Christianity and Patriotism
interests of their lives are utterly apart from national political interests. It is always a matter of complete indifference to a man of the people where a frontier is drawn, and even to what Government he has to pay taxes and for which army to give up his sons. But it is always of very great consequence for him to know how much tax he will have to pay, whether the military service will last long, whether he pay for his land over many years, and has to whether he will earn much for his work—all questions that are quite apart from national political interests. That is how it is that—in spite of the vigorous efforts made by Governments to develop in their peoples the patriotism that is not innate in them, and to suppress in their peoples the ideas of socialism that are developing among them—socialism is spreading more and more widely among the masses of the people, while patriotism, so carefully nursed by the Governments, far from being absorbed by the people, is disappearing more and more, and is only maintained in the upper classes, to whom it is profitable. When it does happen that patriotism takes possession of the crowd, as it has done recently in Paris, this is only when the masses are subjected to the intense hypnotic influence of the Governments and ruling classes, and the patriotism is kept up in the people only so long as that in- fluence is maintained.
