who possess it to aim at benefiting their own country or nation at the expense of every other—an inclination exactly at variance with the fundamental moral law, which all admit "Do not unto others as you would not wish them to do unto you."
Patriotism may have been a virtue in the ancient world when it compelled men to serve the highest idea of those days,—the fatherland. But how can patriotism be a virtue in these days when it requires of men an ideal exactly opposite to that of our religion and morality—an admission not of the equality and fraternity of all men but of the dominance of one country or nations over all others? But not only is this sentiment no virtue in our times, but it is indubitably a vice; for this sentiment of patriotism cannot now exist, because there is neither material nor moral foundation for its conception.
Patriotism might have had some meaning in the ancient world, more or less uniform in composition, professing one national faith and subject to the unrestrained authority of its great and adored sovereign representing as it were, an island in an ocean of barbarians who sought to overflow it.
It is conceivable that in such circumstances patriotism—the desire of protection from barbarian assault, ready not only to destroy the social order, but threatening it with plunder, slaughter, captivity, slavery, and the violation of its women—was a natural feeling: and it is conceivable that men, in order to defend themselves and their fellow-countrymen, might prefer their own nation to any other, and cherish a feeling of hatred towards the surrounding barbarians, and destroy them for self-protection.
But what significance can this feeling have in these Christian days?
On what grounds and for what reason can a man of our time follow this example—a Russian, for instance, kill Frenchmen; or a Frenchman, Germans—when he is well aware, however uneducated he may be, that the men of the country or nation against whom his patriotic animosity is excited are no barbarians, but men. Christians, like himself, often of the same faith as himself, and, like him, desirous of peace and the peaceful interchange of labour; and besides, bound to him, for the most part, either by the interest of a common effort, or by mercantile or spiritual endeavours, or even by both ? So that very often people of one
