h."
Let us here highly resolve that there shall be uttered a new official
interpretation of national honor and vital interests, an
interpretation synonymous with dignity and fidelity, sincerity, and
integrity, and confidence in the vows both of men and of nations. "If
we have 'faith in the right as God gives us to see the right,' we
shall catch a vision of opportunity that shall fire the soul with a
spirit of service which the darkness of night shall not arrest, which
the course of the day shall not weary."

THE EVOLUTION OF PATRIOTISM

By PAUL B. BLANSHARD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

First Prize Oration in the Central Group Contest, 1913, and in the
National Contest held at Mohonk Lake, May 15, 1913

THE EVOLUTION OF PATRIOTISM

Robert Southey has asked through the lips of a little child the
greatest peace question that the world has known. He pictures a summer
evening on the old battlefield of Blenheim. On a chair before his
vine-clad cottage sat old Kaspar while his grandchildren, Wilhelmine
and Peterkin, played on the lawn. Suddenly Peterkin from a nearby
brook unearthed a skull and, running, brought it to Kaspar's knee. The
old man took the gruesome thing from the boy, and told him that this
had been the head of a man killed in the great battle of Blenheim.
Then little Wilhelmine looked up into her grandfather's face and said:

"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."

Here we have the central question in the problem of war. Why do men
fight? Through the answer to that question lies the path to
world-peace.

Few men fight to-day for glory. Modern militarism has no place for
Lancelots and Galahads. The glory of the regiment has absorbed the
glory of the individual. Few men fight to-day to gain great wealth.
The treasures that glittered before Pizarro do not tempt our soldiers.
Material wealth is more easily won in factory or farm or mill. Few men
fight to-day for religion. The conquest of religion has become a
conquest of peace; the very ideal of peace is an end of religion
itself. Glory, wealth, religion--these are no longer the causes of
war. Then why do men fight? The answer is obvious. Men fight to-day
for patriotism. Patriotism is the cause of war.

The next step in our reasoning is more difficult. If patriotism is the
cause of war, how shall we treat the cause to destroy the result?
Shall we attempt to abolish patriotism as Tolstoy would have u