than are 
 these products of the long and continuous cultured 
 history of that nation. The graceful and, at the 
 same time, clear use of their beautiful and elegant 
 language is in harmony with the unobtrusive care 
 which they bestow upon their person and the 
 good taste displayed by them, in their turn stimu- 
 lating the widespread industry of the country 
 which thus establishes a standard of taste for the 
 whole world. This again harmonises with the 
 natural grace of movement which enables the 
 women especially to wear their clothes as no others 
 can, and, free from all awkwardness, to endow the 
 movements of their body and the expression of 
 their faces and moderate use of telling gestures, 
 with an attractiveness which makes intercourse, 
 in whatever society they are placed, a source of 
 almost artistic gratification to every one with 
 whom they come in contact. Though naturally 
 endowed with the cordial demonstrativeness in 
 such strong contrast to the heavy insensibility of 
 the more stolid races, unlike the less well-bred 
 Frenchman or other Latin or Southern people, they 
 have this capital of social attractiveness completely 
 in control, and can impose upon this friendly im- 
 pulse a reserve which endows them, when appro- 
 priate, with a dignity of manner of the same quality 
 as that possessed to so high a degree by their 
 English counterparts. If one may venture upon 
 so highly-generalised a comparison within the 
 complexity and diversity of nations, one would 
 surely be justified in saying, that among no other 
 
58 PATRIOTISM 
 
 people can be found to the same degree of refine- 
 ment and wide distribution the presence of that 
 supreme social virtue conveyed by the word tad. 
 As has so often been shown, true tact arises out 
 of sympathetic considerateness of the feelings of 
 others; and it requires for its effective develop- 
 ment in conduct that native sensibihty of tempera- 
 ment which the Latin races possess to a higher 
 degree than the sturdy " Nordics," but which can 
 only be turned into real social efficiency and un- 
 failing pervasiveness by the continuous activity 
 and tradition of a highly civilised community, 
 such as the historical development of France has 
 given to its people. And within this nation again 
 it applies chiefly to those who have received or 
 created for themselves the opportunities for refined 
 and diversified social intercourse, of trained expe- 
 rience and varied thought and taste. 
 
 These highest representatives of the French 
 nation and its society have travelled abroad and 
 are cognisant of the literature, thought and art of 
 other nations; they have established relationship 
 with congenial people in foreign countries, and keep 
 these alive by visits or by correspondence. They 
 are highly appreciative of all that is best in the 
 lives, customs and traditions of those who for them 
 are " foreigners," and, without in any way relin- 
 quishing their own customs and traditions, they 
 can adopt what they consider best in these foreign 
 qualities and, in any case, adapt themselves to the 
 lives of those who differ from them. 
 
 Now it is grossly untrue to maintain that these 
 social qualities are in France to be found only 
 
GOOD MANNERS AND CULTURE 59 
 
 in one restricted class or group of people, who are 
 identified with the past aristocratic traditions or 
 the aristocratic court -life of the Ancien Regime. 
 The denizens of the Faubourg St. Germain still 
 produce many notable and admirable representa- 
 tives of this higher type, who retain what is good 
 from the traditions of the past, and without pre- 
 tence or aggressive (and therefore vulgar) assertive- 
 ness, live up to these traditions, while adapting 
 themselves to the life of the present. But there 
 are also to be found among their numbers — and 
 these often the most loudly assertive — many who 
 have only retained the vices and weaknesses of the 
 Ancien Regime, while adopting in their lives all the 
 pursuits, ambitions and vulgarities which modern 
 economical, political and social conditions have 
 evolved. But, quite separate from this narrower 
 group, among the learned men, scholars, scientists 
 and leading representatives of public life, of 
 literature and art, even among the well-educated 
 and highly cultured men of affairs in commerce 
 and industry, these representative types of the 
 French gentleman are to be found in large numbers. 
 Their family and home life is free from those vices 
 and excesses which have afforded the dominant 
 themes to the powerful fiction of the more " real- 
 istic " school among their famous writers. Affec- 
 tion and unostentatious inwardness pervade the 
 life of the family circle. 
 
 We are not overstating our case when we main- 
 tain that art and literature in every form con- 
 stitute a more real and vital interest in the actual 
 life of these circles than is the case with any other 
 
60 PATRIOTISM 
 
 nation among civilised people. And this real 
 and vivid interest (in part evoked and developed 
 by the pervasiveness of taste within the principal 
 industries of the country) reaches down to the 
 labouring classes, further down than in any other 
 country. Who cannot recall similar instances 
 from his own experience such as I have had, for 
 instance, when studying the exhibit of Art Retro- 
 spectif Sit a former Paris exhibition, and when I 
 heard a workman in his dark blue blouse telling 
 his wife, " Vois-tii, Marie, ga c'est du Henri III, 
 et ga c'est du Louis XV — ah, que c'est beau I " 
 
 To whatever class in the rough-and-ready 
 classification of by-gone ages they may belong, 
 these gentlemen of France exist; and they have 
 shown that, in addition to the softer and more 
 graceful social qualities, they possess to the highest 
 degree pluck and grit, the heroic courage which 
 they have demonstrated on the hills and in the 
 valleys surrounding Verdun. 
 
 What are the feelings of such a Frenchman 
 when, in the railway carriage while travelling 
 abroad, he meets the other Frenchmen with their 
 families? Their dress loudly pronounces them 
 to be French, claiming to an inordinate degree 
 their share in the gloire of la grande nation. 
 The man's bow-knot tie, hanging down over his 
 coat, asserts this claim with every flap as it 
 flutters in' the wind ; with noisy self-assurance 
 they have taken possession of the compartment, 
 unregardful, in fact, quite unconscious, of the 
 presence of any other occupants. They begin to 
 unpack their provisions from baskets and paper 
 
THE AGGRESSIVE FRENCHMAN 61 
 
 packages and, followiHg their usual table-habits, 
 in default of napkins they tuck their handkerchiefs 
 inside their collars preparatory to their noisy meal. 
 The act of eating is not only made manifest to the 
 eye, but is forced into the ears of the company 
 with every mouthful. In between it is emphasised 
 by specific remarks on the quality of each article 
 of food, by every act of giving or receiving their 
 portions, and this constant babble and hilarity 
 produce loud commotion, which makes it im- 
 possible for others to converse or to read and think 
 in peace. They will even impart to the company 
 about them, though talking to each other, facts 
 connected with the personal details of life which 
 the justified restraint of civilised taste has relegated 
 to privacy. When their eyes turn to the world 
 outside, they will note with undue amusement the 
 difference between the way of living, the manners 
 and customs of the country in which they are 
 travelling and their own, with an undoubted 
 assumption that their own must set the normal 
 standards for the world, and every deviation from 
 these must be a freakish excrescence or some mark 
 of national inferiority. They are in this respect 
 very much like their English counterpart, the 
 difference only being that, whereas the one mani- 
 fests his national arrogance with coarse and stolid 
 insistence, they do it with childlike demonstrative- 
 ness and ebullience of spirit. 
 
 It may be held that such people belong to the 
 lower classes with inferior standards of breeding 
 and education. But such is not the case. In 
 different forms the same objectionable char- 
 
62 PATRIOTISM 
 
 acteristics will manifest themselves among mem- 
 bers of every class. Let me give but one instance 
 from my own personal experience, which will be 
 additionally appropriate as illustrating how the 
 predominant feelings of attraction and repulsion, 
 love and hate, among whole nations may change 
 from one extreme to another in comparatively 
 a short span of time. 
 
 More than twenty years ago I received an 
 invitation to dine with the British admiral com- 
 manding the Mediterranean fleet on his flagship in 
 one of the Mediterranean ports. The dinner was 
 given to the officers of the French fleet which had 
 just arrived at the same port. I found myself 
 placed at dinner nearly opposite to the admiral, 
 towards the middle of the long side of the table, 
 and on my right was the wife of one of the French 
 superior officers who had just joined her husband. 
 She was attractive in looks and manifested con- 
 siderable elegance in dress and manners, and 
 would certainly have been considered a woman of 
 the world. I soon found that, having been pre- 
 sented to her in my official capacity as connected 
 with an American institution, though I held, 
 and was active in, an English academic position, 
 she was unaware of the latter fact, and assumed 
 that as an American my political preferences were 
 in no way favourable to England — an opinion no 
 doubt strengthened by the fact that there had been 
 not long before some tension between the govern- 
 ments of the United States and Great Britain. 
 At an early stage of the dinner she began to 
 criticise our hosts, starting with their ignorance of 
 
A CHAUVINISTIC FRENCHWOMAN 63 
 
 manners as shown by the placing of the guests at 
 table, and from this she proceeded to make un- 
 friendly and disparaging remarks about " ces 
 Anglais " in general. Our host had marked the 
 official nature of the dinner by placing the French 
 admiral and his next in command on either side 
 of himself. The only lady present was placed 
 opposite to him. I have no doubt that to me was 
 assigned the honour of being her table-companion 
 because of my familiarity with her own language. 
 Her criticism, however, was not evoked by any 
 dissatisfaction with the place that had been 
 assigned to her, but by the distribution and 
 seating of the French officers. The true ground of 
 her criticism was the assumption that the French 
 customs and rules of precedence must be valid 
 and should prevail in every country. Our host 
 had followed the usual English custom, thoroughly 
 justified by the spirit of hospitality (which aims at 
 making the guest a part of the home), by placing 
 each one of the foreigners between two of his own 
 officers, wherever possible. The result was that 
 some of the French superior officers were thus 
 placed between junior officers of the ship, who, 
 according to English custom, were their hosts. 
 My fair neighbour was most emphatic in reviling 
 the ignorance and arrogance of the English in this 
 gross breach of manners and etiquette. 
 
 " In France," she said, " the officers must all 
 sit strictly according to their rank. Because they 
 are English they think that an officer of inferior 
 rank can be placed above a foreigner of superior 
 rank." 
 
