' No doubt if a decent man's mother took to drink
he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be
in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or
not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery.
What we really need for the frustration and overthrow of a deaf and
raucous Jingoism is a renascence of the love of the native land. When
that comes, all shrill cries will cease suddenly. For the first of all
the marks of love is seriousness: love will not accept sham bulletins or
the empty victory of words. It will always esteem the most candid
counsellor the best. Love is drawn to truth by the unerring magnetism of
agony; it gives no pleasure to the lover to see ten doctors dancing with
vociferous optimism round a death-bed.
We have to ask, then, Why is it that this recent movement in England,
which has honestly appeared to many a renascence of patriotism, seems to
us to have none of the marks of patriotism--at least, of patriotism in
its highest form? Why has the adoration of our patriots been given
wholly to qualities and circumstances good in themselves, but
comparatively material and trivial:--trade, physical force, a skirmish
at a remote frontier, a squabble in a remote continent? Colonies are
things to be proud of, but for a country to be only proud of its
extremities is like a man being only proud of his legs.
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