Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-03-31
PATRIOTISM AS
OLD AS THE RACE
1t Is as Fundamental as the
Mother Instinct--Some Fam
Gus Ancient and Modern
Utterances
BY GEORGE w. DOUGLAS

mother instinct. The smother instinct Is
| its obligations are denied by women the
language contains no words strong
happens in crude civilization has been
admirably described by Browning In
Ivan Ivanovitch," poem that every lover
of his kind should read. 1t tells of a
woman, who to save her own skin let the
wolves devour her children, and of Ivan,
A clear.thnking peasant who beheaded
her when her crime became known. Ivan
| is not punished because sane old village
| priest declares that he has executed the
law of God. The priest says mother is
the sentinel of the future, the guardian
| of life:
| How say you should the hand God trusted
| with lfe's torch
Kindled to light the world aware OF
sparks that scorch,
| Let fall the same? Forsooth, her tiesh a
| frefake stings:
The mother drops the child! Among what
| monStrous things
| Shall she be classed?
Nations are like mothers: They have
their mission to perform. 1t is the obli-
| CATION OF every citizen to be loyal to his
country in order that its mission may he
| fulfilled He stands as sentinel guard
| ing the camp of the future. If he deserts
| his post he is no less traitor than II he
| had been put on guard on the outskirts
| of an army and had guided the enemy
to his sleeping comrades. stephen Deca'
tur sensed this truth when he proposed
his famous toast at Norfolk, Va, more
| than "a hundred years ago:
| OR country! In her intercourse with
| foreign nations may she always be in the
| right; but our country right or wrong
| The mother will stand by her son, even
| to the foot of the gallows, because he is
her SON 1t is her business to love him
back to righteousness if she may. 1t Is
| likewise the business of every loyal citizen
to stand by his country to the last gasp
| for only through such loyalty can the
country ever find the right.
Patriotism is as old as organized human
| society. The Old Testament is full of 1t.
| The man who was disloyal to ancient
Israel was disloyal to God. 1t was nearly
1000 years ago that this thought was for
mulated by the Jewish race. Coming
down another thousand years we find the
idea developed in Homer who sang:
| A glorious death is his
Who for his country falls.
Whether the idea was transplanted
from Greece to Rome or whether it
sprang from the natural instincts of the
Romans is not material. We find it alive
in that ancient empire. Horace tells us
Dulce ct decorum est pro patria mort,
in Latin so simple that every schoolboy
knows that it means it is sweet apd glo
rious to die for ones country. Cicero
| wrote:
Iappy the death OF him who pays the
debt of nature for his country's sake.
And he put it in another form when
he said:
Our country is the common parent o.
us all.
And vergl in the Aeneid announces
| that
Love of country and an insatiate thirs
| for glory shall prevail .
One has only to see the flag of his
country floating in Il foreign land to dis
cover what thrills it can produce. Scott
understood it when he wrote:
| Breathes there a man with soul so dead
| Who never to himself hath said,
| This is my own, my native land. -
| Whose heart hath neer within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on foreign strand?
| If such there breathe, CO. mark him well
! For him no minstrel raptures swell;
! Living shall forfeit fair renown,
1 And doubly dying. shall go down
| To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
| Unwept, unhonored and unsung
| American orators, statesmen and poets
have rung the changes on the spirit OF
loyalty in Decatur's toast. 1t was DAME
| Webster who said:
Let our object be our country. our who'll
country and nothing but our country.
Rufus Choate declared in this way tn,
faith that was in him:
| We Join ourselves to no party that doe
| not carry the flag and keep step to tn
| music Of the Union
| Lincolns loyalty is what saved tn
nation in the trying years of the Civi
war-hs belief in the divine mission
which the nation founded here in tn
name of freedom had to perform, and h
appealed to the same spirit in the cours
of his first inaugural address:
The. mystic chords of memory, stretchin
from every battlefield and patriot grave I
every living heart and hearthstone all owe
this broad land will yet swell the choru
of the Union, when again touched, as surel
they will be by the better angels of ou
nature.
The very stars in their courses teacl
us a lesson in loyalty, for they are tru
to the laws Of their being, and each pun
sues it's way in its ordained orbit, as eac
loyal citizen moves in his ordained ma
tional sphere and sustains the principle
for which his nation stands. A renegad
son in any nation in the family of ns
tions is as contemplate as renegade /
the domestic family. The burden ha
been put on his shoulders and he ha
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