Art. 11. SOME REFLECTIONS ON PATRIOTISM.

1. The History of English Patriotism. By Esmé Wingfield-Stratford. Two vols. London: John Lane, 1913. 2. The Nation and the Empire. Being a Collection of Speeches and Addresses. By Lord Milner. London: Constable, 1913.

3. National Revival. A Re-statement of Tory Principles. With an Introduction by Lord Willoughby de Broke. London: Jenkins, 1913.

4. Conservatism. By Lord Hugh Cecil. (Home University Library.) London: Williams and Norgate. N.D. (1912). 5. Liberalism. By L. T. Hobhouse. (Home University Library.) London: Williams and Norgate. N.D. (1911). 6. The Socialist Movement. By J. Ramsay Macdonald. (Home Univ. Library.) London: Williams and Norgate. 7. The New Democracy and the Constitution. By William Sharp McKechnie. London: Murray, 1912.

8. Socialism Rejected. By Bernard Samuelson. London: Smith, Elder, 1913.

9. The Britannic Question. By Richard Jebb. London : Longmans, 1913.

'IGNORANCE,' says the acute observer who watched the inception of the party-system, 'maketh most men go into a party, and Shame keepeth them from getting out of it.' We have travelled a long road since Halifax's day, but the words have not lost their application; and to an age that is at once sick of party and nearly helpless in its embraces they come home with a rare force and pathos. Educated men are mostly Trimmers now, the willing victims of a wider knowledge and a fuller understanding. Only ignorance can enable them to go contentedly into any party; only shame-partly, no doubt, the false shame, as Halifax meant, of owning themselves mistaken, but also the true shame of relinquishing all opportunity of doing political service to their country-can prevent them from getting out of it. And not merely the protests of wise and disinterested observers of the party-system, but also the groanings, which cannot be publicly uttered, of those who fight in its battles and endure its thraldom, leave no room to doubt the magnitude of the evil.

The author of the little volume on Conservatism, which we are presently to consider, once declared that he would

be of no party in the Church, since the Church ought to contain no formal divisions. Such also ought to be, such was, the theory of the State. But our polity is now calculated to enlarge every difference and to minimise every agreement. The spirit of the old constitution is almost entirely gone-the spirit which laboured, sometimes blindly, sometimes wisely, to bring to a common unity of purpose all the rival interests and clashing passions of groups and classes. We can measure at length what we have lost with the decline of the monarchy. The King is to us the convenient apex of Empire, a ceremonial functionary unrivalled in experience or training. To our ancestors he appeared as a consecrated power charged with the mysterious destinies of the race, by virtue of his very office a protest against faction and a symbol of national integrity. All particular differences vanished at his presence; all private obligations dissolved before the supreme obligation of carrying on his government; his Council fused the counsels of advisers often opposed in opinion; the unity of his administration rested upon something less absurd than the fiction of the unfaltering unanimity of his ministers. In the satisfaction of his claim upon their loyalty all men were required to unite ; and it was assumed that no one needed a better ideal than the carrying-on of the King's Government in a business-like manner. Such, at least, was the theory, however much practice came short of it. We are accustomed to see Wellington treated as a political blunderer; but his attitude towards the Crown, singular as it appeared even in his own day, more perfectly preserved the ancient spirit of the constitution than that of any of his contemporaries.

Nothing, in fact, is more important to the commonweal than that men should yield the Government an ' active obedience'; and nothing is much less probable than that they will do so, when the Government undisguisedly represents all they have combated, all they have denounced, in the last political campaign. King George's recent resolve to place his prerogative unreservedly in the hands of his Ministers, though in all probability it made little difference to the immediate issue, was thus of a far-reaching consequence. It loosened men's consciences from the old sense of obligation to serve the

King, because the King to all intents and purposes was no more; and the emphasis of the constitution was therefore shifted, as we may say with the King's assent, from unity to faction. The effect is already apparent. The spirit of lawlessness has spread from the uneducated to the educated, from the insane to the sane. In the resolve to govern Ulster in the King's name but against the King's authority, in the appointment of a general to command the King's subjects without the King's commission, as well as in syndicalist strikes and feminist outrages, we can see the same disbelief that the King's Government is anything but a party combination, or has any claim upon our support when it has lost our approval. 'Disintegration,' which the late Lord Salisbury, in the last article he wrote for this Review, indicated as the coming danger, has advanced within the last few years by giant strides. And yet amongst educated men the feeling after unity, after co-operation, after co-partnership in a great inheritance of spiritual and intellectual wealth was never, perhaps, so strong. It is apparent in the singular success of the disinterested and impartial journalism of 'The Round Table,' to which probably our history offers no parallel; and it is very sensible in the books which stand at the head of this article-in Mr Wingfield-Stratford's History of English Patriotism,' in Lord Milner's The Nation and the Empire,' and in the little treatise on National Revival' which comes from an anonymous hand with an introduction by Lord Willoughby de Broke.

