se of home-bred well-being.

Indeed, well-being is altogether out of the perspective, except as
underpinning for an edifice of national prestige. It is, at least, a
safe generalisation that the patriotic sentiment never has been known to
rise to the consummate pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent on
some work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a contentious
complexion, and finds its full expression in no other outlet than
warlike enterprise; its highest and final appeal is for the death,
damage, discomfort and destruction of the party of the second part.

It is not that the spirit of patriotism will tolerate no other
sentiments bearing on matters of public interest, but only that it will
tolerate none that traverse the call of the national prestige. Like
other men, the patriot may be moved by many and divers other
considerations, besides that of the national prestige; and these other
considerations may be of the most genial and reasonable kind, or they
may also be as foolish and mischievous as any comprised in the range of
human infirmities. He may be a humanitarian given over to the kindliest
solicitude for the common good, or a religious devotee hedged about in
all his motions by the ever present fear of God, or taken up with
artistic, scholarly or scientific pursuits; or, again, he may be a
spendthrift devotee of profane dissipation, whether in the slums or on
the higher levels of gentility, or he may be engaged on a rapacious
quest of gain, as a businessman within the law or as a criminal without
its benefit, or he may spend his best endeavors in advancing the
interests of his class at the cost of the nation at large. All that is
understood as a matter of course and is beside the point. In so far as
he is a complete patriot these other interests will fall away from him
when the one clear call of patriotic duty comes to enlist him in the
cause of the national prestige. There is, indeed, nothing to hinder a
bad citizen being a good patriot; nor does it follow that a good
citizen--in other respects--may not be a very indifferent patriot.

Many and various other preferences and considerations may coincide with
the promptings of the patriotic spirit, and so may come in to coalesce
with and fortify its driving force; and it is usual for patriotic men to
seek support for their patriotic impulses in some reasoned purpose of
this extraneous kind that is believed to be served by following the call
of the n