The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-11
SEATTLE. SUNDAY. OCT. II.



and inspiring object lesson in patriotic
education of the growing children of the
land who saw not our civil war and felt
none of its sacrifices. Patriotism. like the
capacity for friendship, must be developed
in youth, for the influences which feed it
do not multiply with age. The young, in
genuous, imaginative youth were the first
to flock around our flag and fill its armies,
for they were freshest from the patriotic
eloquence of Webster and Clay in the
school reader, speaker and history; they
had not yet become cynical over the
stories of the Revolution, or the patriotic
color and dress of the celebration of INDIE
pendence day. The planting of the Amer
lean flag on every school house, and the
worship of its stars and stripes is in line
with Napoleon's order that the French
soldier should salute the standard when he
passed it as religiously as he did his
colonel.
Napoleon was the most intensely prac-
tical genius that ever walked this earth,
but no man knew better than he the power
of sentiment which poets feed; which pa
triots and martyrs breed when their blood
dyes the soil and their ashes are given to
the wind. Webster, another intensely
practical mind, enforced this lesson of the
power of sentiment when he illustrated
the diffusion of ideas by eloquently quo
ting the famous lines:
1.-THE Avon to the Severn runs,
The Severn to the sea,
And Wyclifs ashes spread abroad
Wide as the waters be"
To the gross utilitarian thinker, the
greatest state is measured not by the num-
Der of her high-minded men. who know
their rights and knowing dare maintain.
but by the number of barrels of -four and
bales of cotton she produces. This was
the cry of the Democratic pro-slavery
orators when they denounced the anti
slavery cause, defined civilization as
''coal, cotton and corn, ships and
stocks" forgetting that when the
equilibrium between the social force
of selfinterest and the moral force of
high sentiment is disturbed, the civiliza-
ton of coal, cotton, corn and ships and
stocks Is in danger. because these material
tiles have their permanent, best security in
the spiritual force of sentiment that we
call patriotism, love of universal liberty to
enjoy life, property and all that is compre-
hended in the sure and healthy pursuit Of
public and private happiness.
Venice became richer merchant ship
for her day and population than America,
and what Is Venice today7 so long as
Venice was gallant ship Of war she was
great state, but when she became q mere
trading ship, deeply laden with rich mer-
chandise, she was the prey of Turkish free
hooters at sea and of robber French or
German invaders on land. She had money
enough to hire mercenaries to defend her
coasts, but she could not hire the hearts of
these free lances, and the mistress of the
Adriatic became alternately the political
harlot of France and Germany. The
browning glory of great state is great
men, great hearts.
England, the greatest and most success
full trading state of modern times, has not
kept the place she has won chiefly because
she is naturally an eager and passionate
trader. She has succeeded as a trader be-
cause she was every inch soldier too,
filled with English pluck and patriotism
that would spend blood like water to up
hold the English flag, whether it foated
over treasure island, or only over a bar
rem sand bank, or a coral reef in mid
ocean. This it is that has made England
great, and secured firmly by the sword
what her traders have won. The cheap,
shallow utilitarian inquiries, "Does senti-
ment create great cities, increased trade
and commerce. increased production and
financial GROWTH"
No; but sentiment, sword in hand, is
their strength of possession, protection
and security. The American colonies were
traders, but had they listened TO the voice
of trade they would have made peace. 1t
was high sentiment that won their indie
pendence and founded great state which.
II il would remain a great state. must al
ways mean more than a wealthy, WELL
manned merchant ship. TWAS sentiment
against the voice of trade that fought Eng
land in tsl2-I4; Ii was sentiment against the
voice OF trade that created, organized, mar
shaled for battle and led TO victory the Re
publican party OF 1850; it was sentiment
against the voice of trade that rallied the
people to rescue the dag; it is high senti-
ment and 1t always will be sentiment that
while IL does not directly create great
cities. Is the assurance of life. liberty, pos
session and perpetuity to the material
wealth and prosperity of great cities.
The philosophy that is fatal to patriotism
Is the vulgar cry of that famous old fraud.
made fat by feeding and fuddling, Jack Fal-
staff, when he sneeringly asks. ''Can honor
set q leg. or cure the grief Of q wound ?"
But il is Prince Hal, who follows honor "a
his flag mp to the gates of death, that saves
the state, including the worthless skin OF
the cowardly old cynic Falstaf, who
esteemed a live jackass superior to dead
lion.
Sentiment that saves the state Is not
the sentimentaiism that mopes, 1t is the
sentiment that hopes on, hopes ever, be-
cause of the heroic lie of the past.