ire and greatness, it importeth most, that
a nation do profess arms, as their principal honour, study,
and occupation. For the things which we formerly have spoken
of are but habilitations towards arms; and what is
habitation without intention and act?... It is so plain that
a man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth
not to be stood upon. It is enough to point at it; that no
nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look to
have greatness fall into their mouths.

A state, therefore, 'ought to have those laws or customs, which may
reach forth unto them just occasions of war.' Shakespeare's 'Henry V'
has been not unreasonably recommended by the Germans as 'good
war-reading.' It would be easy to compile a _catena_ of bellicose maxims
from our literature, reaching down to the end of the 19th century. The
change is perhaps due less to progress in morality than to that
political good sense which has again and again steered our ship through
dangerous rocks. But there has been some real advance, in all civilised
countries. We do not find that men talked about the 'bankruptcy of
Christianity' during the Napoleonic campaigns. Even the Germans think it
necessary to tell each other that it was Belgium who began this war.

But, though pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation
of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with
these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of noble and ignoble
sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the
moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes,
that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands
for something intrinsically great and valuable. Where this conviction is
absent we cannot speak of patriotism, but only of the cohesion of a
wolf-pack. The Greeks, who at last perished because they could not
combine, had nevertheless a consciousness that they were the trustees
of civilisation against barbarism; and in their day of triumph over the
Persians they were filled, for a time, with an almost Jewish awe in
presence of the righteous judgment of God. The 'Persae' of AEschylus is
one of the noblest of patriotic poems. The Romans, a harder and coarser
race, had their ideal of _virtus_ and _gravitas_, which included
simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry,
and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that