Patriotism is the one of these lowest vices which most often
masquerades in false garb as a virtue. But what after all IS
patriotism? "My country, right or wrong, and just because it is my
country!" This is clearly nothing more than collective selfishness.
Often enough, indeed, it is not even collective. It means merely,
"MY business-interests against the business-interests of other
people, and let the taxes of my fellow-citizens pay to support
them." At other times it means pure pride of race, and pure lust of
conquest; "MY country against other countries; MY army and navy
against other fighters; MY right to annex unoccupied territory
against the equal right of all other peoples; MY power to oppress
all weaker nationalities, all inferior races." It NEVER means or
can mean anything good or true. For if a cause be just, like
Ireland's, or once Italy's, then 'tis a good man's duty to espouse
it with warmth, be it his own or another's. And if a cause be bad,
then 'tis a good man's duty to oppose it, tooth and nail,
irrespective of your patriotism. True, a good man will feel more
sensitively anxious that strict justice should be done by the
particular community of which chance has made him a component member
than by any others; but then, people who feel acutely this joint
responsibility of all the citizens to uphold the moral right are not
praised as patriots but reviled as unpatriotic. To urge that our
own country should strive with all its might to be better, higher,
purer, nobler, more generous than other countries,--the only kind of
patriotism worth a moment's thought in a righteous man's eyes, is
accounted by most men both wicked and foolish.
Then comes the monopolist instinct of property. That, on the face
of it, is a baser and more sordid one. For patriotism at least can
lay claim to some sort of delusive expansiveness beyond mere
individual interest; whereas property stops short at the narrowest
limits of personality. It is no longer "Us against the world!" but
"Me against my fellow-citizens!" It is the last word of the
intercivic war in its most hideous avatar. Look how it scars the
fair face of our common country with its antisocial notice-boards,
"Trespassers will be prosecuted." It says in effect, "This is my
land. As I believe, God made it; but I have acquired it, and
tabooed it to myself, for my own enjoyment. The grass on the wold
grows green; but only for me. The mountains rise glorious in the
morning sun; no foot of man, save mine and my gillies' shall tread
them. The waterfalls leap white from the ledge in the glen; avaunt
there, non-possessors; your eye shall never see them. For you the
muddy street; for me, miles of upland. All this is my own. And I
choose to monopolize it."