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What, Really, Is Patriotism?
By Margaret Deland
July 1916
I might as well confess at once that I would not drink to Decatur’s toast: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” On the contrary, I believe of my native land, when it comes to toasts, that they
“… best honor her
Who honor in her only what is best.”
And yet I do not think I am one of those persons with
“… soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!”
But whether I may be called patriotic depends upon what patriotism, in a democracy, means. Does it involve the abrogation of individual judgment and, coincidentally, individual conscience? Is a man unpatriotic who refuses to support his nation with voice and sword when, in his judgment, she is doing wrong? Is he patriotic when he does so support her? The definition of the word patriotism does not answer these questions; the dictionary sums it up in those master words of human life — love and service: “Patriotism: Love of country; the passion inspiring one to serve one’s country.” But this only removes the difficulty by one step, because of course the question arises, what do we mean by “country”?
The eagle screams, or the lion roars; the citizen boasts; the tourist sees his colors in a foreign land, and his throat tightens — all for love of — something. The train full of Americans who swarmed out of their cars in Germany a year ago last August [1914, the start of World War I], to stand on the platform of a railroad station and, reaching up trembling hands, touch the American flag, the tears wet upon their faces, loved and were ready to serve — something. Just what is it that rouses such poignantly true emotion?
Of course it is not the land — the earth; not
“… thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills.”
Is it, then, the people who dwell in the land? It appears not, because the man who so loves his country that he would die for her has not the slightest impulse to die for an unknown fellow citizen. The woman who wept when she touched the flag never dreams of serving her next-door neighbor. No one would say of any other individual, merely because he was a fellow countryman: “This person, right or wrong! I will love and serve this man, or even this group of men, whose course is opposed to all I call right.”
“Country,” then, is not the land, nor the people who live in it — the good, bad, stupid, vulgar folk all about us — ourselves, in fact. And if patriotism does not mean love and service of the people of the nation, it cannot mean love and service of the nation of people — the aggregation of fellow citizens. If they were all blotted out but one man, his country would remain!
Now the only things in the world which always remain, which cannot be annihilated, and to which a man may dedicate himself, his soul and body, in reasonable and living sacrifice, are ideas. So I think that, in its last analysis, country, to any man, of any nation, is an idea. It prompts to deeds — golden deeds of courage and self-sacrifice and aspiration; and, as the years and generations pass, these deeds build themselves into that vast edifice of nationality, rounded with the dome of many-colored glass, in which the spirits of men are sheltered.
It is interesting to see how, under each nation, lies its own idea — good or bad — its cornerstone for the edifice of life. The very old nations are permanent only as their ideas are permanent: China continues to be China because of ancestor worship; India, broken into bits, invaded and conquered by another nation, coheres and is still India because of the idea of caste. The idea that has made England England is liberty; and until liberty is dead England will live. In the delirium of 1792 old France died with the ceasing of its old ideas — and a new idea, Equality, was born. The idea of the United States is Democracy [actually, it's supposed to be liberty].
If we concede country to be, not us, with our blunders and trivialities and egotisms, but the idea that has made us a nation, it seems to me possible for a man to call himself patriotic and yet repudiate the conduct of his countrymen. That is what a certain English officer did at the time of the Boer War. He was one of many Englishmen who thought England wrong — so wrong that he did his best to thwart her wicked purpose, to save her from herself. He entered the Boer Army. That last is unthinkable to me; I could refuse to fight for my nation, but I could not fight against her; her soul might go; perhaps she might be spiritually dead; but to fight her would be like striking a dead face which once I had kissed! Yet certainly it took courage for this soldier to turn his sword against England; it took love; it meant service. And, also, it meant the utmost arrogance of judgment. The mugwump is always arrogant — the group mind says so. When the single fish swims against the school no doubt all the rest of the fish say, “Bosh!” and call him a traitor; but who can say that the perverse and conceited minnow may not have, somewhere in his dim brain, a vision to which he dare not be disobedient? I don’t mean to deduce from this that the rebel is necessarily a patriot; he is just as apt, perhaps more apt, to be a self-seeker. But certainly the patriot is sometimes a rebel.
History is full of passionate minnows who in their agony of conscience earn, while they are alive, the name “traitor,” and when they die are called “Patriot.” Charles Fox was patriotic when, loving liberty, he denounced the English Government for its attempt to coerce the American Colonies, and was called an enemy of England. Zola was patriotic when he cried out, “I accuse!” — and instantly, with “A bas Zola!” the people, in a hurricane of rage, roared hatred of the traitor and denial of the creating idea of France — Equality. As for our idea — that idea for which
“… the embattl’d farmers …
… fired the shot heard round the world” —
when we, the people, have trailed it in the dust of apish imitation of the undemocracy of foreign countries, of commercial selfishness, of cheap Fourth-of-July militarism, there have always been single voices crying in the wilderness, single “traitors” who bade us remember our inheritance from the fathers and save our soul (which is Democracy) alive! We have done our best to stifle these patriots, even to the extent of dragging them through the streets of Boston with ropes about their necks. Yet in spite of such things, in spite of us, and our betraying majorities, America’s creating idea still survives, and is something to love and serve, to live and die for!
Of course the “betraying” majorities” — or what I like to call the Group Mind — brings to the individual mind puzzling questions about duty. I suppose that in every national crisis men ask themselves whether patriotism means loyalty to parties and governments. If it does, then, as Johnson said, patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel. Faithfulness to country must sometimes involve unfaithfulness to countrymen. The patriot must denounce the government when he thinks it betrays the creating idea; he may even refuse to serve it. If he does otherwise; if, seeing what he thinks is right, he pursues the wrong — if “Faith, unfaithful, keeps him falsely true” — then he is loyal, not to country, not to principles, but to persons; for parties and majorities are only persons. It is that kind of loyalty—that small conception of patriotism — which has wrought evil and suffering in the world, and is the deep cause and root of the awful irrationality called war.
So I come back to my belief that Decatur’s speech is an insult to intelligence and morality, and that his patriotism was no deeper than his wine glass! I believe of
THE PATRIOT AND HIS COUNTY —
Lover he is, and slave without wage!
On bended knee he takes her high command
And on his heart he wears her glowing gage —
Memories, and hopes, and deaths from her dear hand.
But should her lips betray her mighty past,
Deny his Dead their deaths for Liberty,
Shame the unborn, put first what should be last —
Her Lover loves me no more! Her slave is free!
