True Patriotism is the outcome of National home-feeling and
self-respect.
Home-feeling is born of the loving associations and happy memories
which belong to individual and National experience; self-respect is
the result of a wise and modest contemplation of personal or National
virtues.
The man who does not respect himself is not likely to command the
respect of others. And the Nation which takes no pride in its history
is not likely to make a history of which it can be proud.
But self-respect involves self-restraint, and no man who wishes to
retain his own respect and to merit the respect of others would think
of advertising his own virtues or bragging of his own deeds. Nor
would any Nation wishing to stand well in its own eyes and in the
eyes of the world boast of its own conquests over weaker foes or
shout itself hoarse in the exuberance of vainglory.
Patriotism is not to be measured by ostentation any more than truth
is to be estimated by volubility.
The history of England is full of incidents in which her children may
well take an honest pride, and no one need be debarred from taking a
pride in them because there are other incidents which fill them with
a sense of shame. As a rule it will be found that the sources of
pride belong to the people themselves, and that the sources of shame
belong to their rulers. It would be difficult to find words strong
enough to condemn the campaign of robbery and murder conducted by the
Black Prince against the peaceful inhabitants of Southern France in
1356, but it would be still more difficult to do justice to the
magnificent pluck and grit which enabled 8,000 Englishmen at Poitiers
to put to flight no less than 60,000 of the chosen chivalry of
France. The wire-pullers of state-craft have often worked with
ignoble aims, but those who suffer in the working out of political
schemes often sanctify the service by their self-sacrifice. There is
always Glory at the cannon's mouth.
In these days when the word Patriot is used both as a party badge and
as a term of reproach, and when those who measure their patriotism by
the standards of good feeling and self-respect are denied the right
to the use of the term though they have an equal love for their
country and take an equal pride in their country's honourable
achievements, it seems necessary to define the word before one
applies it to oneself or puts one's name to what may be called
patriotic verse.
It is a bad day for any country when false standards of patriotism
prevail, and at such times it is clearly the duty of intelligent
patriotism to uphold true ones.
ALFRED H. MILES.
_October_, 1901.