it is necessary to set up
the conviction that the promptings of patriotic ambition have the
sanction of moral necessity.

It is not that the line of national policy or patriotic enterprise so
entered upon with the support of popular sentiment need be right and
equitable as seen in dispassionate perspective from the outside, but
only that it should be capable of being made to seem right and equitable
to the biased populace whose moral convictions are requisite to its
prosecution; which is quite another matter. Nor is it that any such
patriotic enterprise is, in fact, entered on simply or mainly on these
moral grounds that so are alleged in its justification, but only that
some such colorable ground of justification or extenuation is necessary
to be alleged, and to be credited by popular belief.

It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patriotic, but only
that he is a patriot hampered with a plodding and uneasy sense of right
and honest dealing, and that one must make up one's account with this
moral bias in looking to any sustained and concerted action that draws
on the sentiment of the common man for its carrying on. But the moral
sense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum of
equity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or
in case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. In
those cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, even
very attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would under
ordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating
circumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication for any
extravagant course of action to which the craving for national prestige
may incite. The higher the pitch of patriotic fervor, the more tenuous
and more thread-bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulative
excitation some very remarkable results have latterly been attained
along this line.

* * * * *

Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of aliency and
animosity between contrasted groups of persons; it lives on invidious
comparison, and works out in mutual hindrance and jealousy between
nations. It commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse and
obstructing traffic that would patently serve the material and cultural
well-being of both nationalities; and not infrequently, indeed
normally, it eventuates in competitive damage to both.

All this holds