Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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Europeans are, in fact, far from having made up their minds as to what
is the organic whole towards which patriotic sentiment ought to be
directed. Socialism agrees with despotism in saying, 'It is the
political aggregate, the state,' however much they may differ as to how
the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and
state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in
exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical
_enclave_; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual
liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country' is not
an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless abstraction,
which as a rule only materialises as a drill-sergeant or a
tax-collector. Enthusiasm for it, and not only for what can be got out
of it, does not extend much beyond the Fabian Society. Caesarism has the
great advantage of a visible head, as well as of its appeal to very old
and strong thought-habits; and accordingly, in any national crisis,
loyalty to the War-lord is likely to show unexpected strength, and
doctrinaire socialism unexpected weakness.

But devotion to the head of the state in his representative capacity is
a different thing from the old feudal loyalty. It is far more
impersonal; the ruler, whether an individual or a council, is reverenced
as a non-human and non-moral embodiment of the national power, a sort of
Platonic idea of coercive authority. This kind of loyalty may very
easily be carried too far. In reality, we are members of a great many
'social organisms,' each of which has indefeasible claims upon us. Our
family, our circle of acquaintance, our business or profession, our
church, our country, the comity of civilised nations, humanity at large,
are all social organisms; and some of the chief problems of ethics are
concerned with the adjustment of their conflicting claims. To make any
one of these absolute is destructive of morality. But militarism and
socialism deliberately make the state absolute. In internal affairs this
may lead to the ruthless oppression of individuals or whole classes; in
external relations it produces wars waged with 'methods of barbarism.'
The whole idea of the state as an organism, which has been emphasised by
social reformers as a theoretical refutation of selfish individualism,
rests on the abuse of a metaphor. The bond between the dwellers in the
same political area is far less close than that between the organs of a
living body. Every man has a life of his own, and some purely personal
rights; he has, moreover, moral links with other human associations,
outside his own country, and important moral duties towards them. No one
who reflects on the solidarity of interests among capitalists, among
hand-workers, or, in a different way, among scholars and artists, all
over the world, can fail to see that the apotheosis of the state,
whether in the interest of war or of revolution, is an anachronism and
an absurdity.

A very different basis for patriotic sentiment is furnished by the
scientific or pseudo-scientific theories about race, which have become
very popular in our time. When the history of ideas in the 20th century
comes to be written, it is certain that among the causes of this great
war will be named the belief of the Germans in the superiority of their
own race, based on certain historical and ethnological theories which
have acted like a heady wine in stimulating the spirit of aggression
among them. The theory, stated briefly, is that the shores of the Baltic
are the home of the finest human type that has yet existed, a type
distinguished by blond hair, great physical strength, unequalled mental
vigour and ability, superior morality, and an innate aptitude for
governing and improving inferior races. Unfortunately for the world,
this noble stock cannot flourish for very long in climates unlike its
own; but from the earliest historical times it has 'swarmed'
periodically, subjugating the feebler peoples of the south, and
elevating them for a time above the level which they were naturally
fitted to reach. Wherever we find marked energy and nobleness of
character, we may suspect Aryan blood; and history will usually support
our surmise. Among the great men who were certainly or probably Germans
were Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, the Founder of Christianity, Dante, and
Shakespeare. The blond Nordic giant is fulfilling his mission by
conquering and imposing his culture upon other races. They ought to be
grateful to him for the service, especially as it has a sacrificial
aspect, the lower types having, at least in their own climates, greater
power of survival.

