ational prestige,--it may be a presumptive increase and
diffusion of culture at large, or the spread and enhancement of a
presumptively estimable religious faith, or a prospective liberation of
mankind from servitude to obnoxious masters and outworn institutions;
or, again, it may be the increase of peace and material well-being among
men, within the national frontiers or impartially throughout the
civilised world. There are, substantially, none of the desirable things
in this world that are not so counted on by some considerable body of
patriots to be accomplished by the success of their own particular
patriotic aspirations. What they will not come to an understanding about
is the particular national ascendency with which the attainment of these
admirable ends is conceived to be bound up.

The ideals, needs and aims that so are brought into the patriotic
argument to lend a color of rationality to the patriotic aspiration in
any given case will of course be such ideals, needs and aims as are
currently accepted and felt to be authentic and self-legitimating among
the people in whose eyes the given patriotic enterprise is to find
favor. So one finds that, e.g., among the followers of Islam, devout and
resolute, the patriotic statesman (that is to say the politician who
designs to make use of the popular patriotic fervor) will in the last
resort appeal to the claims and injunctions of the faith. In a similar
way the Prussian statesman bent on dynastic enterprise will conjure in
the name of the dynasty and of culture and efficiency; or, if worse
comes to worst, an outbreak will be decently covered with a plea of
mortal peril and self-defense. Among English-speaking peoples much is to
be gained by showing that the path of patriotic glory is at the same
time the way of equal-handed justice under the rule of free
institutions; at the same time, in a fully commercialised community,
such as the English-speaking commonly are, material benefits in the way
of trade will go far to sketch in a background of decency for any
enterprise that looks to the enhancement of the national prestige.

But any promise of gain, whether in the nation's material or immaterial
assets, will not of itself carry full conviction to the commonplace
modern citizen; or even to such modern citizens as are best endowed with
a national spirit. By and large, and overlooking that appreciable
contingent of morally defective citizens that is to be counted on in an