[VIII
Helps to Interpretation]
HOW TO BECOME A WORLD CITIZEN
To become a good world citizen, it is not necessary to distribute oneself by travel everywhere—although travel is most valuable—any more than it is absolutely necessary for a worthy citizen of the United States to cross the continent or have homes in both California and New York, desirable as that may be.
Nor would one lose any interest in his nation—remembering that only a bigoted and selfish nationality does harm; and that even in a federation of the nations of the world each individual nation, like each individual State in the Union, would have its own interests and would have to do its part towards expressing the life of the whole.
Of course with the realization of a federation of the world in the future, there would be public world citizens as well as private world citizens, just as there are public and private citizens in every nation; and the public world leaders should necessarily have a higher training, a wider experience and a broader travel than the private world citizen, judging from the standpoint of leadership alone.
But independent of these things it should be remembered that every man—private or public—can acquire full world citizenship by learning to think in world terms and developing the world consciousness which makes you feel that you are a necessary part of all that exists. And this can be done by developing an unprejudiced love for humanity, by persistently opposing war, by keeping in touch with world statesmen and reading world literature, by acquiring a love for nature and the seas which comes from a faith in God, by helping to unify the world's languages and religions, by advocating constantly a central world government for the nations, by traveling when one can and by making it as easy for people to travel as possible, by attending all public meetings that deal with international movements, by never losing sight—especially in the hour of perplexity, ridicule and hardship—of the world vision which is championed on these pages and by becoming sanely religious so that you will feel that the same good spirit throbs in your breast that quickens the whole universe into harmony and beauty as well as every flower and living thing on the globe.
Here are some of the exceptional world citizens. Hear them talk in their own words:
Whitman: