CHAPTER II

ON THE NATURE AND USES OF PATRIOTISM

Patriotism may be defined as a sense of partisan solidarity in respect

of prestige. What the expert psychologists, and perhaps the experts in

Political Science, might find it necessary to say in the course of an

exhaustive analysis and definition of this human faculty would

presumably be something more precise and more extensive. There is no

inclination here to forestall definition, but only to identify and

describe the concept that loosely underlies the colloquial use of this

term, so far as seems necessary to an inquiry into the part played by

the patriotic animus in the life of modern peoples, particularly as it

bears on questions of war and peace.

On any attempt to divest this concept of all extraneous or adventitious

elements it will be found that such a sense of an undivided joint

interest in a collective body of prestige will always remain as an

irreducible minimum. This is the substantial core about which many and

divers subsidiary interests cluster, but without which these other

clustering interests and aspirations will not, jointly or severally,

make up a working palladium of the patriotic spirit.

It is true, seen in some other light or rated in some other bearing or

connection, one and another of these other interests, ideals,

aspirations, beatitudes, may well be adjudged nobler, wiser, possibly

more urgent than the national prestige; but in the forum of patriotism

all these other necessaries of human life--the glory of God and the good

of man--rise by comparison only to the rank of subsidiaries,

auxiliaries, amenities. He is an indifferent patriot who will let "life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness" cloud the issue and get in the way

of the main business in hand.

There once were, we are told, many hardy and enterprising spirits banded

together along the Spanish Main for such like ends, just as there are in

our day an even greater number of no less single-minded spirits bent on

their own "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," according to their

light, in the money-markets of the modern world; but for all their

admirable qualities and splendid achievements, their passionate quest of

these amenities has not entitled these Gentlemen Adventurers to claim

rank as patriots. The poet says:

"Strike for your altars and your fires!

Strike for the green graves of your sires!

God and your native land!"

But, again, a temperate scrutiny of the list of desiderata so enumerated

in the poet's flight, will quickly bring out the fact that any or all of

them might drop out of the situation without prejudice to the plain call

of patriotic duty. In the last resort, when the patriotic spirit falls

back on its naked self alone, it is not reflection on the merits of

these good and beautiful things in Nature that gives him his cue and

enforces the ultimate sacrifice. Indeed it is something infinitely more

futile and infinitely more urgent,--provided only that the man is imbued

with the due modicum of patriotic devotion; as, indeed, men commonly

are. It is not faith, hope or charity that abide as the irreducible

minimum of virtue in the patriot's scheme of things; particularly not

that charity that has once been highly spoken of as being the greatest

of these. It may be that, viewed in the light of reason, as Doctor

Katzenberger would say, patriotic devotion is the most futile thing in

the world; but, for good or ill, the light of reason has nothing to do

with the case,--no more than "The flowers that bloom in the spring."

The patriotic spirit is a spirit of emulation, evidently, at the same

time that it is emulation shot through with a sense of solidarity. It

belongs under the general caption of sportsmanship, rather than of

workmanship. Now, any enterprise in sportsmanship is bent on an

invidious success, which must involve as its major purpose the defeat

and humiliation of some competitor, whatever else may be comprised in

its aim. Its aim is a differential gain, as against a rival; and the

emulative spirit that comes under the head of patriotism commonly, if

not invariably, seeks this differential advantage by injury of the rival

rather than by an increase of home-bred well-being.

Indeed, well-being is altogether out of the perspective, except as

underpinning for an edifice of national prestige. It is, at least, a

safe generalisation that the patriotic sentiment never has been known to

rise to the consummate pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent on

some work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a contentious

complexion, and finds its full expression in no other outlet than

warlike enterprise; its highest and final appeal is for the death,

damage, discomfort and destruction of the party of the second part.

It is not that the spirit of patriotism will tolerate no other

sentiments bearing on matters of public interest, but only that it will

tolerate none that traverse the call of the national prestige. Like

other men, the patriot may be moved by many and divers other

considerations, besides that of the national prestige; and these other

considerations may be of the most genial and reasonable kind, or they

may also be as foolish and mischievous as any comprised in the range of

human infirmities. He may be a humanitarian given over to the kindliest

solicitude for the common good, or a religious devotee hedged about in

all his motions by the ever present fear of God, or taken up with

artistic, scholarly or scientific pursuits; or, again, he may be a

spendthrift devotee of profane dissipation, whether in the slums or on

the higher levels of gentility, or he may be engaged on a rapacious

quest of gain, as a businessman within the law or as a criminal without

its benefit, or he may spend his best endeavors in advancing the

interests of his class at the cost of the nation at large. All that is

understood as a matter of course and is beside the point. In so far as

he is a complete patriot these other interests will fall away from him

when the one clear call of patriotic duty comes to enlist him in the

cause of the national prestige. There is, indeed, nothing to hinder a

bad citizen being a good patriot; nor does it follow that a good

citizen--in other respects--may not be a very indifferent patriot.

Many and various other preferences and considerations may coincide with

the promptings of the patriotic spirit, and so may come in to coalesce

with and fortify its driving force; and it is usual for patriotic men to

seek support for their patriotic impulses in some reasoned purpose of

this extraneous kind that is believed to be served by following the call

of the national prestige,--it may be a presumptive increase and

diffusion of culture at large, or the spread and enhancement of a

presumptively estimable religious faith, or a prospective liberation of

mankind from servitude to obnoxious masters and outworn institutions;

or, again, it may be the increase of peace and material well-being among

men, within the national frontiers or impartially throughout the

civilised world. There are, substantially, none of the desirable things

in this world that are not so counted on by some considerable body of

patriots to be accomplished by the success of their own particular

patriotic aspirations. What they will not come to an understanding about

is the particular national ascendency with which the attainment of these

admirable ends is conceived to be bound up.

The ideals, needs and aims that so are brought into the patriotic

argument to lend a color of rationality to the patriotic aspiration in

any given case will of course be such ideals, needs and aims as are

currently accepted and felt to be authentic and self-legitimating among

the people in whose eyes the given patriotic enterprise is to find

favor. So one finds that, e.g., among the followers of Islam, devout and

resolute, the patriotic statesman (that is to say the politician who

designs to make use of the popular patriotic fervor) will in the last

resort appeal to the claims and injunctions of the faith. In a similar

way the Prussian statesman bent on dynastic enterprise will conjure in

the name of the dynasty and of culture and efficiency; or, if worse

comes to worst, an outbreak will be decently covered with a plea of

mortal peril and self-defense. Among English-speaking peoples much is to

be gained by showing that the path of patriotic glory is at the same

time the way of equal-handed justice under the rule of free

institutions; at the same time, in a fully commercialised community,

such as the English-speaking commonly are, material benefits in the way

of trade will go far to sketch in a background of decency for any

enterprise that looks to the enhancement of the national prestige.

