PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT 247
to be in trouble, or become weak, in order to tear him to pieces with as little risk as possible.
All the peoples of the so-called Christian world have been reduced by patriotism to such a state of brutality, that not only those who are obliged to kill or be killed desire slaughter and rejoice in murder, but all the people of Europe and America, living peaceably in their homes exposed to no danger, are, at each war — thanks to easy means of communication and to the press — in the position of the spectators in a Roman circus, and, like them, delight in the slaughter, and raise the bloodthirsty cry, ' Pollice verso.'*
Not adults only, but also children, pure, wise chil- dren, rejoice, according to their nationality, when they hear that the number killed and lacerated by lyddite or other shells on some particular day was not 700 but 1,000 Englishmen or Boers.
And parents (I know such cases) encourage their children in such brutality.
But that is not all. Every increase in the army of one nation (and each nation, being in danger, seeks to increase its army for patriotic reasons) obliges its neigh- bours to increase their armies, also from patriotism, and this evokes a fresh increase by the first nation.
And the same thing occurs with fortifications and navies : one State has built ten ironclads, a neighbour builds eleven ; then the first builds twelve, and so on to infinity.
^ril pinch you,' ' And I'll punch your head.' ^ And ril stab you with a dagger.' ^ And I'll bludgeon you.' 'And ni shoot you.' . . . Only bad children, drunken men, or animals, quarrel or fight so, but yet it is just what is going on among the highest representatives of the most enlightened Governments, the very men who undertake to direct the education and the morality of their subjects.
- Pollice verso ('thumb down') was the sign given in
the Roman amphitheatres by the spectators who wished a defeated gladiator to be slain.
