THE VIRTUES OF NATIONALISM.
[To THE EDITOR OP TEl " SPECTATOR."] SIE,—Teachers of the people proclaim from the columns of our newspapers and from Hyde Park platforms that nationalism is the main source of the sufferings of Europe. They disparage what, by the plain man in the street, has hitherto been accounted a virtue. Such teaching is in effect, though doubtless not in intention, pernicious. The need of our age in matters emotional and ethical, no less than in the field of economics, is for constructive, not for destructive, teaching. We live by admiration, and we are anxiously searching for objects whereon rightly to bestow it. To tell us that " patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel " is to diminish our all too scanty stock of ideals, to perplex the simple-minded, to pain, if not to anger, those whose nearest and dearest have died that England might live, to undermine the stoicism of the "poor men broke in our wars " by the. suggestion that their sublime sacrifice was offered to a false god. Those of us who engaged in propaganda during the War had special opportunities of witnessing the inspiring power of nationalism. The agents of the new republics usually bore traces of the generations of serfdom whence they were emerging. They too often appeared to be below the standard of the average sensual man, unscrupulous wire-pullers, adven- turers out for what they could get. Yet when such men were urging the claims or describing the wrongs of their respective countries, you saw the light in the eye, the uplift of the head, the flash of divinity transfiguring a mean countenance. It cannot be right or politi& to decry the spirit that can work such miracles.
We accept Miss Cavell's message that " it is not enough to be patriotic," but such acceptance should not, and does not logic- ally, lead us to deny the beauty of patriotism or to refuse grateful recognition of all that this emotion has wrought for humanity in art, in music, in literature, in every field of human activity. How much poorer the world would be without, say, the Parthenon marbles, the great canvases of Veronese, Wagner's music dramas, or Rupert Brooke's immortal sonnet I It was the spirit of nationalism that called these into being. Let us then refuse to be misled by those who belittle its potency for beauty and for heroism, offering us in substitution nothing but a vague and chilly internationalism. The exponents of this new virtue do not define it. They are, perhaps, as a class more addicted to dissertation than to definition. If by international- ism they mean compassion for oppressed races, recognition of the rights of other nations, and of the solidarity of the whole human race, then it will be found that the true patriot is the true internationalist. The cherishing of our national birth- right will help us to feel more deeply and to display more effectually friendship for France, brotherly love for America, a sense of fair play for Germany. We shall better understand the difficulties of the new little nations, and the apparent bumptiousness and lawlessness which mar their strivings after Western ideals, if through these difficult days we hold fast to our faith and our pride in " England, my own."—I am, Sir, &c.,
The Bayswater Hotel, W. 2. Ea*zioa S. &MSS.
Previous page