64 PATRIOTISM 
 
 I at last succeeded in making clear to her the 
 spirit and rule of English hospitality, and to assure 
 her that no offence was intended, and that, on the 
 contrary, our host had desired to show every 
 regard for his visitors in adding to their comfort, 
 by making them feel thoroughly at home; and 
 ventured to suggest that in all the different national 
 manners we could always, if we tried, discover the 
 rationale, the just spirit and purpose out of which 
 they had grown; and I also ventured to believe, 
 that in no country was hospitality developed to so 
 high and efficient a degree as in England. '' It 
 would be a pity," I continued, "if the result of the 
 friendly advances made by the British admiral 
 had on this occasion led to such a misunderstanding 
 and estrangement, owing entirely to the fatal 
 practice of not endeavouring to understand foreign 
 customs and to admit their validity." 
 
 As our conversation kad such a direct bearing 
 upon the mischievous influence of national Chauvin- 
 ism, I cannot refrain from giving the further 
 development of our talk. I found in her, not only 
 the manifest though tacit assumption of the superi- 
 ority of everything French, but to a marked degree 
 an irresistible tendency to be denigrante and to de- 
 preciate all other nationalities, her whole attitude 
 of mind indicating an unfriendly, if not an inimical 
 attitude towards all " foreigners." At last, at 
 the risk of being heavy and magisterial in con- 
 versation and out of harmony with the spirit of 
 the social occasion, I turned upon her and asked 
 her which one of the foreign nations she admired 
 and liked. 
 
HATRED OF ALL FOREIGNERS 65 
 
 (4 
 
 The Germans ? " 
 
 Ah, monsieur, mais vous plaisantez ; c'est le 
 refus des peuples de la terre^ 
 
 " The Enghsh, I have already gathered, you do 
 not Hke or admire. How about the ItaHans ? " 
 
 " Je les deteste ; Us sont perfides et communs.'^ 
 
 " Les Americains ? " 
 
 " Ceux du sud sont des rastaquaires, ceux du nord, 
 sHls ne sont pas comme les Anglais, ce ri'est pas 
 encore un peuple,^^ 
 
 The inhabitants of the small European countries, 
 including her neighbours the Belgians, did not 
 fare any better, in fact worse. At the end, I 
 turned to the allies of France, i. e, the Russians : 
 " Though they are your allies, madame, you are 
 not going to make me believe that you really 
 admire and love them as a nation." 
 
 She smiled and shrugged her shoulders, turning 
 her hands outward with that significant gesture of 
 doubt and admission. 
 
 " Eh Men, oui, il faiit admettre que si vous grattez 
 le Russe vous trouverez le TartareT 
 
 I then made bold to alter the tone of conversa- 
 tion into a more serious and deeper one. 
 
 " Who is there in this world who remains for 
 you to like, madame ? Every single nationality 
 which I have enumerated, you either despise or 
 hate, or both. My dear madame, this is really 
 unworthy of you. You appear to be a woman of 
 intelligence and of a native kindness of heart 
 which you cannot succeed in denying or hiding. 
 But according to what you have just shown me 
 your whole nature is made up of hate, and there is 
 
 F 
 
66 PATRIOTISM 
 
 no room for love. You are a Christian woman, 
 are you not ? " 
 
 " Je Vespere, monsieur.''^ 
 
 " Well, then, where have you left Christ and 
 His teaching? Are you to hate all your fellow- 
 beings, because they do not happen to be French- 
 men ? (I am sure that there are many Frenchmen, 
 in classes and individuals, whom you do not 
 admire, whom you despise, dislike and even hate.) 
 Surely, ily a des braves gens partout ; and you must 
 seek them and fraternise with them and avoid those 
 who are bad and vulgar. If you had your way, in 
 accordance with what you have just been indicating 
 to me, there would be nothing but sanguinary war 
 all over the world, each nation fighting the other, 
 because they hated them as savage animals and 
 primitive men were wont to do. As a Christian 
 woman, and a woman of sense and justice, you 
 must try to cultivate the other side of your nature, 
 
 Here followed an incident which again is typically 
 illustrative of the peculiar national qualities of 
 the people from whom she came. Almost suddenly 
 she turned to me with a frankness as truthfully 
 expressive in its demonstrativeness as were her 
 querulousness and vindictiveness before, and, with 
 a complete change in the expression of her counte- 
 nance and a softness and sincerity in the ring of her 
 voice she said — 
 
 " Ah, vous avez hien raison, monsieur, fai eu 
 tort — il faiit tdcher cF aimer.'' 
 
 In giving this slight instance at length, I think it 
 worth pointing out, as confirming my main thesis. 
 
THE GERMAN GENTLEMAN 67 
 
 that the original attitude of this Frenchwoman 
 towards her British hosts and foreigners in general 
 were not those of the ignorant passionate plebeian, 
 but of one who had enjoyed all the advantages of 
 superior education and position, and who directly 
 or indirectly had some modicum of influence 
 affecting the public affairs of a nation, which might 
 at that time have gone to war with a people now 
 their allies. 
 
 Germany 
 
 In dealing with Germany, I might be spared the 
 great strain on the faculties of self-detachment 
 and passionless justice of attempting to give, on 
 the side of praise, a picture of the German gentle- 
 man, after the soul-revolting experiences in this 
 war, culminating in the driving to slavery of the 
 inhabitants of the occupied French and Belgian 
 territories, and, preceding their retreat, in the 
 desecration of churches and sepulchral monuments 
 and the cutting down of mute and helpless fruit- 
 trees. I can the more readily dispense with such 
 a tour-de-force of sympathetic altruism, as in my 
 book Aristodeniocracy (pp. 29 seq.) I have en- 
 deavoured fully to delineate the characteristics 
 of the true gentlemen and the best types of other 
 classes in the Germany of old, as contrasted with 
 the type of the modern Streber evolved by their 
 militaristic policy of the last forty years. 
 
 Such a man as I have previously described 
 would feel, while travelling abroad, the same 
 repulsion and disgust at the objectionable 
 " patriotic " types of his own countrymen whom 
 
68 PATRIOTISM 
 
 he met, which any other foreigner would experience, 
 intensified in his own case by the fact that national 
 ties made him partly responsible for the blatant 
 vulgarity and truculence which characterise the 
 hypertrophicd German. Like all these objection- 
 able national types, the nationalistic Teuton mani- 
 fests, perhaps more loudly and obtrusively, his 
 assumption that his own social manners furnish 
 the absolute standard for the rest of the world. 
 The reticent and reserved Englishman, w^ho 
 possesses finer shadings of social breeding within 
 the naturalness and even nonchalance of his 
 social manners, is entirely misunderstood by the 
 German, who sees in this reserve and naturalness 
 of deportment (which perhaps mark the highest 
 stage of social development) ignorance of the 
 customs in good society, lack of breeding, av/kward- 
 ness or even boorishness. To him, whose dress 
 in its tightness and stiffness always contains 
 reminiscences of the officer's uniform, the spasmodic 
 and angular bearing, movements and indication of 
 social amenity are the mark of good breeding 
 and distinction. The v/ay in which he enters the 
 drawing-room at any social gathering, advances 
 to one of the guests, claps his heels together and 
 straightens out his body with stiff abruptness, 
 jerks his head forw^ard in lieu of bowing, proclaims 
 with military precision his own name, including 
 title and all other qualifications by way of self- 
 introduction, may be evolved by national condi- 
 tions of social life and, in so far, be justified, and 
 may mark in Germany itself his claims to good- 
 breeding. But there is no valid reason why they 
 
THE VULGAR GERMAN 69 
 
 should be adopted in other countries by other 
 people, and why they should be considered, not 
 only in themselves the most effective means of 
 adding to the grace and freedom of social inter- 
 course, but even to be used as the touchstone for 
 the possession of good manners by others ; so 
 that he who does not conform to them is arrogantly 
 condemned as either devoid of all good manners 
 or possessed of inferior ones. The same applies, 
 in a still more marked degree, to his table-habits, 
 even in the most distinguished circles, to the 
 manifestation of the great importance which is 
 attached to the various dishes, and especially the 
 wines; the meal itself terminating with the 
 repetition of the bow, to which may be added the 
 hand-kiss to the lady and the old-fashioned for- 
 mula " Gesegnete 3Iahlzeit," now substituted by 
 the curtailed and abrupt form of " Mahlzeit ! " 
 We should be falling into the same sin of provincial- 
 ism and social Chauvinism if we did not admit 
 and recognise the justification of such national 
 customs, which may even have added to them the 
 mellowness of a long historical evolution. Never- 
 theless, we must maintain that the act of eating 
 and drinking and the importance which food and 
 drink hold in the life of civilised people, might well 
 be relegated to an inferior position in their con- 
 scious social life; that all that concerns them 
 might be taken for granted ; and that, when thus 
 relegated to the background, a higher stage of 
 civilisation is reached. 
 
 Still more disgusted will our refined German be 
 when he finds himself in a railway carriage with a 
 
70 PATRIOTISM 
 
 group of countrymen corresponding to the French 
 family we have described before. The Jaeger-clad 
 men and women manifest the same disregard of 
 the people about them as shown by our Gallic 
 family, though there is less ebullience and lightness 
 of spirit in their demonstrative self-absorption. 
 There is also less bonhomie and human kindliness ; 
 but a stolid disregard of others, with an almost 
 defiant and conscious assertion of their separate- 
 ness and their determination to assert their own 
 claims against those of anybody else. As a matter 
 of fact, such types are clearly conscious of their 
 foreign neighbours owing to their native virtue, 
 their passion for information, their Wissbegierde, 
 which, in their case, degenerates into mere curiosity 
 (Neugierde). They will soon begin a conversation 
 with the other occupants of the carriage. They 
 have, by the way, before this resented the fact 
 that he should not have more adequately responded 
 to their salutation when they entered, following the 
 custom of their own country, and have thus — 
 perhaps in this case with some justice — been con- 
 firmed in their unshakable convictions that their 
 own manners are better than those of their foreign 
 fellow-traveller. Not infrequently they manifest 
 the advantage Avhich German school education has 
 over that of other countries, in their ability to 
 make themselves understood in the foreign lan- 
 guage of their unknown neighbour, who, on his 
 part, may not desire, or be inclined for, acquaint- 
 anceship or conversation. But such desires and 
 preferences in others do not even penetrate into 
 the thicker skin of Teuton sensibility ; and if they 
 
HIS AGGRESSIVENESS 71 
 
 do they are brushed aside as unworthy of any 
 consideration on their part. The conversation 
 begins, without any unnecessary skirmishes of 
 social affabihty, with a direct frontal attack of 
 personal question, about the country and nation- 
 ality, destination of travel, the object of the 
 journey, the occupation or position of this con- 
 versational victim in his own home, his own con- 
 dition of life, which may not infrequently end in 
 such pronounced personal interest as to inquire 
 into the salary attached to the public or private 
 position or profession, and the paying qualities 
 of the business in which he is engaged. 
 
