The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife eBook
Edward Carpenter
What we have to do is to help on that international
life and spirit to our best, and certainly clear out
a lot of sham patriotism that stands in its way; but
this has to be done with discrimination and a certain
tact. People must be made to see that “my
country, right or wrong,” is not the genuine
article. They must be made to understand how easily
this sort of slapdash sentiment throws them into the
hands of scheming politicians and wire-pullers for
sinister purposes—how readily it can be
made use of directly it has become a mere unreasoning
instinct and habit. If a war is wanted, or conscription,
or a customs tariff—it may be merely to
suit the coward fears of autocratic rulers, or the
selfish interests of some group of contractors or
concession-hunters—all that the parties
concerned have to do is to play the patriotic stop,
and they stand a good chance of getting what they
want. Just now there is a good bit of fleecing
going on in this fashion—both of the public
and the wage-workers. Even in its more healthy
forms, when delayed in too long, patriotism easily
becomes morbid and delays also the birth of the larger
spirit which is waiting behind it. The Continental
Socialists complain that their cause has hitherto
made little progress in Alsace-Lorraine and Poland
for the simple reason that political circumstances
have over-accentuated the patriotic devotion in both
these regions.
Thus we have to push on with discrimination.
Always we have to remember that the wide, free sense
of equality and kinship which lies at the root of
Internationalism is the real goal, and that the other
thing is but a step on the way, albeit a necessary
step. Always we have to press on towards that
great and final liberation—the realization
of our common humanity, the recognition of the same
great soul of man slumbering under all forms in the
heart of all races—the one guarantee and
assurance of the advent of World-peace.
That we are verging rapidly towards some altered perspective
I quite believe; and the day is coming when in the
social and political spheres International activity
will make excessive patriotism seem somewhat ridiculous—as,
in fact, it has already done in the spheres of Science
and Industry and Art. Still, I also do not see
any reason why the two tendencies should not work
side by side. The health of local organs and
members in the human body is by no means incompatible
with the health of the whole organism, and we may
understand the great map of Humanity all the better
for its being differently coloured in different parts.
