We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull, Lord God, we ha' paid in full.' Aggressive patriotism is thus condemned by common sense and the verdict of history no less than by morality. We are entitled to say to the militarists what Socrates said to Polus: "This doctrine of yours has now been examined and found wanting. And this doctrine alone has stood the test-that we ought to be more afraid of doing than of suffering wrong; and that the prime business of every man [and nation] is not to seem good but to be good, in all private and public dealings.' If the nations would render something more than lipservice to this principle, the abolition of war would be within sight; for, as Ruskin says, echoing the judgment of the Epistle of St James,' The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that the majority of persons, high and low, in all European countries, are thieves.' But it must be remembered that, in spite of the proverb, it takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. Our own conversion to pacificism, though sincere, is somewhat recent. Our literature does not reflect it, and we must wince slightly at Mark Twain's good-natured gibe about us. 'The English are mentioned in the Bible. The meek-spirited shall possess the earth.' Bacon is frankly militarist : 'Above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most, that a nation do profess arms, as their principal honour, study, and occupation. For the things which we formerly have spoken of are but habilitations towards arms; and what is habilitation without intention and act?... It is so plain that a man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon. It is enough to point at it; that no nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look to have greatness fall into their mouths.' A state, therefore, ought to have those laws or customs, which may reach forth unto them just occasions of war.' Shakespeare's 'Henry V' has been not unreasonably recommended by the Germans as 'good war-reading.' It would be easy to compile a catena of bellicose maxims from our literature, reaching down to the end of the 19th century. The change is perhaps due less to progress in morality than to that political good sense which has again and again steered our ship through dangerous rocks. But there has been some real advance, in all civilised countries. We do not find that men talked about the 'bankruptcy of Christianity' during the Napoleonic campaigns. Even the Germans think it necessary to tell each other that it was Belgium who began this war. But, though pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of noble and ignoble sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes, that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands for something intrinsically great and valuable. Where this conviction is absent, as in the case of the Huns, we cannot speak of patriotism, but only of the cohesion of a wolf-pack. The Greeks, who at last perished because they could not combine, the victims of a disintegrating intellectualism, had nevertheless a consciousness that they were the trustees of civilisation against barbarism; and in their day of triumph over the Persians they were filled, for a time, with an almost Jewish awe in presence of the righteous judgment of God. The 'Persæ' of Eschylus is one of the noblest of patriotic poems. The Romans, a harder and coarser race, had their ideal of virtus and gravitas, which included simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry, and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that these qualities constituted a vocation to empire. There was much harshness and injustice in Roman imperialism; but what nobler epitaph could even the British empire desire than the tribute of Claudian, when the weary Titan was at last stricken and dying: 'Hæc est, in gremium victos quæ sola recepit, Jewish patriotism was of a different kind. A federation of fierce Bedouin tribes, encamped amid hostile populations, and set in the cockpit of rival empires against which it was impossible to stand, the Israelites were hammered by misfortune into the most indestructible of all organisms, a theocracy. Their religion was to them what, in a minor degree, Roman Catholicism has been to Ireland and Poland, a consecration of patriotic faith and hope. Westphal says the Jews failed because they hated foreigners more than they loved God. They have had good reason to hate foreigners. But undoubtedly the effect of their hatred has been that the great gifts which their nation had to give to humanity have come through other hands, and so have evoked no gratitude. In the first century of our era they were called to an almost superhuman abnegation of their inveterate nationalism, and they could not rise to it. As almost every other nation would have done, they chose the lower patriotism instead of the higher; and it was against their will that the religion of civilised humanity grew out of Hebrew soil. But they gained this by their choice, tragic though it was, that they have stood by the graves of all the empires that oppressed them, and have preserved their racial integrity and traditions in the most adverse circumstances. The history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of steel. The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed nations; for her subjects in the West were barbarous tribes, and in the East she displaced monarchies no less alien to their subjects than her own rule. But she prevented the growth of nationalities, as it is to be feared we have done in India; and the absence of sturdy independence in the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the Greek-speaking provinces, made the final downfall inevitable. The lesson has its warning for modern theorists who wish to obliterate the sentiment of nationality, the revival of which, after a long eclipse, has been one of the achievements of modern civilisation. For it was not till long after the destruction of the Western Roman Empire that nationality began to assume its present importance in Europe. The transition from medieval to modern history is most strongly marked by the emergence of this principle, with all that it involves. At the end of the Middle Ages Europe was at last compelled to admit that the grand idea of an universal state and an universal church had definitely broken down. Hitherto it had been assumed that behind all national disputes lay a ius gentium by which all were bound, and that behind all religious questions lay the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, from which there was no appeal. The modern period, which certainly does not represent the last word of civilisation, has witnessed the abandonment of these ideas. The change took place gradually. France became a nation when the English raids ceased in the middle of the 15th century. Spain achieved unity a generation later by the union of Castile and Aragon and the expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula. Holland found herself in the heroic struggle against Spain in the 16th century. But the practice of conducting wars by hiring foreign mercenaries, a sure sign that the nationalist spirit is weak, continued till much later. And the dynastic principle, which is the very negation of nationalism, actually culminated in the 18th century; and this is the true explanation of the feeble resistance which Europe offered to the French revolutionary armies, until Napoleon stirred up the dormant spirit of patriotism in the peoples whom he plundered. In the old European system,' says Lord Acton, 'the rights of nationalities were neither recognised by governments nor asserted by the people. The interests of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated the frontiers; and the administration was conducted generally without any reference to popular desires.' Marriage or conquest might unite the most diverse nations under one sovereign, such as Charles V. While such ideas prevailed, the suppression of a nation did not seem hateful; the partition of Poland evoked few protests at the time, though perhaps few acts of injustice have recoiled with greater force on the heads Vol. 224.-No. 444. G of their perpetrators than this is likely to do. Poles have been and are among the bitterest enemies of autocracy, and the strongest advocates of republicanism and racialism, in all parts of the world. The French Revolution opened a new era for nationalism, both directly and indirectly. The deposition of the Bourbons was a national act which might be a precedent for other oppressed peoples. And when the Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of liberty proved the futility of mere doctrines, like those of Rousseau, and compelled the peoples to arm themselves and win their freedom by the sword. The national militarism of Prussia was the direct consequence of her humiliation at Jena and Auerstädt, and of the harsh terms imposed upon her at Tilsit. It is true that the Congress of Vienna attempted to revive the old dynastic system. But for the steady opposition of England, the clique of despots might have reimposed the old yoke upon their subjects. The settlement of 1815 also left the entire centre of Europe in a state of chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to choose between a wider and a narrower allegiance. Europeans are, in fact, far from having made up their minds as to what is the organic whole towards which patriotic sentiment ought to be directed. Socialism agrees with despotism in saying, 'The political aggregate -the state,' however much they may differ as to how the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical enclave; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country is not an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless abstraction, which as a rule only materialises as a |