 The selfishness and querulousness of all travellers 
 is notorious. The preference for open or shut 
 windows in railway carriages has afforded innumer- 
 able opportunities for animosity and conflict. I 
 do not venture to say that the German is more 
 selfish and inconsiderate than are others; but I 
 do believe that in his struggle for personal com- 
 fort and privilege while travelling, he is more in- 
 clined than are others to assert his nationality while 
 pressing his personal claim, and to give to it a 
 touch of Chauvinistic rivalry with a quasi- justifica- 
 tion of national antagonism. On leaving the train 
 and proceeding to the various hotels in Italy or 
 on the Riviera, our refined German again feels 
 the same shame, almost personal humiliation, 
 when he enters the dining-room or other public 
 rooms of these hotels, say, during the Easter 
 holidays, and there finds a mass of his own blatant 
 co-nationalists taking full and unquestioned posses- 
 sion of every place in which they congregate. He 
 
72 PATRIOTISM 
 
 is bound to contrast with the tone then prevaiHng 
 the quiet and peaceful atmosphere which reigned 
 in these same locaHtics but a short time before, 
 when there was found there a marked majority of 
 visitors from other countries instead of from his 
 own. Where, before this, people could talk or 
 read in comfort, life is now made unbearable by 
 the buzz and babel of loud and strident voices ; 
 emphatic assertion, unrestrained laughter rise 
 above the general din, with every now and then a 
 shrill ejaculation of " reizend,'^ " himmlisch " and 
 " prachtvoll,'' " colossal,'' or " ahscheidich,'' " uner- 
 hort*' " ganz injam.'' The Englishman's pro- 
 verbial superciliousness and inconsiderateness are 
 at all events passive, and leave others to follow 
 their own lives and inclinations, in which he mani- 
 fests no interest whatever. The German is not 
 passive, but violently active, fully aware and 
 clearly conscious of the lives and desires of others, 
 but militantly ready to oppose his own desires and 
 to assert their domination over them. At such 
 moments and with such experiences our German 
 gentleman finds it hard to be a patriot. 
 
 The American Gentleman 
 
 When we consider the United States, the com- 
 parative newness of national development and the 
 more fluid state of, national evolution, owing to 
 the constant infusion of more recent alien elements, 
 in no way preclude the distinctive national char- 
 acter which has been rapidl}^ and intensely solidified 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN 73 
 
 by history and by the markedly distinctive condi- 
 tions of pohtical and economical life and the 
 natural conditions of the country itself. The 
 American is thus as distinctive and individual an 
 entity as is any denizen of the several European 
 countries and nationalities, though the changes 
 and fluctuations in the social organisation and its 
 tone, and in the dominance of any one social type, 
 are more abrupt and frequent than in European 
 communities. I need not attempt at any length 
 to delineate his distinctive features, nor the 
 attractive type of the American gentleman of the 
 last generation, as I have already referred to him 
 in Aristodemocracij (p. 305). This is still less 
 necessary as in the main lines of his character, 
 deportment and taste, he corresponds in all 
 essentials to the English gentleman. But it would 
 be a great mistake (and one to which Lowell in his 
 essay on " A Certain Condescension in Foreigners " 
 has drawn attention) to consider them as identical, 
 and to impose the standards of the one upon the 
 other in judging them. A still greater error is 
 made by Europeans in selecting, as the prominent 
 and most representative types of the best that 
 America has produced, the people who owe their 
 prominence to wealth only, and to the selection 
 which is made for publication by the European 
 Press and especially by that section of the Press 
 which ministers to the morbid interest of the 
 readers of social columns. For the admirable type 
 with which I am dealing rarely obtrudes itself into 
 public notice and avoids the publicity bestowed 
 by the Press. 
 
74 PATRIOTISM 
 
 Within the numerous points of similarity between 
 the American and EngHsh gentleman there are 
 certain differences greatly adding to the admirable- 
 ness and attractiveness of the American type, and 
 these differences can be traced back to the peculiar 
 conditions of American life which have evolved the 
 t3^pe. Thus the American, while not deprived 
 of a certain dignity of his own, is more socially 
 approachable and more avenant than is the English- 
 man. He manifests greater sensibility and the 
 desire to please and to help all those with whom 
 he comes into contact. Were we to express it in 
 terms of ethnology (though this would be absurdly 
 unscientific and misleading), we might say, that he 
 was the Englishman with a dash of the Frenchman, 
 the Nordic with a dash of the Mediterranean, the 
 Aryan with a dash of the Semite in him. This 
 difference may possibly be due, to some extent, 
 to the differences of climate ; for in his country 
 the northern winter abruptly merges into almost 
 equatorial summer. Whatever influence such 
 primary conditions of natural environment may 
 have upon the formation of national character 
 and even upon the finer shadings of social customs 
 and manners, there can be no doubt that the actual 
 conditions of living, of public, private and, above 
 all, of social life pertaining to one country, are 
 chiefly accountable for the production of char- 
 acteristic and distinctive manners within each 
 nationality. They arise out of, and are modified 
 by, the actual conditions of living ; and we might 
 put this fact almost in the form of a " sociological 
 law." 
 
SHADINGS OF HOSPITALITY 75 
 
 Episode on Different Shadings of Hospitality 
 
 In lieu of a more searching disquisition on this im- 
 portant factor in the evokition of national manners, I 
 may restrict myself to the investigation of but one 
 single aspect of social life and the resultant customs, 
 in the form of an episode to the main theme which 
 we are here investigating. Both the English and the 
 American people are most hospitable. But hospitality 
 has taken different forms in either country, and this 
 difference is not always properly understood and 
 appreciated by each one of them. American hospi- 
 tality is more warm-heartedly profuse and searching; 
 English hospitality is naturally cordial, unobtrusively 
 moderate and reticently mindful of the complete free- 
 dom of action for the guest. This applies, not only to 
 the large country-house, but even to the most modest 
 home. But it must always be remembered that the 
 keynote of English social life is struck in the country 
 and not in the metropolis. It is in the country that the 
 Englishman devotes himself to his guests and is able 
 to offer them the most attractive and enjoyable forms 
 of hospitality. Town is meant more for the business 
 of life, even though the business be only personal 
 amusement. This is not the case in America, where 
 the keynote of social life is struck by the city, and the 
 attentions of hospitality are, therefore, also concerned 
 with the amenities and amusements which city life 
 offers. Now it must further be remembered that 
 hospitality constitutes an integral part of the life of an 
 English country-house ; and that, therefore, the enter- 
 tainment of guests is a frequent, if not a continuous, 
 function of the country home. From its very fre- 
 quency, and from the fact that the metropolis of this 
 comparatively small island constantly brings people 
 together, it is the general rule — though far from being 
 absolute — that the people who meet at the country- 
 house already know each other. The entertainment of 
 guests is, therefore, not unusual, in fact in many cases 
 it is the rule of life. To put it negatively, it would be 
 
76 PATRIOTISM 
 
 physically impossible for the hosts to give the greater 
 part of their day to their guests, as there would thus 
 be no time left to fulfil their usual obligations. Posi- 
 tively, however, it means that this usual and familiar 
 occurrence is also treated by the guests as a more or 
 less ordinary living together in tlae temporary home 
 to which they are admitted, and they do not, therefore, 
 expect much special attention beyond a friendly ad- 
 mission into the family circle and into the society of 
 their fellow-guests. To this must be added the domi- 
 nant craving of the Englishman for social independence, 
 out of which grows his dislike of " being made a fuss 
 of." He is happiest when he is least interfered with. 
 Thus, while providing for his physical comfort and the 
 usual forms of entertainment, which the house itself 
 and the surrounding country naturally offer, the guest 
 is left to himself. These conditions make him perfectly 
 happy and do not interfere with the ordinary life and 
 duties of the host. The guest does not expect or desire 
 to be "entertained." It is not so in other countries, 
 and not to the same degree in the United States. I 
 cannot resist from intruding another episode, in the. 
 form of an actual incident, which illustrates the pecu- 
 liarity of English hospitality and its difference, in this 
 respect, from other countries. 
 
 An English widow of distinction and moderate means, 
 who lived in comfort in a pretty country-house in 
 England, while sojourning abroad made the acquaint- 
 ance of an elegante French marquise of attractive 
 character and personality ana refinement of manners. 
 A mutual attraction developed into intimacy. When 
 their stay m the foreign meeting-place came to an end, 
 they vowed eternal friendship and promised each other 
 that, should they ever come to the respective countries 
 of either, they would pay more than a passing visit. 
 Some time after this, the English lady, again settled in 
 her home, was delighted with the announcement of her 
 friend's arrival in England and the prospect of an 
 immediate visit from her. Mme. la marquise arrived 
 with her maid and an enormous mass of luggage, the 
 evidence of a very comjjlete wardrobe. Tne hostess 
 
DIFFERENT SHADINGS OF CUSTOM 77 
 
 was pleased to learn that her guest could give her a 
 whole fortnight. Before her arrival she had already- 
 planned the various forms of entertainment which she, 
 under the conditions of her small country home, could 
 offer. There was the dinner party to which the limited 
 number of suitable country neighbours were asked to 
 meet the foreign guest ; a garden party included a far 
 wider circle of all the people within reach ; a visit to 
 the nearest country town, with the inspection of the 
 few objects of historic and artistic interest ; drives in 
 her pony-carriage, including the inspection of some 
 beautiful country churches (which did not greatly 
 interest the guest) ; and, as the marquise did not pla}^ 
 either golf or tennis, her hostess had sent for a croquet 
 set, to provide for the only form of sport in which the 
 visitor indulged. With this, the resources in social 
 entertainment were exhausted, and a few days sufficed 
 for this process. In every other respect life was quiet, 
 peaceful and serene within doors. With a good hbrary 
 of books, the chief distraction of the occupant of the 
 house, with a beautiful garden, to which she gave active 
 and loving care herself, and a typically variegated and 
 attractive country about them, always inviting their 
 appreciativeness and enjoyment of the beauties of 
 nature, the means of distraction ended. 
 
