had ever seen. The Japanese (73), we have
heard, believe that they are of divine descent, and that they are
supreme in manliness, loyalty and virtue. Every nation presumably has
somewhere in the back of its mind a belief in its own supremacy in
something, and has a sense of being or having something that makes it
unique in the world.

We can now see in part how the idea of national honor arises out of
the pride of nations. Certain fundamental feelings issue in the form
of claims of superiority or supremacy, which may be either vague and
unclear or very definite and self-conscious. This claim to superiority
is precisely what we mean by national vanity. With this consciousness
there goes a knowledge that these claims are in general not recognized
by other nations, or that the prestige which the recognition of this
superiority presupposes is at least insecure. Since, of course, these
claims to supremacy cannot all be valid, there must be a great amount
of inferiority parading in the world as superiority, many fictitious
and presumably half-hearted assumptions that must not only be defended
against outsiders, but must also be _internally fortified_. The pride
and the conceit must be justified by the creation of a fictitious
past, and of an impossible future. The motive of these falsifications
on the part of race consciousness is clear. A nation is defending its
claim to superiority by first establishing the claim in its own mind.
These claims being really unfounded must be placed beyond criticism.
They must be given a religious form. But also external forms and
relations of an artificial nature must be established. Nations always
hide behind barriers of formality. They make displays to one another.
In this way the feeling and the appearance of superiority are kept up.
Everything external to the group and not participating in its illusion
of supremacy must be _kept_ external to it. The belief which the
nation itself assumes in regard to its virtue must be demanded from
all outsiders with whom the nation has relations of any kind. At least
the forms of the recognition of the claim must be insisted upon. This
is the principle of national honor. It is a defense of certain ideal
or fictitious values in which nations insist that others should
recognize these claims and values. National honor is an artifice for
defending a claim to superiority and concealing an actual inferiority,
and it relates to values which, in general, do not