PATRIOTISM AND INTERNATIONALISM
Many Socialists and sympathizers with the Labour movement over the world belittle Patriotism, and seem to think that by decrying and discouraging the love of one's country one will bring nearer the day of Internationalism.
I do not agree. Of course we all know there is a lot of sham and false Patriotism—such as, for instance, Pressmongers magnify and make use of in order to sell their papers, or such as comfortable, well-to-do folk with big dividends do so heartily encourage among the poorer classes, who can thus be persuaded to fight for them; we know, indeed, that there is a good deal of very mean and unworthy Patriotism—the flag-waving variety, for instance, which we saw in the Boer war—exultant over a small nation of farmers defending their homes, and whipped up deliberately by a commercial gang for their own purposes; or the narrow-minded, lying, canting variety which blinds a people to its own faults, and credits itself with all the moral virtues, while at the same time it gloats over every defamation of the enemy. There is a good deal of that variety in the present war. And it is easy to understand that many people, sick of that sort of Patriotism, would go straight for a ready-made denial of all frontiers and boundaries.
Still, allowing to the full all that can be said in the above direction, one must admit also that there is such a thing as a true Patriotism, and I do not see why—however socialist or cosmopolitan we may be—we should not recognize what is an obvious fact. There is a love of one's own country—a genuine attachment to and preference for it—"in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations"—which after all is very natural, and on the whole a sound and healthy thing. There may be some people whose minds are so lofty that to them all peoples and races are alike and without preference; but one knows that the vast multitudes of our mortal earth are not made like that. "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?" It is certainly easier and more natural to make an effort and a sacrifice for the sake of your own countrymen whom you know so well and with whom you are linked by a thousand ties than for the sake of foreigners who are little more than a name—however worthy you may honestly believe the latter to be. It is more obvious and instinctive for a man to work for his own family than to give his services to his municipality or his county council. Charity begins at home, and the wider spirit of human love and helpfulness which passes beyond the narrow bounds of the family hearth has perhaps to find an intermediate sphere before it can unfold itself and expand in the great field of Humanity among all colours and races.
Personally, I am probably more International by temperament than Patriotic. I feel a strange kinship and intimacy with all sorts of queer and outlandish races—Chinese, Egyptian, Mexican, or Polynesian—and always a slight but persistent sense of estrangement and misapprehension among my own people. Flag-waving certainly, does not stir me. Still, I feel that, whatever one's country may be, the love of it has value and is not to be scoffed at. The Nation is bigger than the Parish; and to a man of limited outlook it is a means of getting him out of his own very narrow and local circle of life; to rob him of that in order to jump him into a cosmopolitan attitude (which to him may be quite empty and arid) is a mistake. It is easy enough to break the shell for the growing chick, but if you break it too soon your chick, when hatched, will be dead.
If you look at the great majority of those who are enthusing just now about our country and patriotically detesting the Germans, you will see that notwithstanding lies and slanders and cant galore, and much of conceit and vanity, their patriotism is pulling them together from one end of Britain to another, causing them to help each other in a thousand ways, urging them to make sacrifices for the common good, helping them to grow the sinews and limbs of the body politic, and even the wings which will one day transport that body into a bigger world. Really, I think we ought to be very grateful to the Germans for doing all this for us; and the Germans ought to be grateful to us for an exactly similar reason. You will see plainly enough that the great majority of those who are at this moment giving their thoughts and lives for their countrymen and neighbours either in Germany or in England could not by any manner of possibility be expected to act with similar self-surrender and enthusiasm in an International cause. They are not grown to that point of development yet, and it is better that they should learn helpfulness and brotherhood within somewhat narrow bounds than perhaps not learn these things at all in the open and indiscriminate field of universal equality. After all, to stimulate love and friendship there is nothing like a common enemy!
It is an old story and an old difficulty. There comes a time when every institution of social life becomes rotten and diseased and has to be removed to make way for the new life which is expanding behind it. Broadly speaking, we may say that the institution of Patriotism is approaching this period—at any rate over Western Europe. The outlines of an International life are becoming clearly visible behind it.
What we have to do is to help on that international life and spirit to our best, and certainly clear out a lot of sham patriotism that stands in its way; but this has to be done with discrimination and a certain tact. People must be made to see that "my country, right or wrong," is not the genuine article. They must be made to understand how easily this sort of slapdash sentiment throws them into the hands of scheming politicians and wire-pullers for sinister purposes—how readily it can be made use of directly it has become a mere unreasoning instinct and habit. If a war is wanted, or conscription, or a customs tariff—it may be merely to suit the coward fears of autocratic rulers, or the selfish interests of some group of contractors or concession-hunters—all that the parties concerned have to do is to play the patriotic stop, and they stand a good chance of getting what they want. Just now there is a good bit of fleecing going on in this fashion—both of the public and the wage-workers. Even in its more healthy forms, when delayed in too long, patriotism easily becomes morbid and delays also the birth of the larger spirit which is waiting behind it. The Continental Socialists complain that their cause has hitherto made little progress in Alsace-Lorraine and Poland for the simple reason that political circumstances have over-accentuated the patriotic devotion in both these regions.
Thus we have to push on with discrimination. Always we have to remember that the wide, free sense of equality and kinship which lies at the root of Internationalism is the real goal, and that the other thing is but a step on the way, albeit a necessary step. Always we have to press on towards that great and final liberation—the realization of our common humanity, the recognition of the same great soul of man slumbering under all forms in the heart of all races—the one guarantee and assurance of the advent of World-peace.
That we are verging rapidly towards some altered perspective I quite believe; and the day is coming when in the social and political spheres International activity will make excessive patriotism seem somewhat ridiculous—as, in fact, it has already done in the spheres of Science and Industry and Art. Still, I also do not see any reason why the two tendencies should not work side by side. The health of local organs and members in the human body is by no means incompatible with the health of the whole organism, and we may understand the great map of Humanity all the better for its being differently coloured in different parts.