 However, after the first days were spent and the more 
 direct and manifest amusements had filled them, there 
 was nothing left for entertainment. But every morn- 
 ing Mme. la marquise came down to breakfast, glowing 
 with expectant avidity for active amusement, and, 
 exquisitely dressed a V occasion, greeted her despairing 
 hostess with the exclamation : " Quel est le ^programme 
 pour aujourdliui ? " 
 
 It is thus owing to the different environments 
 that the distinctive shadings of national customs, 
 manners and good-breeding are evolved. More- 
 over, in every relatively young country and com- 
 munity the need for mutual help and the readiness 
 
78 PATRIOTISM 
 
 to co-operate in every department of life, are 
 more habitually frequent. This produces a social 
 attitude of neighbourliness in general, which 
 accounts for the greater avenance of the American 
 gentleman as compared with the comparative 
 aloofness — if not stolidity — of his English counter- 
 part. This instinct of social independence and 
 aloofness may become so exaggerated, that I 
 remember an Englishwoman abroad, while we 
 were discussing the general experience of making 
 " travelling acquaintances," make the character- 
 istic remark : "It may be very inconvenient to 
 meet people while one is travelling, they might be 
 one's next-door neighbours." 
 
 Another distinctive characteristic in the com- 
 position of the American gentleman is the im- 
 portance of education and culture, which play so 
 prominent a part in his personality. This in no 
 way implies learning, and is in no way attached to 
 the learned classes. On the other hand, more than 
 in any other country, and certainly more than 
 in England, it generally presupposes a univer- 
 sity education — " the college-bred man." Though 
 the many prominent and admirable universities 
 throughout the United States, which have each of 
 them produced excellent intellectual results as well 
 as men of eminence and refinement, have each their 
 own individual character and well-established claim 
 to recognition, the mental atmosphere emanating 
 from Harvard in the past and in the production of 
 the leading body of men in the last generation, 
 has more than any other institution given its tone 
 to these intellectual attributes of the American 
 
SOCIAL FREEDOM 79 
 
 gentleman. So admittedly is this the case, that 
 in the witty or satirical stories, the point of which 
 lies in the contrast between the various classes of 
 men and their lives and manners, " the Harvard 
 man " is the established type, as, on the other hand, 
 " the young lady from Boston " is the national 
 representative of culture. Whether or not satire 
 and ridicule may be justified by pretension, pro- 
 vincialism and pose, the fact remains that this 
 constituent of social refinement has had its focus in 
 these centres, and that the fullest representatives 
 of this best type of the American, whether directly 
 produced in these centres of American life or not, 
 manifest the same spirit. 
 
 Another distinctive characteristic must be traced 
 back to the direct influence of the establishment of 
 the American republic and the spirit of its constitu- 
 tion. The preamble " All men are created equal," 
 to whatever misdirected and even absurd uses it 
 may have been turned, has in its quintessence 
 formed the basis of social consciousness and has 
 sunk down deep into the soul of every American. 
 To say the least, it enables him to start on the social 
 journey through life without any preoccupation, 
 unimpeded and unweighted by the sense of im- 
 mutable and irremovable disqualifications on his 
 own part. Though in the upbringing and in the 
 social atmosphere of these representative types of 
 Americans, reverence for the aged, hero-worship 
 of the great men of the past, and enthusiastic regard 
 and respect for the men of great achievement in 
 the present, coupled with chivalrous considerate- 
 ness towards women (often, however, carried to 
 
80 PATRIOTISM 
 
 excess), are all instilled into the depths of con- 
 viction and throughout the surface of habit and 
 conduct in every stage of life, still, there is no 
 assumption within their mentality or their deport- 
 ment of restricted social privilege adhering to any 
 class of people, and, on the other hand, no social 
 disqualification attaching to birth or occupation. 
 This makes him at ease in every society and frees 
 him from that " shyness " which, to a considerable 
 extent, arises out of the consciousness either of 
 privilege or disqualification. 
 
 These are the leading characteristics of the 
 American gentleman which make him one of the 
 most admirable types of human beings. 
 
 He stands in marked contrast to the lower type 
 of the obtrusively American; and his feelings 
 upon meeting him while travelling abroad are the 
 same as those evoked by their counterparts in 
 other countries already described. The moment 
 these " spread-eagle " Americans set foot in 
 England, whatever their interest in foreign travel 
 may be, and however much amusement and un- 
 conscious education they may derive from their 
 travels, they establish and accentuate the differ- 
 ence between themselves, their nationality and 
 their homes, and those of their temporary abode. 
 Language and dialect are a result of a process of 
 ethnical and national evolution which give justifica- 
 tion to their differing characters. There is no reason 
 whatever why an American should abandon his 
 own vernacular and his own pronunciation. But 
 every just, and even good, thing can be exaggerated 
 into forms which are in no way admirable. The 
 
THE AGGRESSIVE AMERICAN 81 
 
 marked nasality of pronunciation and vocalisation 
 and the profusion of national and often distinctly 
 local or professional slang can be exaggerated or 
 insisted upon out of place. The Briton who gives 
 to his language a marked Scottish, Yorkshire, 
 Devonian or even Cockney character has a perfect 
 right to use this local modification of his mother 
 tongue; but he will not be justified in assuming 
 that his dialect and pronunciation form the 
 standard of the English language and ought to be 
 adopted by all Britons. Our friend, arriving in 
 England, is amused at the difference in diction, 
 and has been known to speak of " the English, 
 accent." The conversation of such people, the 
 moment they land and for a considerable time after 
 this, is largely made up of the comparative qualities 
 of the several ocean steamers and lines, with an 
 aggressive, almost passionate, insistence upon the 
 pre-eminence of the ship they happened to have 
 crossed in. There is in all this conversation and 
 in much that follows, the prominently noticeable 
 spirit of partisanship and of brag which chiefly 
 marks the schoolboy. Theirs, whatever it be, is 
 always the best. We have just noted the arrogance 
 of the same types in other nationalities ; but few 
 among them are so constant and emphatic in 
 dwelling upon the advantages and the marvellous 
 achievements of their own country and their 
 native home, as is the case with this class of 
 American travellers. This pre-eminence and claim 
 to superiority is generally based upon material 
 achievement either in the production of the com- 
 forts and amenities of life or in the business and 
 
 G 
 
82 PATRIOTISM 
 
 industrial successes and innovations which hold 
 the record for the world. In these, again, rapidity 
 of progress and achievement, dimension and bulk 
 of what is produced are, in themselves and of them- 
 selves, put forward as the chief claims to admira- 
 tion, as their absence implies humiliation to those 
 whose lives are not entirely or chiefly concerned 
 with speed and size. All these claims to pre- 
 eminence are in the first place made for the 
 American nation ; but they are soon extended to the 
 provincial and local centre from which this asser- 
 tive " patriot " happens to have come. Even the 
 poignantly tragic and hopelessly sordid atmosphere 
 of a Spoon River Community and the low plane of 
 civilised life which it represents, will in the eyes 
 of this local patriot shine like a bright particular 
 star within the galaxy of civilised communities. 
 
 This corporate pride is merely another form of 
 stupendous, though child-like and unconscious, 
 egotism. Everything these people possess, every 
 new purchase they have made, is of the best and 
 must command the interest of their patient com- 
 panions. Beneath and above all their prosy details 
 of the infinitely unimportant lies the assumption of 
 the supreme importance of themselves and their 
 own lives, which must of necessity interest every- 
 body else. Hence their minute enumeration of all 
 details, the names and qualifications of the people 
 concerned in their private affairs, their Christian 
 names, with parenthetical accounts of their family 
 history and occupations; the conditions under 
 which the purchase was made, including most 
 minute details as to time and place — all this implies 
 
PROVINCIAL ASSERTIVENESS 83 
 
 the assumption on the part of the tedious narrator 
 of special importance to the world at large because 
 it refers to himself. Now such a mentality and such 
 gross self-assertion are not only the characteristics 
 of people who by education and occupation have 
 been deprived of social training, and in their humble 
 walks of life are free from social pretensions ; but 
 it is even to be found among the more favoured 
 provincial patriots of the United States who con- 
 sider themselves representatives of the " aristoc- 
 racy," however much they may glorify the spirit 
 of the American constitution and may spurn the 
 survivals of feudalism in the social organisations 
 of Europe. They will inform you of their own 
 uneventful and hugely uninteresting family history ; 
 they are the X's of Xtown or the Y's of Yville, 
 and, even if they cannot alvv^ays claim wdth truth- 
 fulness that they are descended from psalm- 
 singing, though courageously independent '' pas- 
 sengers " on the Mayflower — (narrow-minded, hard 
 and uncouth as these were, though sublimely 
 honest in a determination to secure their own free- 
 dom of conscience, while cutting off the ears of a 
 Quaker from Pennsylvania who intruded into their 
 community, and whipping the naked men and 
 women who were heretics through the snow-covered 
 streets of their colonial settlement) — though their 
 claim to aristocracy of birth does not rest upon 
 such descent, they can with truth and deep signifi- 
 cance inform you that their family has lived for 
 generations in one town or village. As if every 
 family must not have lived somewhere even for 
 generations. It does not, by the way, occur to 
 
84 PATRIOTISM 
 
 these people that continuous residence in one place, 
 unless it implies activity which has been conducive 
 to the advancement of the community itself, may, 
 on the contrary, imply inferiority, physical and 
 moral, on the part of such a family as compared 
 with those whose strength of character and energy 
 have caused them to leave their homes for new 
 parts. 
 
