r freedom, the sense of liberty, the
colonial spirit of comradeship and devotion to common cause, the ideal
of an abundant and enthusiastic life. Merely becoming conscious of
these and observing their meaning and their place in our national life
is in itself a large contribution to the sources out of which
patriotism may be drawn. _When our patriotism is sincere enough so
that we shall be milling to sacrifice for country our religious
intolerance and bigotry, our social antipathies, and our industrial
advantages, we shall have a morale which for peace or for war will be
wholly sufficient._

Must our ambition be to teach American children that American ways are
the best, and that these ways ought to be established in the world?
There is both an evil and a good, both an absurdity and a sublime
loyalty in the view which all nations have, that their own culture and
life are the best. This conceit is in part a product of isolation, and
is pure provincialism. But it is also of the very essence of the
reality feeling and the sense of solidarity of peoples and of their
loyalty to country. It must not be dealt with too ruthlessly. There is
a primitive stratum of it that must remain in all peoples. Nations,
however benighted, will not be dispossessed of this idea, but
experience and education will make nations more discriminating so that
they can at least see what is essential and what is superficial in
their own characteristics. Certainly whatever is ethical in our
foundations we, and all other peoples, will be expected to hold to. We
feel it a duty to spread our moral truth abroad and our mores are
necessarily right for us, and this idea of rightness of mores must
imply a desire to make them prevail in the world. We may recognize,
abstractly, other standards of conduct, but there is something in
moral belief which, of course, cannot voluntarily be changed, and
which must stand for the ultimately real in consciousness so long as
it is held to be so by the mass of the people. This must extend also
to aesthetic standards, and to all final judgments of values to some
extent.

For these reasons we must suppose that the spirit of competition among
nations, certainly so far as it concerns the ambition for empires of
the spirit, must remain. Belief on the part of a people in the
superiority of their own culture cannot and should not be eliminated.
By this spirit the good, we may be sure, will prevail, but prevail
only through opposi