But any promise of gain, whether in the nation's material or immaterial

assets, will not of itself carry full conviction to the commonplace

modern citizen; or even to such modern citizens as are best endowed with

a national spirit. By and large, and overlooking that appreciable

contingent of morally defective citizens that is to be counted on in any

hybrid population, it will hold true that no contemplated enterprise or

line of policy will fully commend itself to the popular sense of merit

and expediency until it is given a moral turn, so as to bring it to

square with the dictates of right and honest dealing. On no terms short

of this will it effectually coalesce with the patriotic aspiration. To

give the fullest practical effect to the patriotic fervor that animates

any modern nation, and so turn it to use in the most effective way, it

is necessary to show that the demands of equity are involved in the

case. Any cursory survey of modern historical events bearing on this

point, among the civilised peoples, will bring out the fact that no

concerted and sustained movement of the national spirit can be had

without enlisting the community's moral convictions. The common man must

be persuaded that right is on his side. "Thrice is he armed who knows

his quarrel just." The grounds of this conviction may often be tawdry

enough, but the conviction is a necessary factor in the case.

The requisite moral sanction may be had on various grounds, and, on the

whole, it is not an extremely difficult matter to arrange. In the

simplest and not infrequent case it may turn on a question of equity in

respect of trade or investment as between the citizens or subjects of

the several rival nations; the Chinese "Open Door" affords as sordid an

example as may be desired. Or it may be only an envious demand for a

share in the world's material resources--"A Place in the Sun," as a

picturesque phrase describes it; or "The Freedom of the Seas," as

another equally vague and equally invidious demand for international

equity phrases it. These demands are put forward with a color of

demanding something in the way of equitable opportunity for the

commonplace peaceable citizen; but quite plainly they have none but a

fanciful bearing on the fortunes of the common man in time of peace, and

they have a meaning to the nation only as a fighting unit; apart from

their prestige value, these things are worth fighting for only as

prospective means of fighting. The like appeal to the moral

sensibilities may, again, be made in the way of a call to self-defense,

under the rule of Live and let live; or it may also rest on the more

tenuous obligation to safeguard the national integrity of a weaker

neighbor, under a broader interpretation of the same equitable rule of

Live and let live. But in one way or another it is necessary to set up

the conviction that the promptings of patriotic ambition have the

sanction of moral necessity.

It is not that the line of national policy or patriotic enterprise so

entered upon with the support of popular sentiment need be right and

equitable as seen in dispassionate perspective from the outside, but

only that it should be capable of being made to seem right and equitable

to the biased populace whose moral convictions are requisite to its

prosecution; which is quite another matter. Nor is it that any such

patriotic enterprise is, in fact, entered on simply or mainly on these

moral grounds that so are alleged in its justification, but only that

some such colorable ground of justification or extenuation is necessary

to be alleged, and to be credited by popular belief.

It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patriotic, but only

that he is a patriot hampered with a plodding and uneasy sense of right

and honest dealing, and that one must make up one's account with this

moral bias in looking to any sustained and concerted action that draws

on the sentiment of the common man for its carrying on. But the moral

sense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum of

equity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or

in case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. In

those cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, even

very attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would under

ordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating

circumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication for any

extravagant course of action to which the craving for national prestige

may incite. The higher the pitch of patriotic fervor, the more tenuous

and more thread-bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulative

excitation some very remarkable results have latterly been attained

along this line.

* * * * *

Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of aliency and

animosity between contrasted groups of persons; it lives on invidious

comparison, and works out in mutual hindrance and jealousy between

nations. It commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse and

obstructing traffic that would patently serve the material and cultural

well-being of both nationalities; and not infrequently, indeed

normally, it eventuates in competitive damage to both.

All this holds true in the world of modern civilisation, at the same

time that the modern civilised scheme of life is, notoriously, of a

cosmopolitan character, both in its cultural requirements and in its

economic structure. Modern culture is drawn on too large a scale, is of

too complex and multiform a character, requires the cooperation of too

many and various lines of inquiry, experience and insight, to admit of

its being confined within national frontiers, except at the cost of

insufferable crippling and retardation. The science and scholarship that

is the peculiar pride of civilised Christendom is not only

international, but rather it is homogeneously cosmopolitan; so that in

this bearing there are, in effect, no national frontiers; with the

exception, of course, that in a season of patriotic intoxication, such

as the current war has induced, even the scholars and scientists will be

temporarily overset by their patriotic fervour. Indeed, with the best

efforts of obscurantism and national jealousy to the contrary, it

remains patently true that modern culture is the culture of Christendom

at large, not the culture of one and another nation in severalty within

the confines of Christendom. It is only as and in so far as they partake

in and contribute to the general run of Western civilisation at large

that the people of any one of these nations of Christendom can claim

standing as a cultured nation; and even any distinctive variation from

this general run of civilised life, such as may give a "local colour" of

ideals, tastes and conventions, will, in point of cultural value, have

to be rated as an idle detail, a species of lost motion, that serves no

better purpose than a transient estrangement.

So also, the modern state of the industrial arts is of a like

cosmopolitan character, in point of scale, specialisation, and the

necessary use of diversified resources, of climate and raw materials.

None of the countries of Europe, e.g., is competent to carry on its

industry by modern technological methods without constantly drawing on

resources outside of its national boundaries. Isolation in this

industrial respect, exclusion from the world market, would mean

intolerable loss of efficiency, more pronounced the more fully the given

country has taken over this modern state of the industrial arts.

Exclusion from the general body of outlying resources would seriously

cripple any one or all of them, and effectually deprive them of the

usufruct of this technology; and partial exclusion, by prohibitive or

protective tariffs and the like, unavoidably results in a partial

lowering of the efficiency of each, and therefore a reduction of the

current well-being among them all together.

Into this cultural and technological system of the modern world the

patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings.

Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and

retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern

mankind. Yet it is forever present in the counsels of the statesmen and

in the affections of the common man, and it never ceases to command the

regard of all men as the prime attribute of manhood and the final test

of the desirable citizen. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no

other consideration is allowed in abatement of the claims of patriotic

loyalty, and that such loyalty will be allowed to cover any multitude of

sins. When the ancient philosopher described Man as a "political animal,"

this, in effect, was what he affirmed; and today the ancient maxim is as

good as new. The patriotic spirit is at cross purposes with modern life,

but in any test case it is found that the claims of life yield before

those of patriotism; and any voice that dissents from this order of things

is as a voice crying in the wilderness.

* * * * *

To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular discrepancies of

human life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profound

speculation. The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait of

human nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time

immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types.

It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, and

apparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education,

experience or selective breeding.

Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculable

period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently

been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic

among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today

appears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with the

advance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism

has grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance as

ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem.

The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modern

peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high among

the virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, an

hereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity,

rather than a product of habituation. It is, in substance, not

something that can be learned and unlearned. From one generation to

another, the allegiance may shift from one nationality to another, but

the fact of unreflecting allegiance at large remains. And it all argues

also that no sensible change has taken effect in the hereditary

endowment of the race, at least in this respect, during the period known

by record or by secure inference,--say, since the early Neolithic in

Europe; and this in spite of the fact that there has all this while been

opportunity for radical changes in the European population by

cross-breeding, infiltration and displacement of the several racial

stocks that go to make up this population. Hence, on slight reflection

the inference has suggested itself and has gained acceptance that this

trait of human nature must presumably have been serviceable to the

peoples of the earlier time, on those levels of savagery or of the lower

barbarism on which the ancestral stocks of the European population first

made good their survival and proved their fitness to people that quarter

of the earth. Such, indeed, is the common view; so common as to pass for

matter-of-course, and therefore habitually to escape scrutiny.