 The manners of such American " patriots " and 
 their effect upon others while travelling are of 
 the same objectionable kind as those of the other 
 nationalities we have just considered. They also 
 act as if they were alone in the world, and abroad 
 they boisterously take possession of any place 
 in which they congregate ; cheering each other 
 on with unrestrained laughter at their local and 
 personal jokes, they assert their collective solidarity 
 to the discomfiture of other people about them. 
 Like the other nationalists they also assert their 
 difference in dress, speech and manner. I can 
 recall an account which a witty American diplomat 
 gave of such a characteristic family party. Their 
 marked and aggressive nationalism reached the 
 highest degree of absurdity, though they were quite 
 unconscious that this was not justified and com- 
 mendable. While they did not actually carry 
 and wave the Stars and Stripes, the small boy of 
 the family wore a bow-knot tie in which, ingeni- 
 ously and accurately, the centre consisted of a blue 
 ground with white stars, while either end displayed 
 horizontal red and white stripes. When this 
 humorous diplomat, with solemn interest inquired 
 of the youth where he had procured that " remark- 
 
SIMILARITY OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS 85 
 
 able cravat,'' the parents, quite unconscious of his 
 dehcately impHed and gentle disapproval, proudly 
 gave all details of its origin and construction. 
 Surely there is not only a difference of degree, but 
 fundamentally of kind, between the American 
 gentleman and his countrymen of this type. 
 
 The same exposition might be continued with 
 regard to every other country — Italy, Spain, and 
 the smaller States of Europe. Even if foreigners 
 do not readily recognise such differences (as only 
 the shepherd can tell the sheep of a flock apart), 
 the more refined in every nation are clearly aware 
 
 of them. ^ 
 
 Now, the important point arising out of this 
 inquiry for us to realise is, that the gentlemen of 
 every nation have all essentials in common, they 
 all understand each other. The others also have 
 points in common, such as their assertive vul- 
 garity, but they do not understand each other; 
 on the contrary, they obtrude and accentuate their 
 national differences and antagonisms. The one 
 makes for harmony and peace, the other for discord 
 and war. 
 
 However intense and lofty are the gentlemen's 
 love of country, whatever their self-confidence and 
 even their pride of character may be, these, as well 
 as their claims to consideration and respect, do 
 not rest on the collective achievements of their 
 nation nor on the separateness of their national 
 life ; but on the degree in which they individually 
 may possess moral, intellectual and social qualities 
 
86 PATRIOTISM 
 
 which are recognised as such by the whole of civil- 
 ised humanity, and the possession of which directs 
 the aims and ideals of every human being in every 
 civilised country. The combination of all social 
 qualities into the organic unity of personality and 
 life produces in the mind of man an individual 
 ideal of the perfect being which is more or less 
 consciously present as a model and an ideal for 
 mankind. 
 
 The assertive " patriot," on the contrary, what- 
 ever his personal qualities or defects, rests his pride, 
 and bases his assertion of superiority, on the fact 
 that he belongs to a huge collective body called 
 a nation, and moreover on the distinctive and 
 differentiating attributes of this collective body, 
 as separate from, or antagonistic to, the other 
 collective bodies also called nations. 
 
Corporate Inferiority 
 
 The essential point in this difference between 
 the superior and the inferior citizen, at the same 
 time the central argument of this essay, lies in the 
 correct understanding of Social Corporateness and 
 of its effect upon national and international life, 
 when the claims to distinctness and distinction are 
 based upon this corporateness itself and produce 
 the wrong conception of Patriotism. In itself, 
 corporateness has a lowering tendency. As we 
 shall see, beyond the special question of patriotism 
 we maintain that it is a distinctive characteristic 
 of the gentleman not to obtrude the corporate 
 claims for personal consideration ; for such obtru- 
 sion in general social life produces that whole group 
 of social vices stigmatised under the comprehen- 
 sive term of " snobbishness." His standards for 
 approval and esteem are based upon the real moral 
 and social values which pervade human society as 
 such, and upon these his claims are to be judged. 
 As a social being he therefore avoids the obtrusion 
 of corporate existence. All highly civilised and 
 morally healthy social communities condemn the 
 obtrusion or exaggeration of corporate differentia- 
 tion in social intercourse. Thus the fact of belong- 
 
 87 
 
88 PATRIOTISM 
 
 ing to a class, profession, local district or family, 
 when pushed to the foreground of social conduct, 
 is repudiated as a defect of manners in every 
 general society all over the world. When such 
 individuals are singled out and designated em- 
 phatically and merely as having the attributes of 
 such collective groupings and nothing more, such 
 designation clearly implies weakness or vice or 
 social inferiority and manifest disapproval. A 
 man who is emphatically designated by the class 
 in which he is born, whether high or low, without 
 any further qualification, is held up as an imperfect 
 or abnormal social being. Such a designation when 
 applied to him in the light of his occupation or 
 profession implies the same censure. The terms : a 
 donnish don, in the learned profession, a " beakish " 
 schoolmaster, a clerical clergyman, a politician who 
 is not a statesman, a promoter and stock-manipu- 
 lator, a city man or shopkeeper, when used to 
 designate by themselves a member of general 
 society, imply disapproval as much as the emphasis 
 which is put on the designation of an individual as 
 coming from a certain country, county, village or 
 class. It is a just instinct of Englishmen (no 
 doubt often carried to excess with more far-reaching 
 deleterious results) to taboo what is called " shop " 
 in conversation and deportment. It arises out of 
 the condemnation of such obtrusion of corporate 
 distinctness, counteracting the just and effective 
 function of specifically social qualities. The men 
 manifesting such faults become " corporately " 
 different beings instead of normal social beings. 
 Furthermore, this correct and instructive dis- 
 
COMMITTEES 89 
 
 approval is based upon the more or less conscious 
 realisation of the fact that corporateness has 
 elements of inferiority and deterioration in itself.^ 
 The familiar saying that, "in a cavalry regiment 
 it is the slowest horse that gives the pace," simply 
 and strikingly conveys this great truth. 
 
 If this applies to the physical properties of 
 animals and man it also applies to man's moral 
 and intellectual functions and aspirations. Even 
 in cases where corporateness is temporary and 
 clearly called into existence for a definite and com- 
 mendable purpose, and even if its existence is 
 limited to the realisation of the purpose, this lower- 
 ing effect of corporateness is often manifest. Who- 
 ever has had experience in the working of Com- 
 mittees must frequently have been tempted to 
 put his experience in the exaggerated form of an 
 epigram : that a committee of twenty Avise men 
 makes one big fool. In this special instance the 
 inferior efficiency of corporate activity may be due 
 to what may be considered an accident, but this 
 accident is connected wdth the corporateness of the 
 body. The nature of intellectual activity and the 
 workings of human reason depend upon the organic 
 unity of the spirit in the human mind. It cannot 
 be subdivided without losing its organic vitality 
 and force. It is therefore almost invariably the 
 case that one brain and one personality produce 
 all the energy and the good work in every com- 
 mittee or collective body. If this individual 
 
 ^ In Aristodemocracy (Chap. VIII and p. 320) I have en- 
 larged more fully upon this thesis, and have endeavoured to 
 show the danger arising out of the virtue of corporate loyalty. 
 
90 PATRIOTISM 
 
 possesses the greatest energy, the highest intellect- 
 uaUty and moral integrity of all its members, the 
 result will be good ; if not, it will be bad or inferior. 
 However, it is not infrequently the case that those 
 who possess these superior qualifications are not 
 the most active members of such a body or do not 
 carry with them effective influence as regards its 
 decisions and its work. This is so, because in the 
 ordinary course of events, the most efficient and 
 superior members of such a temporary body have 
 naturally found numerous and engrossing occupa- 
 tions in other directions, and they therefore leave 
 the work, responsibility and influence, to one or 
 more inferior members. Furthermore, the wisest 
 men and those who are most just do not rapidly 
 make up their minds and are not passionately 
 wedded to their own opinions, which the inferior 
 men generally are. Yet in the collective delibera- 
 tions — and the larger the body the more is this the 
 case — it is the man of decision who carries the day, 
 whether this decision be wise or unwise. Finally, 
 it may sometimes be found that in a committee the 
 wisest man is not necessarily the one who possesses 
 the greatest facility for what is called " drafting 
 a resolution," and it is often upon this one faculty 
 that the success in carrying a definite opinion 
 depends to a considerable extent. The net result 
 is that the work of such a committee is generally 
 inferior to that of one individual if he be of average 
 ability endowed with power and responsibility. 
 However, committees are, of course, necessary, and 
 have counterbalancing advantages. 
 
