There is an instinctive and usually
unconscious sense of a common purpose animating the members of a
nation. This becomes especially vivid when there is war or a danger
of war. Any one who, at such a time, stands out against the orders of
his government feels an inner conflict quite different from any that
he would feel in standing out against the orders of a foreign
government in whose power he might happen to find himself. If he
stands out, he does so with some more or less conscious hope that his
government may in time come to think as he does; whereas, in standing
out against a foreign government, no such hope is necessary. This
group instinct, however it may have arisen, is what constitutes a
nation, and what makes it important that the boundaries of nations
should also be the boundaries of states.
National sentiment is a fact, and should be taken account of by
institutions. When it is ignored, it is intensified and becomes a
source of strife. It can only be rendered harmless by being given
free play, so long as it is not predatory. But it is not, in itself,
a good or admirable feeling. There is nothing rational and nothing
desirable in a limitation of sympathy which confines it to a fragment
of the human race. Diversities of manners and customs and traditions
are, on the whole, a good thing, since they enable different nations
to produce different types of excellence.
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