Still it need not follow, as more patient reflection will show. All the

European peoples show much the same animus in this respect; whatever

their past history may have been, and whatever the difference in past

experience that might be conceived to have shaped their temperament. Any

difference in the pitch of patriotic conceit and animosity, between the

several nationalities or the several localities, is by no means wide,

even in cases where the racial composition of the population is held to

be very different, as, e.g., between the peoples on the Baltic seaboard

and those on the Mediterranean. In point of fact, in this matter of

patriotic animus there appears to be a wider divergence,

temperamentally, between individuals within any one of these communities

than between the common run in any one community and the corresponding

common run in any other. But even such divergence of individual temper

in respect of patriotism as is to be met with, first and last, is after

all surprisingly small in view of the scope for individual variation

which this European population would seem to offer.

* * * * *

These peoples of Europe, all and several, are hybrids compounded out of

the same run of racial elements, but mixed in varying proportions. On

any parallel of latitude--taken in the climatic rather than in the

geometric sense--the racial composition of the west-European population

will be much the same, virtually identical in effect, although always of

a hybrid complexion; whereas on any parallel of longitude--also in the

climatic sense--the racial composition will vary progressively, but

always within the limits of the same general scheme of hybridisation,--the

variation being a variation in the proportion in which the several racial

elements are present in any given case. But in no case does a notable

difference in racial composition coincide with a linguistic or national

frontier. But in point of patriotic animus these European peoples are one

as good as another, whether the comparison be traced on parallels of

latitude or of longitude. And the inhabitants of each national territory,

or of each detail locality, appear also to run surprisingly uniform in

respect of their patriotic spirit.

Heredity in any such community of hybrids will, superficially, appear to

run somewhat haphazard. There will, of course, be no traceable

difference between social or economic classes, in point of heredity,--as

is visibly the case in Christendom. But variation--of an apparently

haphazard description--will be large and ubiquitous among the

individuals of such a populace. Indeed, it is a matter of course and of

easy verification that individual variation within such a hybrid stock

will greatly exceed the extreme differences that may subsist between the

several racial types that have gone to produce the hybrid stock. Such is

the case of the European peoples. The inhabitants vary greatly among

themselves, both in physical and in mental traits, as would be expected;

and the variation between individuals in point of patriotic animus

should accordingly also be expected to be extremely wide,--should, in

effect, greatly exceed the difference, if any, in this respect between

the several racial elements engaged in the European population. Some

appreciable difference in this respect there appears to be, between

individuals; but individual divergence from the normal or average

appears always to be of a sporadic sort,--it does not run on class

lines, whether of occupation, status or property, nor does it run at all

consistently from parent to child. When all is told the argument returns

to the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic animus

are sporadic and inconsequential, and do not touch the general

proposition that, one with another, the inhabitants of Europe and the

European Colonies are sufficiently patriotic, and that the average

endowment in this respect runs with consistent uniformity across all

differences of time, place and circumstance. It would, in fact, be

extremely hazardous to affirm that there is a sensible difference in the

ordinary pitch of patriotic sentiment as between any two widely diverse

samples of these hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that the

diversity in visible physical traits may be quite pronounced.

In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that in this respect

the several racial stocks that have gone to produce the existing

populations of Christendom have all been endowed about as richly one as

another. Patriotism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among the

races and peoples of Christendom. From which it should follow, that

since there is, and has from the beginning been, no differential

advantage favoring one racial stock or one fashion of hybrid as against

another, in this matter of patriotic animus, there should also be no

ground of selective survival or selective elimination on this account as

between these several races and peoples. So that the undisturbed and

undiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population,

early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability or

disserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture and

technology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last;

except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under the

conditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of these

Europeans, one with another.[4]

[Footnote 4: For a more extended discussion of this matter, cf.

_Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, ch. i. and

Supplementary Notes i. and ii.]

The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above as if it were an

hereditary trait, something after the fashion of a Mendelian unit

character. Doubtless this is not a competent account of the matter; but

the present argument scarcely needs a closer analysis. Still, in a

measure to quiet title and avoid annoyance, it may be noted that this

patriotic animus is of the nature of a "frame of mind" rather than a

Mendelian unit character; that it so involves a concatenation of

several impulsive propensities (presumably hereditary); and that both

the concatenation and the special mode and amplitude of the response are

a product of habituation, very largely of the nature of conventionalised

use and wont. What is said above, therefore, goes little farther than

saying that the underlying aptitudes requisite to this patriotic frame

of mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on this point

run with sufficient uniformity to bring a passably uniform result. It

may be added that in this concatenation spoken of there seems to be

comprised, ordinarily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and custom

that is called love of home, or in its accentuated expression,

home-sickness; so also an invidious self-complacency, coupled with a

gregarious bent which gives the invidious comparison a group content;

and further, commonly if not invariably, a bent of abnegation,

self-abasement, subservience, or whatever it may best be called, that

inclines the bearer unreasoningly and unquestioningly to accept and

serve a prescriptive ideal given by custom or by customary authority.

* * * * *

The conclusion would therefore provisionally run to the effect that

under modern conditions the patriotic animus is wholly a disserviceable

trait in the spiritual endowment of these peoples,--in so far as bears

on the material conditions of life unequivocally, and as regards the

cultural interests more at large presumptively; whereas there is no

assured ground for a discriminating opinion as touches its possible

utility or disutility at any remote period in the past. There is, of

course, always room for the conservative estimate that, as the

possession of this spiritual trait has not hitherto resulted in the

extinction of the race, so it may also in the calculable future

continue to bring no more grievous results than a degree of mischief,

without even stopping or greatly retarding the increase of population.

All this, of course, is intended to apply only so far as it goes. It

must not be taken as intending to say any least word in derogation of

those high qualities that inspire the patriotic citizen. In its

economic, biological and cultural incidence patriotism appears to be an

untoward trait of human nature; which has, of course, nothing to say as

to its moral excellence, its aesthetic value, or its indispensability to

a worthy life. No doubt, it is in all these respects deserving of all

the esteem and encomiums that fall to its share. Indeed, its well-known

moral and aesthetic value, as well as the reprobation that is visited on

any shortcomings in this respect, signify, for the purposes of the

present argument, nothing more than that the patriotic animus meets the

unqualified approval of men because they are, all and several, infected

with it. It is evidence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicable

presence of this quality in human nature; all the more since it

continues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in spite of the

fact that a modicum of reflection should make its disserviceability

plain to the meanest understanding. No higher praise of moral

excellence, and no profounder test of loyalty, can be asked than this

current unreserved commendation of a virtue that makes invariably for

damage and discomfort. The virtuous impulse must be deep-seated and

indefeasible that drives men incontinently to do good that evil may come

of it. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

In the light--and it is a dim and wavering light--of the archaeological

evidence, helped out by circumstantial evidence from such parallel or

analogous instances as are afforded by existing communities on a

comparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on

a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, of

early neolithic times and later.[5] And so one may form some conception

of the part played by this patriotic animus among those beginnings,

when, if not the race, at least its institutions were young; and when

the native temperament of these peoples was tried out and found fit to

survive through the age-long and slow-moving eras of stone and bronze.

In this connection, it appears safe to assume that since early neolithic

times no sensible change has taken effect in the racial complexion of

the European peoples; and therefore no sensible change in their

spiritual and mental make-up. So that in respect of the spiritual

elements that go to make up this patriotic animus the Europeans of today

will be substantially identical with the Europeans of that early time.