 Now, if corporateness in itself leads to in- 
 
CHURCH AND STATE 91 
 
 feriority and deterioration, even when its existence 
 is temporarily limited to the direct purpose of 
 its institution, this lowering tendency is still more 
 active and inherent in its very essence when such 
 bodies are fully organised and definitely fixed in 
 their existence as separate entities. The mare 
 firmly and lastingly they are organised, the more 
 the corporate elements become fixed and stereo- 
 typed, the more powerful is the natural tendency 
 to self-preservation inherent in the individual and 
 in larger bodies as well. The end is then absorbed 
 in the means. The more highly developed and 
 confirmed in its existence and the more complicated 
 and widely diffused its organisation and activity, 
 the greater is the inherent force which makes for 
 the realisation of its own solidarity, of its own 
 machinery, and absorbs all the energies of those 
 who originally gathered together for a wider 
 ultimate purpose. At last, when we come to the 
 widest and most spiritual institvitions of humanity, 
 we find that their activity and energy are in- 
 creasingly absorbed by the organisation itself, in 
 inverse ratio to the ultimate objects for which 
 they were called into existence, the longer their 
 duration in time and the wider and more powerful 
 their influence in space. The history of the 
 Church as well as of the State in the annals of 
 civilised mankind affords the fullest illustration 
 of this process. The spiritual ends of the founders 
 of religion are obscured, if not wholly obliterated, 
 in the activity of the executive members of the 
 Churches to uphold and to increase the power of 
 the Churches themselves or the more formal and 
 
92 PATRIOTISM 
 
 ritual practices arising out of the spiritual aim 
 which binds all the members together in fixed and 
 effective unity. The ultimate result is that, even 
 religions which originally arose out of the exalted 
 aims of their founders to extend and to intensify 
 love and brotherhood among men, have, in the 
 fully established and organised sectarian corporate- 
 ness of the several Churches, accentuated the dis- 
 uniting differences between them, and, with ever- 
 recurrent frequency in past history, have en- 
 couraged animosity, hatred and warfare among 
 them. As regards the State, even though our 
 theory of its origin and function may not be that 
 of the Contrat Social, past and present history has 
 abundantly shown how it directly counteracts 
 the social and moral ideals of man. Within the 
 State itself, and even in democratic countries, the 
 multiform and far-reaching mechanism of parties 
 tends to obliterate or overshadow the essential 
 and ideal aims of the State and the Constitution, 
 and of making the mere corporate existence of 
 the party a final aim in itself. All conscientious 
 politicians have realised this, and have occasionally 
 struggled against its evil effects. Whoever reads 
 the lives of two such great statesmen and party 
 leaders as were Gladstone and Disraeli, will note 
 how this central problem of actual political life, 
 the reconciliation of the true aims of the State 
 and public welfare with the maintenance of party 
 power, came upon them with greatest moral force 
 and distressed them at moments when the rush 
 of their immediate party work spared them the 
 leisure to direct their attention towards the 
 
REVISION OF CORPORATE IDEALS 93 
 
 higher, though none the less real and immediate, 
 aims of all political activity. 
 
 If this is the case with the highest corporate 
 institutions of man, the aims of which are widely 
 human and clearly moral and social, it is a fortiori 
 the case with all the minor corporate bodies, the 
 aims of which are lower and the activity and 
 practice of which are further removed from spiritual 
 purposes. The fact remains that corporateness 
 as such has a lowering tendency unless the spiritual 
 purpose and the ideals which called it into existence 
 are constantly held before its corporate conscious- 
 ness and are made effectively to direct corporate 
 activity. All corporate bodies should therefore 
 be periodically tested as regards their right of 
 existence in respect of their conformity to the ideal 
 purposes for which they were inaugurated. If this 
 is not done, the inherent process of deterioration 
 is set free. They should accordingly either be 
 reformed or dissolved as corporate bodies. 
 
 The pronounced and strong corporateness of the 
 State thus affects, with all the inherent conse- 
 quences just described, purely spiritual bodies or 
 activities, such as religion, philosophy, science, art 
 and literature when it comes into direct contact 
 with them and establishes state-religion, state- 
 philosophy, science or art. These cannot be made 
 to order. They deteriorate because they are 
 deflected from their essential ideals. Pragmatism 
 and compromise enter when literature, science, art, 
 ethics and religion forsake their inherent and 
 essential aims and follow a foreign, and in so far 
 antagonistic, impulse. 
 
94 PATRIOTISM 
 
 The State itself, being a social corporation, is 
 socially lowered when it makes its own organisa- 
 tion, irrespective of the social attributes, its own 
 preservation and aggrandisement, its final aim and 
 end. The individuals, moreover, who are sub- 
 ordinated to this lower end lose their human and 
 social ideals, which are replaced by the lowered 
 political ideals called " patriotism." The in- 
 evitable result is that nationalism replaces humani- 
 tarianism, and thus again counteracts the human- 
 ities, insists upon and exaggerates the distinctively 
 national characteristics in the individual, in their 
 differentiating aspect from those of other nation- 
 alities and individuals, and thus reacts upon the 
 national spirit itself, vulgarising national taste into 
 aggressive assertiveness. 
 
 The same applies to political parties. The 
 fundamental distinctions are based upon principles 
 and ideals. The Conservatives are convinced 
 that, as the instinct for change and the forward 
 movement of doctrinaire humanity require above 
 all things a check in order to retain what, in 
 their opinion, are decidedly good traditions, they 
 are thus primarily concerned in preserving the 
 good. Liberals, on the other hand, are more 
 concerned with overcoming the vis inertice of 
 men, as well as the stereotyped class privileges 
 among them ; and are chiefly bent on accelerating 
 progress in the community. These fundamental 
 differences being justified and embodying ideals 
 for corporate differentiation, the business of 
 organisation and the multiform and far-reaching 
 mechanism of parties, have the tendency to 
 
LESSER CORPORATIONS 95 
 
 obliterate or to overshadow such ideals and of 
 making the mere corporate existence of a party a 
 final aim in itself. All conscientious politicians 
 have had to face this problem, which presents in 
 various aspects the chief problem of politics for 
 leaders and for citizens. As stated before, this 
 clearly manifests, as regards the State, the chief 
 task applying to all corporateness for revision, 
 reform, or, if need be, dissolution. In this latter 
 case, each successive historical period must re- 
 organise its corporate institutions, not only to 
 conform to the needs of changing historical con- 
 ditions, but above all, to respond to the highest 
 ideals of life and thought and art which each 
 successive period can in honesty and im diluted 
 clearness of vision and expression, attain to. 
 
 If all that I have said applies to the State as 
 well as its administration in party government, 
 it applies still more to the corporate bodies within 
 the State. The disintegrating influence of such 
 bodies, based upon what is called class, circum- 
 scribed geographical districts, local patriotism, 
 which might be opposed to the wider national 
 patriotism; occupations which are grouped to- 
 gether by self-interest which may clash with the 
 wider interests of the community and the nation ; 
 of societies and corporations dependent for the 
 cohesion of their members upon adventitious con- 
 ditions of geographical or historical association, 
 and even of those which, though originally founded 
 for some higher moral or clearly social object, 
 submerge these objects in the mere struggle for 
 corporate existence and survival — all these mani- 
 
96 PATRIOTISM 
 
 fest to a still higher degree the dangers inherent 
 in the natural process of corporate association. 
 Still more is this the case when families in their 
 ramification extend their solidarity through genera- 
 tions by the mere claims of descent, unregardful 
 of their social relationship and moral responsi- 
 bilities to the welfare of the wider community and 
 the nation. 
 
 Race Corporateness 
 
 In modern times perhaps the most disintegrating 
 influence in the claims and activities of such 
 corporateness has been exercised by the solidarity 
 of '' race," actively put forward with claims of 
 dominance within the community and the State 
 and among the States themselves, subdividing 
 them into racial groups that stand opposed to one 
 another in antagonistic rivalry. The history of 
 the second half of the nineteenth century manifests 
 the dominance of this fatal principle. Not only 
 are the terms " race " and " nationality" confused 
 in their meaning and consequent practical influence 
 on politics and even social life ; but the most 
 pronounced antagonisms within each State and 
 of States among each other have been aroused, 
 ending in internal persecutions and wholesale 
 murder and in devastating wars between the 
 several '' nationalities " and nations. We had 
 heard enough in the last century of the opposition 
 between Germanentum. or Teutonism and the 
 Romance or Latin world, to which was added the 
 antagonism between Teuton and Slav, which served 
 as the initial war-cry in this great world-conflict. 
 
ETHNOLOGICAL PRETENTIONS 97 
 
 Within each nation, again, there was ready to hand, 
 to serve any party or even individual interests, 
 ethnological differences, if not actually discernible 
 in the present, at least clearly recognisable in 
 past history. In the British Empire, among the 
 numerous ethnological elements, which together 
 compose the true nationality, the antagonism 
 between Saxon and Celt has been used for the most 
 definite political ends and issues. In the Con- 
 tinental nations this confused and utterly un- 
 founded principle of disintegration is even more 
 pronounced and mischievous. 
 
 All these ethnological pretensions and passions — 
 and this is one of the distinctive features of the 
 more modem conflict of " races " — are based upon 
 the achievements and results of modern ethno- 
 logical study, the youngest and least accurate of 
 modern sciences. In federation with the revived 
 study of philology, comparative religion and 
 anthropology, the ethnological politician and 
 agitator found a fertile field, especially for internal 
 disintegration and antagonism, in the inner life 
 of modern States (in most cases neither consciously 
 nor unconsciously quite free from considerations 
 of material interests and greeds), in the antagonism 
 between Aryanism and Semitism. But, again 
 guided by the development of ethnological study, 
 this supremely active subdivision, upon which 
 powerful political parties were founded in several 
 continental countries, has again been superseded 
 in theory and abandoned as a scientific basis and 
 justification ; though the anti-Semitic parties have 
 not dissolved and continue their passionate activity. 
 
98 PATRIOTISM 
 
 The principles of racial subdivision for Europe 
 to-day are the Nordic, Mediterranean and Alpine. 
 Militant activity now chiefly centres round the 
 proposition that the Nordic is the superior race 
 and should as a race not only survive, but dominate 
 all others. 
 
