is deemed an enemy of his country. A patriot, in
the contemporary sense of the word, loves both what is good and what is
bad in his country; he is ready to do evil for the sake of his country;
carried away by the stream of mass suggestion, he is positively eager to
do evil for his country's sake. The weaker a man's character, the more
inflammatory his patriotism. He has no power to resist collective
suggestion; and is indeed passionately attracted by it, for every weak
man looks for others' support, and believes himself stronger if he does
what others are doing. Now, these persons of weak character have no
common bond of profound culture. What they need to unite them is an
external bond, and what can suit them better than national feeling!
"Every blockhead," writes Nicolai, "feels several inches taller if he
and a few dozen millions of his kind can only unite to form a
majority.... The fewer independent personalities a nation possesses, the
fiercer is that nation's patriotism."

This mass attraction, which works like a magnet, is the positive side of
jingoism. The negative side is hatred of foreign countries. War is the
biological culture-medium. War hurls upon the world sufferings mountain
high; it crushes the world by material and spiritual privations. If
people are to endure it, there must be a supreme exaltation of mass
sentiment, to support the weak by herding them more closely together.
This is artificially effected by the newspaper press. The result is
appalling. Patriotism concentrates all the energies of the human mind
upon love for one's own country and upon hatred for the enemy. Hatred
becomes a religion. Hatred without reason, without common sense, and
absolutely without foundation. No room is left for any other faculty.
Intelligence and morality have abdicated. Nicolai quotes a number of
almost incredible examples from the Germany of 1914 and 1915, and
equally striking instances could be given in the case of every
belligerent nation. There was no resistance to these suggestions. In
the collective aberration, all differences of class, education,
intellectual or moral value, are reduced to one level; all are
equalised. The entire human race, from base to summit, is delivered over
to the Furies. If the least sparkle of free will shows itself, it is
trampled under foot, and the isolated independent is torn to pieces as
Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes.

But this frenzy does not disturb the calm vi