This fantastic theory has been defended in a large number of German
books, of which the 'Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' by the
renegade Englishman Houston Chamberlain, is the most widely known. The
objections to it are numerous. It is notorious that until the invention
of gunpowder the settled and civilised peoples of Europe were in
frequent danger from bands of hardier mountaineers, forest-dwellers, or
pastoral nomads, who generally came from the north. But the formidable
fighting powers of these marauders were no proof of intrinsic
superiority. In fact, the most successful of these conquerors, if
success is measured by the amount of territory overrun and subdued, were
not the 'great blond beasts' of Nietzsche, but yellow monsters with
black hair, the Huns and Tartars.[9] The causes of Tartar ascendancy had
not the remotest connection with any moral or intellectual qualities
which we can be expected to admire. Nor can the Nordic race, well
endowed by nature as it undoubtedly is, prove such a superiority as this
theory claims for it. Some of the largest brains yet measured have been
those of Japanese; and the Jews have probably a higher average of
ability than the Teutons. Again, the Germans are not descended from a
pure Nordic stock. The Northern type can be best studied in Scandinavia,
where the people share with the Irish the distinction of being the
handsomest race in the world. The German is a mixture of various
anatomical types, including, in some parts, distinct traces of Mongolian
blood, which indicate that the raiding Huns meddled, according to their
custom, with the German women, and bequeathed to a section of the nation
the Turanian cheek-bones, as well as certain moral characteristics.
Lastly, the German race has never shown much aptitude for governing and
assimilating other peoples. The French, by virtue of their greater
sympathy, are far more successful.

The French have their own form of this pseudo-science in their doctrine
of the persistence of national characteristics. Each nation may be
summed up in a formula: England, for example, is 'the country of will.'
A few instances may, no doubt, be quoted in support of this theory.
Julius Caesar said: 'Duas res plerasque Gallia industriosissime
prosequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui'; and these are still the
characteristics of our gallant allies. And Madame de Stael may be
thought to have hit off the German character very cleverly about the
time when Bismarck first saw the light. 'The Germans are vigorously
submissive. They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the
least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear
which transforms that respect into admiration.' But the fact remains
that the characters of nations frequently change, or rather that what we
call national character is usually only the policy of the governing
class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which
climate, geographical position, and other external causes have made
necessary for the inhabitants of a country.

To found patriotism on homogeneity of race is no wiser than to bound it
by frontier lines. As the Abbe Noel has lately written about his own
country, Belgium,

the race is not the nation. The nation is not a
physiological fact; it is a moral fact. What constitutes a
nation is the community of sentiments and ideals which
results from a common history and education. The variations
of the cephalic index are here of no great importance. The
essential factor of the national consciousness resides in a
certain common mode of conceiving the conditions of the
social life.

Belgium, the Abbe maintains, has found this national consciousness amid
her sufferings; there are no longer any distinctions between
French-speaking Belgians and Walloons or Flemings. This is in truth the
real base of patriotism. It is the basis of our own love for our
country. What Britain stands for is what Britain is. We have long known
in our hearts what Britain stands for; but we have now been driven to
search our thoughts and make our ideals explicit to ourselves and
others. The Englishman has become a philosopher _malgre lui_, 'Whatever
the world thinks,' writes Bishop Berkeley. 'he who hath not much
meditated upon God, the human soul, and the _summum bonum_, may possibly
make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry
patriot and a sorry statesman.' These words, which were quoted by Mr.
Arthur Balfour a few years ago, may seem to make a large demand on the
average citizen; but in our quiet way we have all been meditating on
these things since last August, and we know pretty well what our _summum
bonum_ is for our country. We believe in chivalry and fair play and
kindliness--these things first and foremost; and we believe, if not
exactly in democracy, yet in a government under which a man may think
and speak the thing he wills. We do not believe in war, and we do not
believe in bullying. We do not flatter ourselves that we are the
supermen; but we are convinced that the ideas which we stand for, and
which we have on the whole tried to carry out, are essential to the
peaceful progress and happiness of humanity; and for these ideas we have
drawn the sword. The great words of Abraham Lincoln have been on the
lips of many and in the hearts of all since the beginning of the great
contest: 'With malice towards none; with charity for all: with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right--let us strive on to
finish the work we are in.'