 From the interesting, and comparatively inno- 
 cent, essay of Count (iobineau, with many minor 
 lucubrations, we come to the grotesquely pre- 
 tentious, superficial and tragically mischievous 
 work of Mr. Houston Chamberlain, the fatal in- 
 fluence of which I have indicated elsewhere (see 
 Aristodemocracy, p. 53). Its influence on the in- 
 ception of the present war, as regards the develop- 
 ment of the present political mentality of Germany, 
 can hardly be exaggerated. A correspondent and 
 friend, commenting on this opinion of mine, has 
 humorously suggested that, should (as we trust) 
 the war end in the utter overthrow of German 
 militarism, the defeated Germans will maintain 
 that the real responsibility of this world-tragedy 
 is to be ascribed to the fact that they were misled 
 by the writings of an Englishman whom they will, 
 in their legal phraseology, describe as the In- 
 tellectueller Urheber. Our own days have wit- 
 nessed the production of a work by an American 
 would-be ethnographer and historian, supported 
 in an introduction by a well-estabHshed and dis- 
 tinguished zoologist and biologist, wliich is the 
 most amateurish as well as pretentious piece of 
 scientific over-generalisation, incomplete induction 
 and dogmatic application of scientific principles 
 to practical politics and life, which I have met 
 
UNSOUND GENERALISATION 99 
 
 with in the whole range of my own reading.^ 
 Starting with the proposition that somatic (bodily 
 or physical) characteristics and distinctions in the 
 human race correspond with unvarying interaction 
 to intellectual and moral characteristics — even to 
 fitness for political organisation, general activities 
 and occupations in civilised life, intellectual 
 achievements and social amenities — he endeavours 
 to show that the Nordic race, compared to all 
 others, possesses all the qualities that make for 
 civilisation and moral and intellectual develop- 
 ment to the highest degree. He maintains that 
 the wars of the past and the present war have 
 tended to disintegrate this race and to lead to its 
 submersion by the lower races, and his expressed 
 hope and emphatic injunction is that, by the action 
 of modern society and of the individual, it should 
 be preserved and its dominance assured. The 
 definition of the Nordic race by means of somatic 
 attributes is limited to the combination of the 
 dolicho -cephalic shape of the head (though he 
 denies the definite distinctive racial claim to this 
 cranological attribute), the possession of light eyes, 
 fair or red hair (including profusion of hair on head 
 and body), straight nose and a tall muscular 
 body. On such grounds of ethnological distinc- 
 tion he proceeds to write the " political and social 
 history of Europe," nay, of the world, in a few 
 pages. This war has confirmed us in deploring 
 the work of many historians of note, whose patient 
 research into the documents of the past and whose 
 
 1 The Passing of the Great Race, by Madison Grant. Clias. 
 Scribner, N.Y., 1916. 
 H2 
 
100 PATRIOTISM 
 
 critical sincerity and acumen have been vitiated 
 by their personal and political bias and by " patri- 
 otic passion," all made still more disastrously 
 effective in filtering through the history school- 
 books, where young " patriots " are brought up 
 to hate and to despise their actual or potential 
 national enemies. But if history is to be written 
 in the spirit of Mr. Grant's ethnological generalisa- 
 tion, and if the American people are to be trained 
 to keep separate and pure the tall, light or red- 
 haired, long-headed, blue-eyed and straight -nosed 
 inhabitants from contamination with the rest, 
 instead of concentrating the efforts of their citizens 
 on the maintenance of the spirit of their con- 
 stitution and the realisation of the highest ideals 
 of mankind (this object by itself absorbing all the 
 energies left them after having earned an honest 
 livelihood), it will be a sad day for the people of 
 the United States and for the development of 
 the American nation and its position in civilised 
 humanity. 
 
VI 
 
 The Ascending Scale of Corporate Duties 
 
 All these forms of minor corporate organisations 
 within the State will have to be tested by their 
 original purposes and ideals, while these purposes 
 and ideals will again have to be tested by their 
 moral relationship to wider bodies, ending with the 
 State, humanity, civilisation and the ultimate 
 ideals of human life. 
 
 The duties of everv citizen as a moral social 
 being will have to be co-ordinated in an ascending 
 scale, the principle of which I have attempted to 
 develop and emphasise in my book Aristodemocracy. 
 Patriotism itself and the minor forms of corporate 
 duty, activity and loyalty, will have to find their 
 just and appropriate places in this ascending 
 scale, the minor or lower duty being subordinated 
 and tested in the rightness of its efficiency by the 
 higher duties and the higher ideals. From the 
 moral and directly social point of view the several 
 virtues pertaining to this will rise by degrees above 
 absolute selfishness. There can thus be no doubt 
 that he who performs his duties to his family has 
 in so far advanced on a higher moral plane than the 
 individual entirely wrapt up and concentrated in 
 his own life and effort, upon the inconsiderate and 
 
 101 
 
1C2 PATRIOTISM 
 
 ruthless advance of his own interests and the 
 satisfaction of his own instincts and passions. 
 The man who widens his circle of duties and 
 activities beyond his family to the immediate 
 locality in which he lives, his village or town or 
 county, and within these and beyond these to the 
 several institutions with which, by propinquity 
 and social selection he becomes associated, will 
 prove to be a higher social being than the one who, 
 with designed and decided exclusiveness, confines 
 his sympathies and activities to the members of 
 his own family. We finally rise to the patriot 
 who is prepared to devote his best energies, and 
 even to sacrifice his life, to the maintenance and 
 welfare of his country. But even beyond the 
 country and the State there is mankind and the 
 advancement and welfare of humanity, to which 
 ultimately the existence and the activity of every 
 State must be subordinated. It is a part of the 
 duty of every citizen, and more immediately of the 
 leaders of the State, to keep this ultimate purpose 
 and ideal before the minds of the whole population 
 and to subordinate the activity and the aims of 
 each State to this wider and higher sphere of duty. 
 Unless the higher purposes and ideals which justify 
 the existence of the State in its position within 
 humanity are constantly held up and brought 
 home to the people at large by their leaders, the 
 foremost men of the democracy, the tendency 
 necessarily is to make the State itself and its 
 prosperity the only aim and object, and to con- 
 firm and stereotype its separateness from the rest 
 of humanity, leading to antagonism between the 
 
PROXIMATE DUTIES 103 
 
 several States. Patriotism then becomes Chau- 
 vinism; and the pride in the separateness and 
 prosperity of each State becomes a leading passion 
 of its citizens. 
 
 On the other hand we must also remember that, 
 looking down from these lofty heights of duty to 
 which we have attained, the more proximate 
 duties corresponding to the smaller spheres of 
 corporateness themselves present a most effective 
 and progressive advance from the purely selfish 
 man and brute ; and we must also realise that each 
 of these are earlier and nearer to us both in time 
 and space. The ascent and progression must 
 therefore be continuous and logically successive in 
 this ascending scale, without omitting any of the 
 intervening phases of duty, which in time and 
 space may have the strongest claims upon us. 
 The co-ordination must be complete and perfect 
 also in the proper relation and succession in our 
 proximate and ultimate duties. The moral and 
 social workers like Mrs. Jellaby, who concentrate 
 their activity and efforts on the ultimate duties 
 to the neglect of the proximate ones, are grotesquely 
 ignorant of the true principle in this moral progres- 
 sion of duties. Their self-satisfied virtuous in- 
 dustry may be the outcome of self-indulgence and 
 indolence, and these satisfy their moral vanity 
 because of the loftiness of the more remote and 
 ultimate spiritual aims — a. form of moral " snobbish- 
 ness " corresponding to the intellectual and sociaL 
 " snobbishness " with which every civilised com- 
 munity is familiar. 
 
104 PATRIOTISM 
 
 True National Patriotism 
 
 Patriotism simply and purely as the love of the 
 country of which we are citizens thus has its moral 
 justification in itself. Its principles and the 
 feelings and passions which it evokes are to be 
 encouraged. A man or a woman devoid of all 
 love and loyalty towards his country is either a 
 moral and social monster or, to say the least, is 
 deficient in one of the most powerful forces which 
 elevate and ennoble man. Scott's immortal verses 
 will ever remain a most perfect and truthful 
 expression of this quality in social man — 
 
 [i_' Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 This is my own, my native land ! 
 Wliose heart hath ne'er within him burned. 
 As home his footsteps he hath turned 
 From wandering on a foreign strand ! ■ 
 If such there be, go, mark him well ; 
 For him no Minstrel raptures swell ; 
 High though his titles, proud his name, 
 Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; 
 Despite those titles, power and pelf. 
 The wretch, concentred all in self. 
 Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
 And doubly dying, shall go down 
 To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, 
 Unwept, unhonoured and unsung." 
 
 The justification for this characteristic in its 
 efficiency in the social life of man is not far to seek. 
 Consanguinity, as in the case of the family, brings 
 with it a world of proximate duties, 4iQntuiuQusly_ 
 preseiit and actiye in the life of each individual, 
 from which he cannot escape and which thus furnish 
 
LOVE OF COUNTRY 105 
 
 him with the educational tradition and discipline 
 of altruistic activity which are the foundation for 
 the development of the highest type of social man. 
 As these forces act upon members of a family and 
 a home, so with the citizens of a State the physical/ 
 and practical conditions of national life and of the 
 native country are the true training-ground for 
 the most effective higher moral idealism, ending in 
 the love of mankind. For one thing, we cannot 
 escape from them as we readily can from the 
 more spiritual and abstract duties that lie in the 
 higher regions of pure thought. But not merely 
 in thought, but also in the emotional life of man, 
 the world of feelings and of passions, which are the 
 most direct and effective sources of action, this 
 love of country, this true patriotism has a highly 
 ennobling influence. It does not only include the 
 material and physical home and the unity of all 
 inhabitants into a nation, but it includes all that 
 Renan has called '' rdme d'une nation,'''' the more 
 delicate shadings of feelings, such as piety for the 
 past, adiniration^nd love of the heroic figures in 
 the history of the nation and its great achieve- 
 ments, lov^e~onanguage, continuity of tradition, 
 laws and customs, and all that gives individual 
 character to the civilisation of each nation. More- 
 over, being physically nearer to each other, spring- 
 ing from the same antecedents, readily enabled to 
 understand each other in one language and the 
 associations and habits of mind which this pro-- 
 duces, actually living under similar conditions of 
 life in every aspect, even the most intimate, the 
 
106 PATRIOTISM 
 
 members of one State or nation are more likely to 
 embody, to support, to safeguard and to advance 
 the ends and ideals of such a common life, and 
 therefore, through this definite channel, to reach 
 the ultimate purpose and ideals which the State 
 holds in its relation to humanity. 
 
 But it is well to remember one important element 
 in the constitution of the true patriot. Nationality, 
 Udme (Tune nation — in spite of what has just been 
 said, chiefly depends upon the political constitu- 
 tion, the political, social and moral conditions, 
 and, above all, the political, social and moral ideals_ 
 of the State. In not one of the greater civilised 
 States can it truly be said to rest on the racial origin 
 of its inhabitants, as they are in every State merged 
 beyond any hope of accurate racial distribution 
 and differentiation. Nor does it rest on religious 
 beliefs, as in most civilised States truthful adhesion 
 to one religious sect cannot be made the test of 
 true citizenship. Moreover, if such tests of 
 political eligibility enter into the actual life of any 
 State they invariably lead to persecution of the 
 minority or injustice towards them. To the 
 spiritual unity of the State on the true grounds of 
 " nationality " we can feel love and loyalty, and 
 above all, we are bound to obey its laws, of which, 
 ultimately, we are the makers and for which we are 
 Responsible. Whatever other associations, quali- 
 fications and ideas be added to this central and 
 decisive element, this is the ultimate test which 
 makes the citizen — the true test of Nationality. 
 