The like is true as regards those other traits of temperament that come

in question here, as being included among the stable characteristics

that still condition the life of these peoples under the altered

circumstances of the modern age.

[Footnote 5: Cf. _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, as

above.]

The difference between prehistoric Europe and the present state of these

peoples resolves itself on analysis into a difference in the state of

the industrial arts, together with such institutional changes as have

come on in the course of working out this advance in the industrial

arts. The habits and the exigencies of life among these peoples have

greatly changed; whereas in temperament and capacities the peoples that

now live by and under the rule of this altered state of the industrial

arts are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, that the

fact of their having successfully come through the long ages of

prehistory by the use of this mental and spiritual endowment can not be

taken to argue that these peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigencies

of this later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to assume that

because these peoples have themselves worked out this modern culture and

its technology, therefore it must all be suitable for their use and

conducive to their biological success. The single object lesson of the

modern urban community, with its endless requirements in the way of

sanitation, police, compulsory education, charities,--all this and many

other discrepancies in modern life should enjoin caution on anyone who

is inclined off-hand to hold that because modern men have created these

conditions, therefore these must be the most suitable conditions of life

for modern mankind.

In the beginning, that is to say in the European beginning, men lived in

small and close groups. Control was close within the group, and the

necessity of subordinating individual gains and preferences to the

common good was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, on

pain of common extinction. The situation and usages of existing Eskimo

villages may serve to illustrate and enforce the argument on this head.

The solidarity of sentiment necessary to support the requisite

solidarity of action in the case would be a prime condition of survival

in any racial stock exposed to the conditions which surrounded these

early Europeans. This needful sense of solidarity would touch not simply

or most imperatively the joint prestige of the group, but rather the

joint material interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual support

and dependence. Which would be rather helped than hindered by a jealous

attitude of joint prestige; so long as no divergent interests of members

within the group were in a position to turn this state of the common

sentiment to their own particular advantage.

This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively long time; long

enough to have tested the fitness of these peoples for that manner of

life,--longer, no doubt, than the interval that has elapsed since

history began. Special interests--e.g., personal and family

interests--will have been present and active in these days of the

beginning; but so long as the group at large was small enough to admit

of a close neighborly contact throughout its extent and throughout the

workday routine of life, at the same time that it was too small and

feeble to allow any appreciable dissipation of its joint energies in

such pursuit of selfish gains as would run counter to the paramount

business of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a common

livelihood and a joint fortune would continue to hold any particularist

ambitions effectually in check. Had it fallen out otherwise, the story

of the group in question would have been ended, and another and more

suitably endowed type of men would have taken the place vacated by its

extinction.

With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale of operations

would grow larger, and the group more numerous and extensive. The margin

between production and subsistence would also widen and admit additional

scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process

of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control

exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the

common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and

sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it

would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and

incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies

touching the common fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasion

that the collective interest of the group at large was placed in

jeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its members from

without. The group's prestige at least would be felt to suffer in the

defeat or discourtesy suffered by any of its members at the hands of any

alien; and, under compulsion of the ancient sense of group solidarity,

whatever material hardship or material gain might so fall to individual

members in their dealings with the alien would pass easy scrutiny as

material detriment or gain inuring to the group at large,--in the

apprehension of men whose sense of community interest is inflamed with a

jealous disposition to safeguard their joint prestige.

With continued advance in the industrial arts the circumstances

conditioning life will undergo a progressive change of such a character

that the joint interest of the group at large, in the material respect,

will progressively be less closely bound up with the material fortunes

of any particular member or members; until in the course of time and

change there will, in effect, in ordinary times be no general and

inclusive community of material interest binding the members together in

a common fortune and working for a common livelihood. As the rights of

ownership begin to take effect, so that the ownership of property and

the pursuit of a livelihood under the rules of ownership come to govern

men's economic relations, these material concerns will cease to be a

matter of undivided joint interest, and will fall into the shape of

interest in severalty. So soon and so far as this institution of

ownership or property takes effect, men's material interests cease to

run on lines of group solidarity. Solely, or almost solely, in the

exceptional case of defense against a predatory incursion from outside,

do the members of the group have a common interest of a material kind.

Progressively as the state of the arts advances, the industrial

organisation advances to a larger scale and a more extensive

specialisation, with increasing divergence among individual interests

and individual fortunes; and intercourse over larger distances grows

easier and makes a larger grouping practicable; which enables a larger,

prompter and more effective mobilisation of forces with which to defend

or assert any joint claims. But by the same move it also follows, or at

least it appears uniformly to have followed in the European case, that

the accumulation of property and the rights of ownership have

progressively come into the first place among the material interests of

these peoples; while anything like a community of usufruct has

imperceptibly fallen into the background, and has presently gone

virtually into abeyance, except as an eventual recourse _in extremis_

for the common defense. Property rights have displaced community of

usufruct; and invidious distinctions as between persons, sub-groups, and

classes have displaced community of prestige in the workday routine of

these peoples; and the distinctions between contrasted persons or

classes have come to rest, in an ever increasing degree, directly or

indirectly, on invidious comparisons in respect of pecuniary standing

rather than on personal affiliation with the group at large.

So, with the advance of the industrial arts a differentiation of a new

character sets in and presently grows progressively more pronounced and

more effectual, giving rise to a regrouping on lines that run regardless

of those frontiers that divide one community from another for purposes

of patriotic emulation. So far as it comes chiefly and typically in

question here, this regrouping takes place on two distinct but somewhat

related principles of contrast: that of wealth and poverty, and that of

master and servant, or authority and obedience. The material interests

of the population in this way come to be divided between the group of

those who own and those who command, on the one hand, and of those who

work and who obey, on the other hand.

Neither of these two contrasted categories of persons have any direct

material interest in the maintenance of the patriotic community; or at

any rate no such interest as should reasonably induce them to spend

their own time and substance in support of the political (patriotic)

organisation within which they live. It is only in so far as one or

another of these interests looks for a more than proportionate share in

any prospective gain from the joint enterprise, that the group or class

in question can reasonably be counted on to bear its share in the joint

venture. And it is only when and in so far as their particular material

or self-regarding interest is reenforced by patriotic conceit, that they

can be counted on to spend themselves in furtherance of the patriotic

enterprise, without the assurance of a more than proportionate share in

any gains that may be held in prospect from any such joint enterprise;

and it is only in its patriotic bearing that the political community

continues to be a joint venture. That is to say, in more generalised

terms, through the development of the rights of property, and of such

like prescriptive claims of privilege and prerogative, it has come

about that other community interests have fallen away, until the

collective prestige remains as virtually the sole community interest

which can hold the sentiment of the group in a bond of solidarity.

To one or another of these several interested groups or classes within

the community the political organisation may work a benefit; but only to

one or another, not to each and several, jointly or collectively. Since

by no chance will the benefit derived from such joint enterprise on the

part of the community at large equal the joint cost; in as much as all

joint enterprise of the kind that looks to material advantage works by

one or another method of inhibition and takes effect, if at all, by

lowering the aggregate efficiency of the several countries concerned,

with a view to the differential gain of one at the cost of another. So,

e.g., a protective tariff is plainly a conspiracy in restraint of trade,

with a view to benefit the conspirators by hindering their competitors.

