Christianity and Patriotism
some patriotic function and drinking healths and making flattering speeches to people whom one does not like and with whom one has nothing in common? Or, indeed, what is there of importance in admitting in conversation the usefulness and value of treaties and alliances, or even of remaining silent when one's own nation and state is praised and other nationalities are abused and slandered; or when Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, or some ruler or hero of war, such as Napoleon, or Peter, or in our own day Boulanger or Skobelev, is praised up to the skies?
All this seems to be of so little consequence. And yet in these actions that seem to us of little consequence—in our refraining from taking part in them, in our pointing out to the limit of our powers the unreasonableness of what we see clearly to be unreasonable-in this lies our great irresistible power, that power out of which is formed that invincible force which makes up the real living public opinion, that opinion which, moving of itself, moves all humanity. Governments know this and tremble before that force, and with all the means at their disposal try to resist it or gain possession of it.
They know that strength lies not in force but in thought and the clear expression of it, and therefore they fear the expression of independent thought more than an army; they
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