 Absolutely justified as patriotism is from this 
 
'MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR WRONG' 107 
 
 point of view, we nevertheless find ourselves forced 
 back again to the final tests of the aims and ideals 
 of that great corporate body called the State which, 
 as we have already seen, together with all other 
 corporate bodies, should continuously be tested 
 with regard to its right of existence by its con- 
 formity to the original aims and the ultimate 
 ideals of its corporate existence. Our approval 
 and admiration, our love, our loyalty and our 
 patriotism, must be modified by this final test. 
 The love of humanity must not be sacrificed to the 
 love of our country, as the love of rigfet|inu&t, n^^^^ 
 V make room for the love of wrong. 
 
 ^' We here face the most difficult problem in the 
 whole of this inquiry, and one which, without any 
 false and inopportune humility, I must admit, it 
 would be presumptuous to hope to solve with 
 absolute clearness and finality. The problem is 
 brought home to us in the familiar dictum, ''My 
 countrpight or wrong." There can be no doubt 
 that it remains^our country even when it is wrong, 
 as our father remains our father even when he is 
 a criminal. We dare not disown either. We must 
 do our best to help them when they are in distress, 
 even when such distress was brought about by 
 their own error or criminality. The duties of the 
 citizen remain, as do the filial duties. But we 
 ratist ^lot^ohdone what is manifestly wrong or 
 criminal. In this respect the duties of a true 
 patriot in an autocracy or bureaucracy are much 
 more difficult of clear definition than are those of 
 a citizen of a democracy. There can be no doubt 
 
108 PATRIOTISM 
 
 that one of the chief political duties of a citizen 
 in a democratic country is, by his action as a 
 citizen, to strive in his political activity to do his 
 utmost that the Government of his country is 
 not wrong and does not commit criminal actions. 
 He is even bound to make known and heard his 
 protest against what leads to criminality in State - 
 action or against the crime when it has been 
 /^committed. A more complicated and difficult 
 ' situation is produced when, in time of war, the 
 direct and supreme military exigencies of the 
 country justly forbid such an expression of dissent 
 or condemnation. In such a case, just as the citizen 
 as a citizen is bound to sacrifice even his life in 
 the defence of his country, so, while upholding his 
 highest moral convictions, he must be prepared to 
 accept martyrdom when it is imposed upon him 
 by the prevailing laws of his country. As I have 
 maintained elsewhere, " inopportunism is a crime 
 as well as opportunism." 
 
 In no case, however, is he justified in opposing 
 the military interests of his country when the war 
 in which it is engaged is clearly a Defensive War, 
 On the contrary, it is his duty in such a case to 
 do his utmost by the exertion of every physical 
 and mental faculty and by the submersion of his 
 own personality to help his country to victory. 
 Whatever our enemies may think and feel on this 
 vital point of national and international justice 
 and morality, we Allies are completely and firmly 
 convinced that this war has been and is for us a 
 defensive war, and moreover, beyond the defence 
 
RECENT ADVANCE IN PATRIOTISM 109 
 
 of our own national existence and freedom, it has 
 been, is being and will continue to be fought to 
 uphold those ideals of every State which tend 
 to the emancipation and the advancement of 
 humanity. 
 
 International Patriotism 
 
 Thus, while encouraging and intensifying in 
 ourselves our patriotic devotion to our country 
 and our nation, and while loyally conforming to 
 our duties to the narrower and more proximate 
 corporate bodies and institutions with which we 
 are associated by natural ties or by common 
 endeavours and a feeling entirely at one with 
 them — especially as concerns our duties and not 
 our privileges — we must ardently and passionately 
 strive for the development in all civiHsed nations 
 of that wider patriotism which makes for inter- 
 nationalism. The great step forward in ideality 
 marked by the adhesion of the United States to 
 the vast western democratic alliance, as clearly 
 formulated in the speech of President Wilson as 
 ''the struggle of democracy against autocracy," 
 must lead to a further advance in the formulation 
 of our final object from national ideals to the ideals 
 of internationality, as a real object stirring the 
 higher patriotic passions of every citizen of a free 
 State. In his recent utterance, on May 12. 
 President Wilson gives expression to this clear 
 formula. He says : '' Here is an opportunity to 
 express the character of the United States. We 
 
110 PATRIOTISM 
 
 have no grievances of our own. We went into 
 this war because we are the servants of mankind, 
 and we will not accept any advantage from this 
 war." 
 
 It has remained for the youngest member of the 
 great democratic confederation to express with 
 unequivocal emphasis this ultimate principle and 
 motive of a nation's activity. 
 
 I cannot suppress some personal satisfaction in 
 having published ^ the following opinion, while 
 deploring the senile mentality of western civilised 
 nations whose profession of faith in ideals failed 
 to lead to realisation in action: "The only 
 countries which manifest in their political life the 
 consciousness that ideas and ideals are practical, 
 and can be made practical, are, at the present 
 moment, the Republic of France, and, in so far as 
 the people are enabled to express themselves, the 
 population of Russia." The Russian people are 
 now able to express themselves. It is ardently 
 to be wished that the Russian people, while 
 clinging to their higher international patriotism, 
 will not disregard and disown their proximate 
 duties to the Cause of the Allies who are actually 
 fighting for this ultimate victory of political ideals 
 against Prussian militarism. It would, indeed, 
 be the most tragic satire of history if their with- 
 drawal from the actual struggle at the critical 
 
 ^ This was one of a series of articles written, at the invitation 
 of the Editor, to the New York Times, by a number of scholars, 
 and public men in 1910, " on the World's Changes in the last 
 Fifty Years." My own article, has been reprinted in Appendix III 
 of Aristodemocracy, pp. 378 seq. 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 111 
 
 moment jeopardised the great Cause. However, 
 I, for one, firmly believe in the future mission 
 of Russia in the political regeneration of the 
 world. 
 
 Patriotism is a form of love and devotion. 
 We can and do feel these_for ideas and ideals as 
 well as for persons and things living and tangible. 
 Religious devotion can be as real and passionate 
 as is personal devotion. The step from individual 
 love to family love, to the love of the home, the 
 love of country, even of the vast Empire and all 
 the ideas and ideals it connotes, is normal ; every 
 day we can see how thousands — nay, millions — 
 of men and women, many of them of limited in- 
 tellectuality and imagination, are moved to self- 
 sacrifice by such vast and intangible ideas. Surely 
 love and loyalty to a League of Civilised and Free 
 Nations can, will and must be as strong and 
 passionate as they now are for a single country. 
 The day will come, and may not be far distant, 
 when the Great International Federation will be 
 as real to the hearts and minds of men and women 
 as is any political body now existing. The step 
 from national to international patriotism will not 
 be as great and as difficult of accomplishment as, 
 let us say, the step taken by Scotland of old, before 
 the Union, to the Scotland of to-day, when the 
 separate interests of Scotland are subordinated to 
 those of the British Empire. It may even be less 
 difficult of accomplishment than to arouse the 
 illiterate yokel of to-day, who has never travelled 
 more than a few miles from home, to a sense 
 
112 PATRIOTISM 
 
 of duty and devotion to his country and the 
 Empire. 
 
 The final aim of all education is to make ideals 
 realities, the moving force to thought and action. 
 \ After all, man is religious in the degree in which 
 ultimate ideals are real to him. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 Individuals come and go; they die and their 
 work — whether for good or evil — ^lives after them. 
 Famihes come and go ; they rise in honour and 
 prosperity or dechne in obscurity or dishonour. 
 Village and metropolitan communities develop 
 their individual character in life, their political 
 and social spirit, and rise or sink as they may be 
 administered with integrity or corruption, or often 
 as they are influenced by the prominence of one 
 or more outstanding or hard-working individuals. 
 Counties and whole districts modify their char- 
 acter by the nature of the predominant occupation 
 of their inhabitants, and the spirit infused into 
 them by their administrators or leading citizens. 
 Nations have constantly changed in their history, 
 swinging from liberalism to reaction, varying their 
 policies and traditions, even their religion, often 
 in short spans of time. Races have ever, in the 
 history and pre-history of man, been interspersed 
 confusedly among the various nations, mixed within 
 them out of all recognition of their original char- 
 acter. Religions have been founded, have been 
 reformed or died away, unrecognisable — even the 
 most conservative and stereotyped of them — if 
 considered in the original form given to them by 
 their founders or earliest adherents. 
 
 113 
 
114 PATRIOTISM 
 
 Only ideas last, good or evil ones; and these 
 establish traditions, good or evil. But the most 
 consoling thought_which the history of this world 
 gives, is that the trueTdeasTiirvive when the false 
 
 ideas j>ass.a\vayT Of""air'th'ings spiritual ideals 
 last the longest because they are purest in spirit 
 and truest, untarnished by the accidents of material 
 existence. The truest are those that are at once 
 most good and most beautiful. But even these 
 ideals must be revised in their form and vitality, 
 by the intellect of man permeating and directing 
 his imagination. They must thus change and grow 
 higher and lower as is the power of the intellect 
 and the purity, the loftiness of the imagination of 
 man. Within all changes, however, there remains 
 the principle of the perfect form as the lasting 
 attribute of all ideals. It is the spiritual harmony 
 which transfuses man's world into the spirit of 
 infinity — ^the spirit of Gk)d. 
 
 Thus what is considered by superficial thinkers 
 the least absolute, the most relative, changing and 
 personal of man's spiritual powers, his longing 
 for beauty and harmony, is the most lasting and 
 all-embracing and absolute of spiritual elements. 
 It underlies all religion, all theology, as it is the 
 foundation for all belief in the Perfect and Super- 
 natural . 
 
 It means the spiritual rule of Harmonism. 
 
 THE END 
 
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