"EXCESS PATRIOTISM."

Patriotism is one of those good things of which it is an easy matter to have too much. This may sound flippant or paradoxical, but it is meant in no such sense. A man should have love and regard for his native land, but not in such a degree as to interfere with more important and more beneficial virtues.

Patriotism is a rather mercurial virtue; and when heated, it is prone to rise and slop over; that which slops over may be called Excess Patriotism. What are the chief uses of this Excess Patriotism? It is used constantly by politicians to stir up a campaign that will land them in office; and often by soldiers and statesmen to stir up a war that will place them in history. It is the strong suit of the man who is always assuring "the dear people" that they are the best and only friends they have.

Why should one boast of fierce pride in his own country, a pride excluding all other countries, especially when his own is in no appreciable degree

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any better than the others? This Red Hot Patriotism
is the air in which was germinated and nourished the
war code between nations, just as, once, the foolish,
unreasonable pride of individuals kept alive the code
duelo. "But," it is claimed, "we must have patriotic
citizens to defend the country." When the Fatherland
is threatened, and homes and wives and children are in
danger it does not require patriotism to make men take
up arms. Any race of men not born for slaves will
then fly to arms, and fight to the last ditch. But
when there is a war of policy, a war of conquest, a
war to further some unrighteous cause, then it is that
patriotism needs to be called into play; and the flame
is fanned first gently, then violently, until the dear,
deluded people spring to arms and march to the field of
battle to fight, to bleed and to die; for what? They
themselves don't know. If one reads history with this
question in view he will see that this brand of patri-
otism has been the cause or the means of a very great
part of all the misery and suffering of the human race.

Besides the Red Hot brand, there is another
variety of Excess Patriotism. You have undoubtedly
met the man who, when anything contained in the heavens
above, the earth beneath, or in the waters under the
earth, manners, customs, laws, institutions, virtues,

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vices, sports, anything of which the human mind has
knowledge, was mentioned, would maintain that it was
better in his country than in any other; and who,
if the particular thing mentioned did not happen to
exist at all in his country, would set out to prove
that they had something equally as good or that his
country was better off without it. This is Offensive
Patriotism. It is patriotism which is not love of
one's country, but braggadocio about one's country.
A man should love his country as he does his home. He
does not by that love make his home a menace to the
homes of others. And it would be deemed worse than
poor taste for him to go about boasting that he had a
more refined family, a better house, more expensive
furniture, more costly pictures, finer carpets, and ate
better food than any of his neighbors; and the more
truth there might be in such statements, the more griev-
ous would be his fault. Why are not similar faults as
serious in nations?

It is this blind, stubborn spirit which has a
tendency to keep a nation in the rear in the march of
progress. The spirit of Cosmopolitanism, the spirit
which is ready to see and acknowledge excellencies in
others, and as quick to imitate them, is what will keep
a nation the fore: really great.