Patriotism thus spiritualised and moralised is the true patriotism.
When the emotion is once set in its right relations to the whole of
human life and to all that makes human life worth living, it cannot
become an immoral obsession. It is certain to become an immoral
obsession if it is isolated and made absolute. We have seen the
appalling perversion--the methodical diabolism--which this obsession has
produced in Germany. It has startled us because we thought that the
civilised world had got beyond such insanity; but it is of course no new
thing. Machiavelli said, 'I prefer my country to the salvation of my
soul'--a sentiment which sounds noble but is not; it has only a
superficial resemblance to St. Paul's willingness to be 'accursed' for
the sake of his countrymen. Devil-worship remains what it was, even when
the idol is draped in the national flag. This obsession may be in part a
survival from savage conditions, when all was at stake in every feud;
but chiefly it is an example of the idealising and universalising power
of the imagination, which turns every unchecked passion into a
monomania. The only remedy is, as Lowell's Hosea Biglow reminds us, to
bear in mind that

our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to
ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like.
Our terrestrial organisations are but far-off approaches to
so fair a model; and all they are verily traitors who resist
not any attempt to divert them from this their original
intendment. Our true country is bounded on the north and the
south, on the east and west, by Justice, and when she
oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a
hair's breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses
rather to be looked upon _quasi noverca_.

So Socrates said that the wise man will be a citizen of his true city,
of which the type is laid up in heaven, and only conditionally of his
earthly country.

The obsession of patriotism is not the only evil which we have to
consider. We may err by defect as well as by excess. Herbert Spencer
speaks of an 'anti-patriotic bias'; and it can hardly be disputed that
many Englishmen who pride themselves on their lofty morality are
suffering from this mental twist. The malady seems to belong to the
Anglo-Saxon constitution, for it is rarely encountered in other
countries, while we had a noisy pro-Napoleonic faction a hundred years
ago, and the Americans had their 'Copperheads' in the Northern States
during the civil war. In our own day, every enemy of England, from the
mad Mullah to the mad Kaiser, has had his advocates at home; and the
champions of Boer and Boxer, of Afridi and Afrikander, of the Mahdi and
the Matabele, have been usually the same persons. The English, it would
appear, differ from other misguided rascals in never being right even by
accident. But the idiosyncrasy of a few persons is far less important
than the comparative insensibility of whole classes to the patriotic
appeal, except when war is actually raging. This is not specially
characteristic of our own country. The German Emperor has complained of
his Social Democrats as 'people without a fatherland'; and the cry 'A
bas la patrie' has been heard in France.

It is usual to explain this attitude by the fact that the manual workers
'have no stake in the country,' and might not find their condition
altered for the worse by subjection to a foreign power. A few of our
working-men have given colour to this charge by exclaiming petulantly
that they could not be worse off under the Germans; but in this they
have done themselves and their class less than justice. The
anti-militarism and cosmopolitanism of the masses in every country is a
profoundly interesting fact, a problem which demands no superficial
investigation. It is one result of that emancipation from traditional
ideas, which makes the most important difference between the upper and
middle classes on the one side and the lower on the other. We lament
that the working-man takes but little interest in Christianity, and rack
our brains to discover what we have done to discredit our religion in
his eyes. The truth is that Christianity, as a dogmatic and
ecclesiastical system, is unintelligible without a very considerable
knowledge of the conditions under which it took shape. But what are the
ancient Hebrews, and the Greeks and Romans, to the working-man? He is
simply cut off from the means of reading intelligently any book of the
Bible, or of understanding how the institution called the Catholic
Church, and its offshoots, came to exist. As our staple education
becomes more 'modern' and less literary, the custodians of organised
religion will find their difficulties increasing. But the same is true
about patriotism. Love of country means pride in the past and ambition
for the future. Those who live only in the present are incapable of it.
But our working-man knows next to nothing about the past history of
England; he has scarcely heard of our great men, and has read few of our
great books. It is not surprising that the appeal to patriotism leaves
him cold. This is an evil that has its proper remedy. There is no reason
why a sane and elevated love of country should not be stimulated by
appropriate teaching in our schools. In America this is done--rather
hysterically; and in Germany--rather brutally. The Jews have always made
their national history a large part of their education, and even of
their religion. Nothing has helped them more to retain their
self-consciousness as a nation. Ignorance of the past and indifference
to the future usually go together. Those who most value our historical
heritage will be most desirous to transmit it unimpaired.

