But in national feeling
there is always latent or explicit an element of hostility to
foreigners. National feeling, as we know it, could not exist in a
nation which was wholly free from external pressure of a hostile kind.
And group feeling produces a limited and often harmful kind of
morality. Men come to identify the good with what serves the
interests of their own group, and the bad with what works against
those interests, even if it should happen to be in the interests of
mankind as a whole. This group morality is very much in evidence
during war, and is taken for granted in men's ordinary thought.
Although almost all Englishmen consider the defeat of Germany
desirable for the good of the world, yet nevertheless most of them
honor a German for fighting for his country, because it has not
occurred to them that his actions ought to be guided by a morality
higher than that of the group.
A man does right, as a rule, to have his thoughts more occupied with
the interests of his own nation than with those of others, because his
actions are more likely to affect his own nation. But in time of war,
and in all matters which are of equal concern to other nations and to
his own, a man ought to take account of the universal welfare, and not
allow his survey to be limited by the interest, or supposed interest,
of his own group or nation.
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