The aggregate cost to the community at large of such an enterprise in

retardation is always more than the gains it brings to those who may

benefit by it.

In so speaking of the uses to which the common man's patriotic devotion

may be turned, there is no intention to underrate its intrinsic value as

a genial and generous trait of human nature. Doubtless it is best and

chiefly to be appreciated as a spiritual quality that beautifies and

ennobles its bearer, and that endows him with the full stature of

manhood, quite irrespective of ulterior considerations. So it is to be

conceded without argument that this patriotic animus is a highly

meritorious frame of mind, and that it has an aesthetic value scarcely

to be overstated in the farthest stretch of poetic license. But the

question of its serviceability to the modern community, in any other

than this decorative respect, and particularly its serviceability to the

current needs of the common man in such a modern community, is not

touched by such an admission; nor does this recognition of its generous

spiritual nature afford any help toward answering a further question as

to how and with what effect this animus may be turned to account by

anyone who is in position to make use of the forces which it sets free.

Among Christian nations there still is, on the whole, a decided

predilection for that ancient and authentic line of national repute that

springs from warlike prowess. This repute for warlike prowess is what

first comes to mind among civilised peoples when speaking of national

greatness. And among those who have best preserved this warlike ideal of

worth, the patriotic ambition is likely to converge on the prestige of

their sovereign; so that it takes the concrete form of personal loyalty

to a master, and so combines or coalesces with a servile habit of mind.

But peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, it is said; and

peaceable folk of a patriotic temper have learned to make the best of

their meager case and have found self-complacency in these victories of

the peaceable order. So it may broadly be affirmed that all nations look

with complacency on their own peculiar Culture--the organised complex of

habits of thought and of conduct by which their own routine of life is

regulated--as being in some way worthier than the corresponding habits

of their neighbors. The case of the German Culture has latterly come

under a strong light in this way. But while it may be that no other

nation has been so naive as to make a concerted profession of faith to

the effect that their own particular way of life is altogether

commendable and is the only fashion of civilisation that is fit to

survive; yet it will scarcely be an extravagance to assert that in their

own secret mind these others, too, are blest with much the same

consciousness of unique worth. Conscious virtue of this kind is a good

and sufficient ground for patriotic inflation, so far as it goes. It

commonly does not go beyond a defensive attitude, however. Now and

again, as in the latterday German animation on this head, these

phenomena of national use and wont may come to command such a degree of

popular admiration as will incite to an aggressive or proselyting

campaign.

In all this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous kind. The

common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the

national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain

from the increase of renown that so comes to his sovereign, his

language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his God.

There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual assets of

self-complacency are, indeed, to be rated as grounds of high-minded

patriotism without afterthought. These aspirations and enthusiasms would

perhaps be rated as Quixotic by men whose horizon is bounded by the main

chance; but they make up that substance of things hoped for that

inflates those headlong patriotic animosities that stir universal

admiration.

So also, men find an invidious distinction in such matters of physical

magnitude as their country's area, the number of its population, the

size of its cities, the extent of its natural resources, its aggregate

wealth and its wealth per capita, its merchant marine and its foreign

trade. As a ground of invidious complacency these phenomena of physical

magnitude and pecuniary traffic are no better and no worse than such

immaterial assets as the majesty of the sovereign or the perfections of

the language. They are matters in which the common man is concerned

only by the accident of domicile, and his only connection with these

things is an imaginary joint interest in their impressiveness. To these

things he has contributed substantially nothing, and from them he

derives no other merit or advantage than a patriotic inflation. He takes

pride in these things in an invidious way, and there is no good reason

why he should not; just as there is also no good reason why he should,

apart from the fact that the common man is so constituted that he,

mysteriously, takes pride in these things that concern him not.

* * * * *

Of the several groups or classes of persons within the political

frontiers, whose particular interests run systematically at cross

purposes with those of the community at large under modern conditions,

the class of masters, rulers, authorities,--or whatever term may seem

most suitable to designate that category of persons whose characteristic

occupation is to give orders and command deference,--of the several

orders and conditions of men these are, in point of substantial motive

and interest, most patently at variance with all the rest, or with the

fortunes of the common man. The class will include civil and military

authorities and whatever nobility there is of a prescriptive and

privileged kind. The substantial interest of these classes in the common

welfare is of the same kind as the interest which a parasite has in the

well-being of his host; a sufficiently substantial interest, no doubt,

but there is in this relation nothing like a community of interest. Any

gain on the part of the community at large will materially serve the

needs of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford them

a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial

phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be

spoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection of

discourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford the

conventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and

the "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argument

is only that their material or other self-regarding interests are of

such a nature as to be furthered by the material wealth of the

community, and more particularly by the increasing volume of the body

politic; but only with the proviso that this material wealth and this

increment of power must accrue without anything like a corresponding

cost to this class. At the same time, since this class of the superiors

is in some degree a specialised organ of prestige, so that their value,

and therefore their tenure, both in the eyes of the community and in

their own eyes, is in the main a "prestige value" and a tenure by

prestige; and since the prestige that invests their persons is a shadow

cast by the putative worth of the community at large, it follows that

their particular interest in the joint prestige is peculiarly alert and

insistent. But it follows also that these personages cannot of their own

substance or of their own motion contribute to this collective prestige

in the same proportion in which it is necessary for them to draw on it

in support of their own prestige value. It would, in other words, be a

patent absurdity to call on any of the current ruling classes,

dynasties, nobility, military and diplomatic corps, in any of the

nations of Europe, e.g., to preserve their current dignity and command

the deference that is currently accorded them, by recourse to their own

powers and expenditure of their own substance, without the usufruct of

the commonalty whose organ of dignity they are. The current prestige

value which they enjoy is beyond their unaided powers to create or

maintain, without the usufruct of the community. Such an enterprise does

not lie within the premises of the case.

In this bearing, therefore, the first concern with which these

personages are necessarily occupied is the procurement and retention of

a suitable usufruct in the material resources and good-will of a

sufficiently large and industrious population. The requisite good-will

in these premises is called loyalty, and its retention by the line of

personages that so trade on prestige rests on a superinduced association

of ideas, whereby the national honour comes to be confounded in popular

apprehension with the prestige of these personages who have the keeping

of it. But the potentates and the establishments, civil and military, on

whom this prestige value rests will unavoidably come into invidious

comparison with others of their kind; and, as invariably happens in

matters of invidious comparison, the emulative needs of all the

competitors for prestige are "indefinitely extensible," as the phrase of

the economists has it. Each and several of them incontinently needs a

further increment of prestige, and therefore also a further increment of

the material assets in men and resources that are needful as ways and

means to assert and augment the national honor.

