turned into
factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have
replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of
great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of
sorrow, tears, and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of
scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest
anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that
will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that
requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the
making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a
trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of
the average workingman.

Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a
superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than
religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability
to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard
thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and
therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than
himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in
the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand,
is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a
network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his
self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is
divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate.
Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot,
consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than
the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the
duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die
in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course,
with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is
poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French,
the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he
is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord
himself to defend HIS country against the attack or invasion of any
foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are