"Pride is one of the strongest traits in human character, and one of the least desirable; don't you think so? Pride of possession, pride of class, of birth, of accomplishment; why do we build up these barriers between us, when the whole process of life should be to break them down, to get closer to one another, to understand and help?"
"You think pride is out of fashion?"
"Just that. We treasure so many outgrown virtues, which have become vices. Patriotism, for instance. The rulers of Europe crash half the world into war by decking out this old scarecrow. My country, right or wrong, better than your country: our citizens, better than your citizens. What nonsense! Europe fights to protect the fatherland. What, in fact, is Europe protecting? The greed of kings for power and territory?"
"I know, and the people who make the war, and who gain by it, are never the ones who fight it."
"Exactly. An Englishman said to me the other day: 'The British Government's idea of the way for a rich Briton to be a patriot is to induce the poor men who work for him to go to war.'"
"It isn't much of a national virtue, if it is confined to a class," Jane agreed.
"It won't do. If I thought that nationalism would go on to the scrap heap, at the end of the war, along with the power of kings, I'd believe that the whole holocaust was purposeful, not accident."
"But what are you going to do with patriotism, Mr. Christiansen?"
"Make it over. You can't psychologize it out of us, even if we admit that it is bad. It is an instinct, woven of many other instincts—pugnacity, group loyalty, egoism. But we can substitute the bigger group for the smaller; we can grow up to an international patriotism that shall be as fierce as that we know now, one that will conserve instead of destroy."
"But how can we educate people to your new sort?"