PATRIOTISM OR PEACE
Letter to Manson
1896
PATRIOTISM OR PEACE
Letter to Manson
Dear Sir:—You write to me asking me to express myself in respect to the United States of North America "in the interests of Christian consistency and true peace," and express the hope that "the nations will soon awaken to the one means of securing national peace."
I harbour the same hope. I harbour the same hope, because the blindness in our time of the nations that extol patriotism, bring up their young generations in the superstition of patriotism, and, at the same time, do not wish for the inevitable consequences of patriotism,—war,—has, it seems to me, reached such a last stage that the simplest reflection, which begs for utterance in the mouth of every unprejudiced man, is sufficient, in order that men may see the crying contradiction in which they are.
Frequently, when you ask children which they will choose of two things which are incompatible, but which they want alike, they answer, "Both."