But the absence of traditional ideas is by no means an unmixed evil. The
working-man sees more clearly than the majority of educated persons the
absurdity of international hatred and jealousy. He is conscious of
greater solidarity with his own class in other European countries than
with the wealthier class in his own; and as he approaches the whole
question without prejudice, he cannot fail to realise how large a part
of the product of labour is diverted from useful purposes by modern
militarism. International rivalry is in his eyes one of the most serious
obstacles to the abolition of want and misery. Tolstoy hardly
exaggerates when he says: 'Patriotism to the peoples represents only a
frightful future; the fraternity of nations seems an ideal more and more
accessible to humanity, and one which humanity desires.' Military glory
has very little attraction for the working-man. His humanitarian
instincts appear to be actually stronger than those of the sheltered
classes. To take life in any circumstances seems to him a shocking
thing; and the harsh procedure of martial law and military custom is
abhorrent to him. He sees no advantage and no credit in territorial
aggrandisement, which he suspects to be prompted mainly by the desire to
make money unjustly. He is therefore a convinced pacificist; though his
doctrine of human brotherhood breaks down ignominiously when he finds
his economic position threatened by the competition of cheap foreign
labour. If an armed struggle ever takes place between the nations of
Europe (or their colonists) and the yellow races, it will be a
working-man's war. But on the whole, the best hope of getting rid of
militarism may lie in the growing power of the working class. The poor,
being intensely gregarious and very susceptible to all collective
emotions, are still liable to fits of warlike excitement. But their real
minds are at present set against an aggressive foreign policy, without
being shut against the appeals of a higher patriotism.

And yet the irritation which is felt against preachers of the
brotherhood of man is not without justification. Some persons who
condemn patriotism are simply lacking in public spirit, or their loyalty
is monopolised by some fad or 'cause,' which is a poor substitute for
love of country. The man who has no prejudices in favour of his own
family and his own country is generally an unamiable creature. So we
need not condemn Moliere for saying, 'L'ami du genre humain n'est pas du
tout mon fait,' nor Brunetiere for declaring that 'Ni la nature ni
l'histoire n'ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous freres.' But
French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all the
'ideas of 1789,' seems to have adopted the most ferocious kind of
chauvinism. M. Paul Bourget wrote the other day in the _Echo de Paris_,
'This war must be the first of many, since we cannot exterminate
sixty-five million Germans in a single campaign!' The women and children
too! This is not the way to revive the religion of Christ in France.

The practical question for the future is whether there is any prospect
of returning, under more favourable auspices, to the unrealised ideal
of the Middle Ages--an agreement among the nations of Europe to live
amicably under one system of international law and right, binding upon
all, and with the consciousness of an intellectual and spiritual unity
deeper than political divisions. 'The nations are the citizens of
humanity,' said Mazzini; and so they ought to be. Some of the omens are
favourable. Militarism has dug its own grave. The great powers increased
their armaments till the burden became insupportable, and have now
rushed into bankruptcy in the hope of shaking it off. In prehistoric
times the lords of creation were certain gigantic lizards, protected by
massive armour-plates which could only be carried by a creature thirty
to sixty feet long. Then they died, when neither earth, air, nor water
could support them any longer. Such must be the end of the European
nations, unless they learn wisdom. The lesson will be brought home to
them by Transatlantic competition. The United States of America had
already, before this war, an initial advantage over the disunited states
of Europe, amounting to at least 10 per cent. on every contract; after
the war this advantage will be doubled. It remains to be seen whether
the next generation will honour the debts which we are piling up.
Disraeli used to complain of what he called 'Dutch finance,' which
consists in 'mortgaging the industry of the future to protect property
in the present.' Pitt paid for the great war of a hundred years ago in
this manner; after a century we are still groaning under the burden of
his loans. We may hear more of the iniquity of 'Dutch finance' when the
democracies of the next generation have a chance of repudiating
obligations which, as they will say, they did not contract. However that
may be, international rivalry is plainly very bad business; and there
are great possibilities in the Hague Tribunal, if, and only if, the
signatories to the conference bind themselves to use force against a
recalcitrant member. The conduct of Germany in this war has shown that
public opinion is powerless to restrain a nation which feels strong
enough to defy it.