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To the first it is impossible here to do adequate justice. The author has, indeed, sometimes devoted more attention to philosophy than the title warrants, and less to metaphysics than the title requires. The alien theories of Newman and Spencer loom a good deal too large; the ultimate foundations of patriotism are rather more assumed than discovered. And, throughout, action is at a perhaps inevitable yet certainly improper disadvantage as compared with sentiment. But the book is none the less a very suggestive and sometimes eloquent piece of work, informed by wide reading, coloured by high purpose, and conceived (for its genius is avowedly the genius of William Blake) in an original, almost childlike spirit, which results in a brilliant and

striking tapestry of the surpassing love of Englishmen for their mother-land.

Lord Milner's feelings are concealed behind more sober hues. If we can imagine Halifax transported into our own times and transformed by a new orientation of interest and endeavour, he might have commented on recent events and present issues with something of the same restrained and balanced judgment as the great pro-consul, who, gifted with less brilliancy of phrase and diction, has rendered not the least of his many services to his country by the delivery (as he tells us, against natural inclination) of these wise and temperate addresses. At any rate to one who affirms that he has a fatal habit of seeing that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of a question'; who echoes the sentiment, Any man can stand up to his opponents-give me the man who will stand up to his friends!'; who has been the subject at once of a vote of thanks from the House of Lords and of some particular commendation at the hands of Mr Wells as the best available impersonation of a New Utopian, the mention of the great Trimmer can suggest no distasteful comparison. For, as Halifax in effect contended, trimming' is the acme of wisdom in human things, the golden mean of the poet, the μɛoórns of the philosopher, transferred, as we might say, to the science of government. And since trimmers labour under obvious disadvantages in a world dominated by party-spirit, we may welcome with especial satisfaction the advent of a book of so catholic a cast as 'The Nation and the Empire,' where the author, without blurring a clear outlook of his own, discovers a singularly wide power of appreciating alien points of view and a singularly fair temper in discussing them. In that exalted place, whither amid all the roaring and the wreaths' wise men turn their eyes, among that 'little public' which is sometimes shortsightedly supposed to be apathetic, because it has but imperfect sympathy with party politics-there, at any rate, patriotism so pure, language so restrained, will meet with the only reward which the author is likely to value. In the same quarter the little book on National Revival' will find a kindly recognition. High sentiment and generous enthusiasm are always agreeable, though, when, as in

this case, unattended by practical illustration and definite guidance, they are apt to secure assent without inspiring effort. All convincing philosophy entails the constant application of theory and principle to the concrete problems of life and society.

There is a hidden danger in Halifax's system, which probably accounts for a certain ineffectiveness in his own career. It is the temptation of supposing that, because the pursuit of a mean is the golden key which unlocks the treasures of political wisdom, that mean is to be found at each successive moment by striking a nice balance between the views of contending parties. It it were so, the very party-system which the trimmer abhors would become the indispensable condition of his thought, the sine qua non of a right judgment; and he himself, instead of being a trimmer in the science of politics, which Halifax justly recommended, would· become a trimmer in its art, with which Halifax was justly reproached. But patriotism requires us to bring light and leading, as well as temper and judgment, to the service of our country.

Besides, as things are, patriotic wine has, it is plain, a great while yet to flow from party bottles. The vision of the future-the vision of a people agreed upon essentials, not disagreeing (that is) except in opinion, belittling instead of parading its differences, and resolving its problems with the disinterested consideration which is the tradition of the law courts and the common habit of all sensible men-must in practice be reached through a transfiguration of some existing party which will by degrees draw all the best men into one camp and range the forces of order and wisdom against those of violence and confusion. The condition of success in such an undertaking is the association of a fundamentally right view of human affairs with a conciliatory enforcement of it; and he who would be a patriot must ask himself first of all which of the contending parties is the better suited to that purpose.

It is noticeable that these three books, pleading as they do the cause of the nation without any appearance of party-feeling or class-prejudice, should look alike for succour in the direction of that which we still sometimes style the Conservative party, though it is perhaps more