Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association

by Intercollegiate Peace Association

THE EVOLUTION OF PATRIOTISM

Robert Southey has asked through the lips of a little child the greatest peace question that the world has known. He pictures a summer evening on the old battlefield of Blenheim. On a chair before his vine-clad cottage sat old Kaspar while his grandchildren, Wilhelmine and Peterkin, played on the lawn. Suddenly Peterkin from a nearby brook unearthed a skull and, running, brought it to Kaspar's knee. The old man took the gruesome thing from the boy, and told him that this had been the head of a man killed in the great battle of Blenheim. Then little Wilhelmine looked up into her grandfather's face and said:

"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."

Here we have the central question in the problem of war. Why do men fight? Through the answer to that question lies the path to world-peace.

Few men fight to-day for glory. Modern militarism has no place for Lancelots and Galahads. The glory of the regiment has absorbed the glory of the individual. Few men fight to-day to gain great wealth. The treasures that glittered before Pizarro do not tempt our soldiers. Material wealth is more easily won in factory or farm or mill. Few men fight to-day for religion. The conquest of religion has become a conquest of peace; the very ideal of peace is an end of religion itself. Glory, wealth, religion—these are no longer the causes of war. Then why do men fight? The answer is obvious. Men fight to-day for patriotism. Patriotism is the cause of war.

The next step in our reasoning is more difficult. If patriotism is the cause of war, how shall we treat the cause to destroy the result? Shall we attempt to abolish patriotism as Tolstoy would have us do, or shall we try to change its nature so that war as a natural result will be impossible? To answer these questions we must study patriotism from its very beginnings. We must ask: What is patriotism? Where did it come from? What place has it in our life?

Observe first the simplest cell of life, the amœba. We can watch it through the microscope. It is so tiny that it keeps house in a drop of water. It has neither emotion nor consciousness, in the human sense. It lives a while, and then splits in two to form other cells that have no connection with each other. Yet this infinitesimal bit of life has an instinct, the instinct to save itself. Watch an amœba as fire is brought near. It immediately moves away. Its every act is regulated by this one instinct, self-preservation.

Now let us leave the microscope and go outdoors. Over there is a bird in a tree top, feeding its young in a nest. Suppose that a fire should suddenly consume the tree. Would the mother bird fly away in safety? No, it would die on its nest in the effort to save its young. There is more than self-preservation here. The scientist will tell you that the instinct has expanded to include the preservation of the offspring.

And now turn to primitive man. The recent excavations in Sussex will give us a picture of him. He is a wild, gorilla-like figure that creeps beneath the trees. He can leap with lightning force on his prey. He drapes his body with bearskins, and eats meat from fingers that end in claws. And yet with all his savage ferocity, this is more than an animal. This is a man. In his breast there stir the instincts of a man. In his life we see the vital element of patriotism, love. His little savage family is more precious to him than all the world. He will fight and die, not only for self-preservation but for those who to him are "brother and sister and mother." This is the stamp of the human. This is the potentially divine.