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.