It is true, the notion that their prestige value is in any degree

conditioned by the material circumstances and the popular imagination of

the underlying nation is distasteful to many of these vicars of the

national honour. They will incline rather to the persuasion that this

prestige value is a distinctive attribute, of a unique order, intrinsic

to their own persons. But, plainly, any such detached line of magnates,

notables, kings and mandarins, resting their notability on nothing more

substantial than a slightly sub-normal intelligence and a moderately

scrofulous habit of body could not long continue to command that eager

deference that is accounted their due. Such a picture of majesty would

be sadly out of drawing. There is little conviction and no great dignity

to be drawn from the unaided pronouncement:

"We're here because,

We're here because,

We're here because

We're here,"

even when the doggerel is duly given the rhetorical benefit of a "Tenure

by the Grace of God." The personages that carry this dignity require the

backing of a determined and patriotic populace in support of their

prestige value, and they commonly have no great difficulty in procuring

it. And their prestige value is, in effect, proportioned to the volume

of material resources and patriotic credulity that can be drawn on for

its assertion. It is true, their draught on the requisite sentimental

and pecuniary support is fortified with large claims of serviceability

to the common good, and these claims are somewhat easily, indeed

eagerly, conceded and acted upon; although the alleged benefit to the

common good will scarcely be visible except in the light of glory shed

by the blazing torch of patriotism.

In so far as it is of a material nature the benefit which the

constituted authorities so engage to contribute to the common good, or

in other words to confer on the common man, falls under two heads:

defense against aggression from without; and promotion of the

community's material gain. It is to be presumed that the constituted

authorities commonly believe more or less implicitly in their own

professions in so professing to serve the needs of the common man in

these respects. The common defense is a sufficiently grave matter, and

doubtless it claims the best affections and endeavour of the citizen;

but it is not a matter that should claim much attention at this point in

the argument, as bearing on the service rendered the common man by the

constituted authorities, taken one with another. Any given governmental

establishment at home is useful in this respect only as against another

governmental establishment elsewhere. So that on the slightest

examination it resolves itself into a matter of competitive patriotic

enterprise, as between the patriotic aspirations of different

nationalities led by different governmental establishments; and the

service so rendered by the constituted authorities in the aggregate

takes on the character of a remedy for evils of their own creation. It

is invariably a defense against the concerted aggressions of other

patriots. Taken in the large, the common defense of any given nation

becomes a detail of the competitive struggle between rival nationalities

animated with a common spirit of patriotic enterprise and led by

authorities constituted for this competitive purpose.

Except on a broad basis of patriotic devotion, and except under the

direction of an ambitious governmental establishment, no serious

international aggression is to be had. The common defense, therefore, is

to be taken as a remedy for evils arising out of the working of the

patriotic spirit that animates mankind, as brought to bear under a

discretionary authority; and in any balance to be struck between the

utility and disutility of this patriotic spirit and of its service in

the hands of the constituted authorities, it will have to be cancelled

out as being at the best a mitigation of some of the disorders brought

on by the presence of national governments resting on patriotic loyalty

at large.

But this common defense is by no means a vacant rubric in any attempted

account of modern national enterprise. It is the commonplace and

conclusive plea of the dynastic statesmen and the aspiring warlords, and

it is the usual blind behind which events are put in train for eventual

hostilities. Preparation for the common defense also appears unfailingly

to eventuate in hostilities. With more or less _bona fides_ the

statesmen and warriors plead the cause of the common defense, and with

patriotic alacrity the common man lends himself to the enterprise aimed

at under that cover. In proportion as the resulting equipment for

defense grows great and becomes formidable, the range of items which a

patriotically biased nation are ready to include among the claims to be

defended grows incontinently larger, until by the overlapping of

defensive claims between rival nationalities the distinction between

defense and aggression disappears, except in the biased fancy of the

rival patriots.

Of course, no reflections are called for here on the current American

campaign of "Preparedness." Except for the degree of hysteria it appears

to differ in no substantial respect from the analogous course of

auto-intoxication among the nationalities of Europe, which came to a

head in the current European situation. It should conclusively serve the

turn for any self-possessed observer to call to mind that all the

civilised nations of warring Europe are, each and several, convinced

that they are fighting a defensive war.

The aspiration of all right-minded citizens is presumed to be "Peace

with Honour." So that first, as well as last, among those national

interests that are to be defended, and in the service of which the

substance and affections of the common man are enlisted under the aegis

of the national prowess, comes the national prestige, as a matter of

course. And the constituted authorities are doubtless sincere and

single-minded in their endeavors to advance and defend the national

honour, particularly those constituted authorities that hold their place

of authority on grounds of fealty; since the national prestige in such a

case coalesces with the prestige of the nation's ruler in much the same

degree in which the national sovereignty devolves upon the person of its

ruler. In so defending or advancing the national prestige, such a

dynastic or autocratic overlord, together with the other privileged

elements assisting and dependent on him, is occupied with his own

interest; his own tenure is a tenure by prestige, and the security of

his tenure lies in the continued maintenance of that popular fancy that

invests his person with this national prestige and so constitutes him

and his retinue of notables and personages its keeper.

But it is uniformly insisted by the statesmen--potentates, notables,

kings and mandarins--that this aegis of the national prowess in their

hands covers also many interests of a more substantial and more tangible

kind. These other, more tangible interests of the community have also a

value of a direct and personal sort to the dynasty and its hierarchy of

privileged subalterns, in that it is only by use of the material forces

of the nation that the dynastic prestige can be advanced and maintained.

The interest of such constituted authorities in the material welfare of

the nation is consequently grave and insistent; but it is evidently an

interest of a special kind and is subject to strict and peculiar

limitations. The common good, in the material respect, interests the

dynastic statesman only as a means to dynastic ends; that is to say,

only in so far as it can be turned to account in the achievement of

dynastic aims. These aims are "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory," as

the sacred formula phrases the same conception in another bearing.

That is to say, the material welfare of the nation is a means to the

unfolding of the dynastic power; provided always that this material

welfare is not allowed to run into such ramifications as will make the

commonwealth an unwieldy instrument in the hands of the dynastic

statesmen. National welfare is to the purpose only in so far as it

conduces to political success, which is always a question of warlike

success in the last resort. The limitation which this consideration

imposes on the government's economic policy are such as will make the

nation a self-sufficient or self-balanced economic commonwealth. It must

be a self-balanced commonwealth at least in such measure as will make it

self-sustaining in case of need, in all those matters that bear directly

on warlike efficiency.

Of course, no community can become fully self-sustaining under modern

conditions, by use of the modern state of the industrial arts, except by

recourse to such drastic measures of repression as would reduce its

total efficiency in an altogether intolerable degree. This will hold

true even of those nations who, like Russia or the United States, are

possessed of extremely extensive territories and extremely large and

varied resources; but it applies with greatly accentuated force to

smaller and more scantily furnished territorial units. Peoples living

under modern conditions and by use of the modern state of the industrial

arts necessarily draw on all quarters of the habitable globe for

materials and products which they can procure to the best advantage

from outside their own special field so long as they are allowed access

to these outlying sources of supply; and any arbitrary limitation on

this freedom of traffic makes the conditions of life that much harder,

and lowers the aggregate efficiency of the community by that much.

National self-sufficiency is to be achieved only by a degree of economic

isolation; and such a policy of economic isolation involves a degree of

impoverishment and lowered efficiency, but it will also leave the nation

readier for warlike enterprise on such a scale as its reduced efficiency

will compass.

So that the best that can be accomplished along this line by the

dynastic statesmen is a shrewd compromise, embodying such a degree of

isolation and inhibition as will leave the country passably

self-sufficient in case of need, without lowering the national

efficiency to such a point as to cripple its productive forces beyond

what will be offset by the greater warlike readiness that is so

attained. The point to which such a policy of isolation and sufficiency

will necessarily be directed is that measure of inhibition that will

yield the most facile and effective ways and means of warlike

enterprise, the largest product of warlike effectiveness to be had on

multiplying the nation's net efficiency into its readiness to take the

field.

Into any consideration of this tactical problem a certain subsidiary

factor enters, in that the patriotic temper of the nation is always more

or less affected by such an economic policy. The greater the degree of

effectual isolation and discrimination embodied in the national policy,

the greater will commonly be its effect on popular sentiment in the way

of national animosity and spiritual self-sufficiency; which may be an

asset of great value for the purposes of warlike enterprise.

Plainly, any dynastic statesman who should undertake to further the

common welfare regardless of its serviceability for warlike enterprise

would be defeating his own purpose. He would, in effect, go near to

living up to his habitual professions touching international peace,

instead of professing to live up to them, as the exigencies of his

national enterprise now conventionally require him to do. In effect, he

would be _functus officio_.

There are two great administrative instruments available for this work

of repression and national self-sufficiency at the hands of the

imperialistic statesman: the protective tariff, and commercial

subvention. The two are not consistently to be distinguished from one

another at all points, and each runs out into a multifarious convolution

of variegated details; but the principles involved are, after all,

fairly neat and consistent. The former is of the nature of a conspiracy

in restraint of trade by repression; the latter, a conspiracy to the

like effect by subsidised monopoly; both alike act to check the pursuit

of industry in given lines by artificially increasing the cost of

production for given individuals or classes of producers, and both alike

impose a more than proportionate cost on the community within which they

take effect. Incidentally, both of these methods of inhibition bring a

degree, though a less degree, of hardship, to the rest of the industrial

world.

All this is matter of course to all economic students, and it should,

reasonably, be plain to all intelligent persons; but its voluble denial

by interested parties, as well as the easy credulity with which

patriotic citizens allow themselves to accept the sophistries offered in

defense of these measures of inhibition, has made it seem worth while

here to recall these commonplaces of economic science.

The ground of this easy credulity is not so much infirmity of intellect

as it is an exuberance of sentiment, although it may reasonably be

believed that its more pronounced manifestations--as, e.g., the high

protective tariff--can be had only by force of a formidable cooperation

of the two. The patriotic animus is an invidious sentiment of joint

prestige; and it needs no argument or documentation to bear out the

affirmation that its bias will lend a color of merit and expediency to

any proposed measure that can, however speciously, promise an increase

of national power or prestige. So that when the statesmen propose a

policy of inhibition and mitigated isolation on the professed ground

that such a policy will strengthen the nation economically by making it

economically self-supporting, as well as ready for any warlike

adventure, the patriotic citizen views the proposed measures through the

rosy haze of national aspirations and lets the will to believe persuade

him that whatever conduces to a formidable national battle-front will

also contribute to the common good. At the same time all these national

conspiracies in restraint of trade are claimed, with more or less

reason, to inflict more or less harm on rival nationalities with whom

economic relations are curtailed; and patriotism being an invidious

sentiment, the patriotic citizen finds comfort in the promise of

mischief to these others, and is all the more prone to find all kinds of

merit in proposals that look to such an invidious outcome. In any

community imbued with an alert patriotic spirit, the fact that any given

circumstance, occurrence or transaction can be turned to account as a

means of invidious distinction or invidious discrimination against

humanity beyond the national pale, will always go far to procure

acceptance of it as being also an article of substantial profit to the

community at large, even though the slightest unbiased scrutiny would

find it of no ascertainable use in any other bearing than that of

invidious mischief. And whatever will bear interpretation as an

increment of the nation's power or prowess, in comparison with rival

nationalities, will always be securely counted as an item of joint

credit, and will be made to serve the collective conceit as an invidious

distinction; and patriotic credulity will find it meritorious also in

other respects.

So, e.g., it is past conception that such a patent imbecility as a

protective tariff should enlist the support of any ordinarily

intelligent community except by the help of some such chauvinistic

sophistry. So also, the various royal establishments of Europe, e.g.,

afford an extreme but therefore all the more convincing illustration of

the same logical fallacy. These establishments and personages are great

and authentic repositories of national prestige, and they are therefore

unreflectingly presumed by their several aggregations of subjects to be

of some substantial use also in some other bearing; but it would be a

highly diverting exhibition of credulity for any outsider to fall into

that amazing misconception. But the like is manifestly true of

commercial turnover and export trade among modern peoples; although on

this head the infatuation is so ingrained and dogmatic that even a rank

outsider is expected to accept the fallacy without reflection, on pain

of being rated as unsafe or unsound. Such matters again, as the

dimensions of the national territory, or the number of the population

and the magnitude of the national resources, are still and have perhaps

always been material for patriotic exultation, and are fatuously

believed to have some great significance for the material fortunes of

the common man; although it should be plain on slight reflection that

under modern conditions of ownership, these things, one and all, are of

no consequence to the common man except as articles of prestige to

stimulate his civic pride. The only conjuncture under which these and

the like national holdings can come to have a meaning as joint or

collective assets would arise in case of a warlike adventure carried to

such extremities as would summarily cancel vested rights of ownership

and turn them to warlike uses. While the rights of ownership hold, the

common man, who does not own these things, draws no profit from their

inclusion in the national domain; indeed, he is at some cost to

guarantee their safe tenure by their rightful owners.

In so pursuing their quest of the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, by

use of the national resources and by sanction of the national spirit,

the constituted authorities also assume the guardianship of sundry

material interests that are presumed to touch the common good; such as

security of person and property in dealings with aliens, whether at home

or abroad; security of investment and trade, and vindication of their

citizens before the law in foreign parts; and, chiefly and ubiquitously,

furtherance and extension of the national trade into foreign parts,

particularly of the export trade, on terms advantageous to the traders

of the nation.

The last named of these advantages is the one on which stress is apt to

fall in the argument of all those who advocate an unfolding of national

power, as being a matter of vital material benefit to the common man.

The other items indicated above, it is plain on the least reflection,

are matters of slight if any material consequence to him. The common

man--that is ninety-nine and a fraction in one hundred of the nation's

common men--has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist,

trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion for security of

person or property under circumstances that raise any remotest question

of the national prowess or the national prestige; nor does he seek or

aspire to trade to foreign parts on any terms, equitable or otherwise,

or to invest capital among aliens under foreign rule, or to exploit

concessions or take orders, for acceptance or delivery; nor, indeed,

does he at all commonly come into even that degree of contact with

abroad that is implied in the purchase of foreign securities. Virtually

the sole occasion on which he comes in touch with the world beyond the

frontier is when, and if, he goes away from home as an emigrant, and so

ceases to enjoy the tutelage of the nation's constituted authorities.

But the common man, in point of fact, is a home-keeping body, who

touches foreign parts and aliens outside the national frontiers only at

the second or third remove, if at all, in the occasional purchase of

foreign products, or in the sale of goods that may find their way abroad

after he has lost sight of them. The exception to this general rule

would be found in the case of those under-sized nations that are too

small to contain the traffic in which their commonplace population are

engaged, and that have neither national prowess nor national prestige to

fall back on in a conceivable case of need,--and whose citizens,

individually, appear to be as fortunately placed in their workday

foreign relations, without a background of prowess and prestige, as the

citizens of the great powers who are most abundantly provided in these

respects.

