Nationaliam and Catholicism. By Lord Hugh Coon. (Mac- millan. le.
net.)—In this able but provocative essay Lord Hugh Cecil disousses the rival views of war as an unmitigated curse and as a necessary evil out of which mush good may come. "Those who feel that the war has raised and is raising us from a lower to a higher standard are thinking of all that individuals have done for their country; those who cry out on war as degrading and brutalizing and the negation of Christian teaching are thinking of what we do and feel towards our enemies." Lord Hugh Cecil dislikes the absorption of the individual in the State I Plato's argument in the Crib does not convince him that such absorption is not " a root of wickedness," and that national- ism, as distinguished from patriotism, may not lead to eviL For our part, we should say that nationalism, like other senti- ments, may be carried to excess, as in Germany or in Ireland ; here in England we have long outgrown the crude nationalism of the Irish and their German friends. Lord Hugh Cecil doubts whether a League of Nations would have sufficient vitality to coned the perversions of nationalism. He sees no remedy but "to move men's minds from the national to the catholic ideal."
Previous page
