wickedness. For true patriotism, although like all
passionate emotion it involves a certain mental distortion, a slight
disturbance of the rational orbit, is yet one of those happy diseases
which relieve the colourlessness of strict normality. It is a magic, a
glamour, of the nature of personal affection, which only great poetry
can fully express, and volumes of bad poetry cannot quite destroy. It
has besides a real political value, binding the State together, and
giving it a stronger moral coherence than can be attained by any legal
or constitutional authority; a fact that is illustrated by those
distressful countries in which its limits are not conterminous with the
political boundaries of the State. I am inclined to think that just
because true patriotism is of the nature of a personal affection, it is
an emotion that cannot be inspired by an empire, any more than personal
affection can be inspired by a corporation or a joint-stock company.[14]
Certainly Imperialism more often gives rise to a sentimental worship of
force and a certain promiscuous lust for mere extension of territory
which are quite alien to the steady devotion of the patriot to the land
he knows.[15]

Unless one be a poet, it is difficult, as may perhaps be gathered from
the preceding paragraph, sufficiently to praise genuine patriotism
without falling into vague rhetoric. But I submit that there is nothing
to show that this political emotion is created, stimulated, or even
discovered by war. Actually it seems that the reverse is the case, if
one may judge by the fact that war is invariably accompanied by an
overwhelming outbreak of every spurious form of patriotism that was ever
invented by the devil to make an honest man ashamed of his country. True
patriotism is a calm and lovely orientation of the spirit towards the
vital beauty of England. It has no noisy manifestations and consequently
one may not be able to find it among the crowds who shout most loudly
for war.

One finds instead a sort of violent fever and calenture which not merely
deflects, as any emotion may, but totally inhibits the rational
operations of the mind. The newspapers supply a legion of witnesses.

Thus the _Evening Standard_ perorates against some pacificist lecturer
(who had attempted to clear his views from all sorts of
misrepresentations) with the magnificent comment that he had not
"repudiated his remarks as to the pleasure which the tune of the
Austrian National Anth