With wholly negligible exceptions, these matters touch the needs or the

sensibilities of the common man only through the channel of the

national honour, which may be injured in the hardships suffered by his

compatriots in foreign parts, or which may, again, be repaired or

enhanced by the meritorious achievements of the same compatriots; of

whose existence he will commonly have no other or more substantial

evidence, and in whose traffic he has no share other than this vicarious

suffering of vague and remote indignity or vainglory by force of the

wholly fortuitous circumstance that they are (inscrutably) his

compatriots. These immaterial goods of vicarious prestige are, of

course, not to be undervalued, nor is the fact to be overlooked or

minimised that they enter into the sum total of the common citizen's

"psychic income," for whatever they may foot up to; but evidently their

consideration takes us back to the immaterial category of prestige

value, from which the argument just now was hopefully departing with a

view to consideration of the common man's material interest in that

national enterprise about which patriotic aspirations turn.

These things, then, are matters in which the common man has an interest

only as they have a prestige value. But there need be no question as to

their touching his sensibilities and stirring him to action, and even to

acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Indignity or ill treatment of his

compatriots in foreign parts, even when well deserved, as is not

infrequently the case, are resented with a vehemence that is greatly to

the common man's credit, and greatly also to the gain of those patriotic

statesmen who find in such grievances their safest and most reliable raw

materials for the production of international difficulty. That he will

so respond to the stimulus of these, materially speaking irrelevant,

vicissitudes of good or ill that touch the fortunes of his compatriots,

as known to him by hearsay, bears witness, of course, to the high

quality of his manhood; but it falls very far short of arguing that

these promptings of his patriotic spirit have any value as traits that

count toward his livelihood or his economic serviceability in the

community in which he lives. It is all to his credit, and it goes to

constitute him a desirable citizen, in the sense that he is properly

amenable to the incitements of patriotic emulation; but it is none the

less to be admitted, however reluctantly, that this trait of impulsively

vicarious indignation or vainglory is neither materially profitable to

himself nor an asset of the slightest economic value to the community in

which he lives. Quite the contrary, in fact. So also is it true that the

common man derives no material advantage from the national success along

this line, though he commonly believes that it all somehow inures to his

benefit. It would seem that an ingrown bias of community interest,

blurred and driven by a jealously sensitive patriotic pride, bends his

faith uncritically to match his inclination. His persuasion is a work of

preconception rather than of perception.

But the most substantial and most unqualified material benefit currently

believed to be derivable from a large unfolding of national prowess and

a wide extension of the national domain is an increased volume of the

nation's foreign trade, particularly of the export trade. "Trade follows

the Flag." And this larger trade and enhanced profit is presumed to

inure to the joint benefit of the citizens. Such is the profession of

faith of the sagacious statesmen and such is also the unreflecting

belief of the common man.

It may be left an open question if an unfolding of national prowess and

prestige increases the nation's trade, whether in imports or in

exports. There is no available evidence that it has any effect of the

kind. What is not an open question is the patent fact that such an

extension of trade confers no benefit on the common man, who is not

engaged in the import or export business. More particularly does it

yield him no advantage at all commensurate with the cost involved in any

endeavour so to increase the volume of trade by increasing the nation's

power and extending its dominion. The profits of trade go not to the

common man at large but to the traders whose capital is invested; and it

is a completely idle matter to the common citizen whether the traders

who profit by the nation's trade are his compatriots or not.[6]

[Footnote 6: All this, which should be plain without demonstration, has

been repeatedly shown in the expositions of various peace advocates,

typically by Mr. Angell.]

The pacifist argument on the economic futility of national ambitions

will commonly rest its case at this point; having shown as unreservedly

as need be that national ambition and all its works belong of right

under that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood and

Pestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is not to be put out

of the way with an argument showing that it has its disutilities. So

with the patriotic animus; it is a factor to be counted with, rather

than to be exorcised.

As has been remarked above, in the course of time and change the advance

of the industrial arts and of the institutions of ownership have taken

such a turn that the working system of industry and business no longer

runs on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes account of national

frontiers,--except in so far as the national policies and legislation,

arbitrarily and partially, impose these frontiers on the workings of

trade and industry. The effect of such regulation for political ends is,

with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the efficient working

of the industrial system under modern conditions; and it is therefore

detrimental to the material interests of the common citizen. But the

case is not the same as regards the interests of the traders. Trade is a

competitive affair, and it is to the advantage of the traders engaged in

any given line of business to extend their own markets and to exclude

competing traders. Competition may be the soul of trade, but monopoly is

necessarily the aim of every trader. And the national organisation is of

service to its traders in so far as it shelters them, wholly or partly,

from the competition of traders of other nationalities, or in so far as

it furthers their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges as

against their competitors, whether at home or abroad. The gain that so

comes to the nation's traders from any preferential advantage afforded

them by national regulations, or from any discrimination against traders

of foreign nationality, goes to the traders as private gain. It is of no

benefit to any of their compatriots; since there is no community of

usufruct that touches these gains of the traders. So far as concerns his

material advantage, it is an idle matter to the common citizen whether

he deals with traders of his own nationality or with aliens; both alike

will aim to buy cheap and sell dear, and will charge him "what the

traffic will bear." Nor does it matter to him whether the gains of this

trade go to aliens or to his compatriots; in either case equally they

immediately pass beyond his reach, and are equally removed from any

touch of joint interest on his part. Being private property, under

modern law and custom he has no use of them, whether a national frontier

does or does not intervene between his domicile and that of their owner.

These are facts that every man of sound mind knows and acts on without

doubt or hesitation in his own workday affairs. He would scarcely even

find amusement in so futile a proposal as that his neighbor should share

his business profits with him for no better reason than that he is a

compatriot. But when the matter is presented as a proposition in

national policy and embroidered with an invocation of his patriotic

loyalty the common citizen will commonly be found credulous enough to

accept the sophistry without abatement. His archaic sense of group

solidarity will still lead him at his own cost to favor his trading

compatriots by the imposition of onerous trade regulations for their

private advantage, and to interpose obstacles in the way of alien

traders. All this ingenious policy of self-defeat is greatly helped out

by the patriotic conceit of the citizens; who persuade themselves to see

in it an accession to the power and prestige of their own nation and a

disadvantage to rival nationalities. It is, indeed, more than doubtful

if such a policy of self-defeat as is embodied in current international

trade discriminations could be insinuated into the legislation of any

civilized nation if the popular intelligence were not so clouded with

patriotic animosity as to let a prospective detriment to their foreign

neighbors count as a gain to themselves.

So that the chief material use of the patriotic bent in modern

populations, therefore, appears to be its use to a limited class of

persons engaged in foreign trade, or in business that comes in

competition with foreign industry. It serves their private gain by

lending effectual countenance to such restraint of international trade

as would not be tolerated within the national domain. In so doing it has

also the secondary and more sinister effect of dividing the nations on

lines of rivalry and setting up irreconcilable claims and ambitions, of

no material value but of far-reaching effect in the way of provocation

to further international estrangement and eventual breach of the peace.

How all this falls in with the schemes of militant statesmen, and

further reacts on the freedom and personal fortunes of the common man,

is an extensive and intricate topic, though not an obscure one; and it

has already been spoken of above, perhaps as fully as need be.