Another cause which may give patriots leisure to turn their thoughts
away from war's alarms is that the 'swarming' period of the European
races is coming to an end. The unparalleled increase of population in
the first three quarters of the 19th century has been followed by a
progressive decrease in the birth-rate, which will begin to tell upon
social conditions when the reduction in the death-rate, which has
hitherto kept pace with it, shall have reached its natural limit. Europe
with a stationary population will be in a much happier condition; and
problems of social reform can then be tackled with some hope of success.
Honourable emulation in the arts of life may then take the place of
desperate competition and antagonism. Human lives will begin to have a
positive value, and we may even think it fair to honour our saviours
more than our destroyers. The effects of past follies will then soon be
effaced; for nations recover much more quickly from wars than from
internal disorders. External injuries are rapidly cured; but 'those
wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.' The greatest obstacle to
progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency
to parasitism. The true patriot will keep his eye fixed on this, and
will dread as the state's worst enemies those citizens who at the top
and bottom of the social scale have no other ambition than to hang on
and suck the life-blood of the nation. Great things may be hoped from
the new science of eugenics, when it has passed out of its tentative and
experimental stage.

In the distant future we may reasonably hope that patriotism will be a
sentiment like the loyalty which binds a man to his public school and
university, an affection purged of all rancour and jealousy, a stimulus
to all honourable conduct and noble effort, a part of the poetry of
life. It is so already to many of us, and has been so to the noblest
Englishmen since we have had a literature. If Henry V's speech at
Agincourt is the splendid gasconade of a royal freebooter, there is no
false ring in the scene where John of Gaunt takes leave of his banished
son; nor in Sir Walter Scott's 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,'
etc. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning.' We cannot quite manage to substitute London for Zion in
singing psalms, though there are some in England--Eton, Winchester,
Oxford, Cambridge--which do evoke these feelings. These emotions of
loyalty and devotion are by no means to be checked or despised. They
have an infinite potency for good. In spiritual things there is no
conflict between intensity and expansion. The deepest sympathy is,
potentially, also the widest. He who loves not his home and country
which he has seen, how shall he love humanity in general which he has
not seen? There are, after all, few emotions of which one has less
reason to be ashamed than the little lump in the throat which the
Englishman feels when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of
Dover.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] In his _Introduction to Social Psychology_.

[9] The reasons of their irresistible strength have been
explained in a most brilliant manner by Dr. Peisker in the
first volume of the 'Cambridge Medieval History.'

THE BIRTH-RATE

(1917)

The numbers of every species are determined, not by the procreative
power of its members, which always greatly exceeds the capacity of the
earth to support a progeny increasing in geometrical progression, but by
two factors, the activity of its enemies and the available supply of
food. Those species which survive owe their success in the struggle for
existence mainly to one of two qualities, enormous fertility or parental
care. The female cod spawns about 6,000,000 eggs at a time, of which at
most one-third--perhaps much less--are afterwards fertilised. An
infinitesimal proportion of these escapes being devoured by fish or
fowl. An insect-eating bird is said to require for its support about
250,000 insects a year, and the number of such birds must amount to
thousands of millions. As a rule there is a kind of equilibrium between
the forces of destruction and of reproduction. If a species is nearly
exterminated by its enemies, those enemies lose their food-supply and
perish themselves. In some sheltered spot the survivors of the victims
remain and increase till they begin to send out colonies again. In some
species, such as the mice in La Plata, and the beasts and birds which
devour them, there is an alternation of increase and decrease, to be
accounted for in this way. But permanent disturbances of equilibrium
sometimes occur. The rabbit in Australia, having found a virgin soil,
multiplied for some time almost up to the limit of its natural fertility
and is firmly established on that continent. The brown rat (some say)
has exterminated our black rat and the Maori rat in New Zealand. The
microbe of the terrible disease which the crews of Columbus brought back
to Europe, after causing a devastating epidemic at the end of the
fifteenth century, established a kind of _modus vivendi_ with its hosts,
and has remained as a permanent scourge in Europe. Other microbes, like
those of cholera and plague, emigrate from the lands where they are
endemic, like a horde of Tartars, and after slaying all who are
susceptible disappear from inanition. The draining of the fens has
driven the anopheles mosquito from England, and our countrymen no longer
suffer from 'ague.' Cleanlier habits are banishing the louse and its
accompaniment typhus fever.

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