The World in Chains | Page 8

for exposing the best citizens of a state to abnormal risks of annihilation. As a matter of historic fact we are told, though I don't know on what authority, that the Napoleonic wars, how much less deadly than our own, reduced by an inch the average height of the French nation.
So much, in brief, for the "scientific" justification of war. It is evident that by the eugenic argument war could be defended only if we agreed to send into battle precisely those men whom our recruiting officers disqualify. A good deal might be said, from the sociologist's point of view, in favour of a system of cathartic conscription which would rejuvenate England with a watchword of "The Unfit to the Trenches."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: They usually add to their mental confusion the elementary blunder of using the word "fittest" in a moral instead of in its biological sense.]
§ 3
Patriotism
If again there were any evidence to show that war and war alone kept alive the spirit of true patriotism, it would be less easy to denounce its manifold wickedness. For true patriotism, although like all passionate emotion it involves a certain mental distortion, a slight disturbance of the rational orbit, is yet one of those happy diseases which relieve the colourlessness of strict normality. It is a magic, a glamour, of the nature of personal affection, which only great poetry can fully express, and volumes of bad poetry cannot quite destroy. It has besides a real political value, binding the State together, and giving it a stronger moral coherence than can be attained by any legal or constitutional authority; a fact that is illustrated by those distressful countries in which its limits are not conterminous with the political boundaries of the State. I am inclined to think that just because true patriotism is of the nature of a personal affection, it is an emotion that cannot be inspired by an empire, any more than personal affection can be inspired by a corporation or a joint-stock company.[14] Certainly Imperialism more often gives rise to a sentimental worship of force and a certain promiscuous lust for mere extension of territory which are quite alien to the steady devotion of the patriot to the land he knows.[15]
Unless one be a poet, it is difficult, as may perhaps be gathered from the preceding paragraph, sufficiently to praise genuine patriotism without falling into vague rhetoric. But I submit that there is nothing to show that this political emotion is created, stimulated, or even discovered by war. Actually it seems that the reverse is the case, if one may judge by the fact that war is invariably accompanied by an overwhelming outbreak of every spurious form of patriotism that was ever invented by the devil to make an honest man ashamed of his country. True patriotism is a calm and lovely orientation of the spirit towards the vital beauty of England. It has no noisy manifestations and consequently one may not be able to find it among the crowds who shout most loudly for war.
One finds instead a sort of violent fever and calenture which not merely deflects, as any emotion may, but totally inhibits the rational operations of the mind. The newspapers supply a legion of witnesses.
Thus the Evening Standard perorates against some pacificist lecturer (who had attempted to clear his views from all sorts of misrepresentations) with the magnificent comment that he had not "repudiated his remarks as to the pleasure which the tune of the Austrian National Anthem gave him."[16] But I should weary you were I to transcribe a tithe of the stupid remarks made by persons in authority under the influence of war. The record, I believe, in England is held at present by Mr. Bodkin, K.C.
It may be said of course that men, and newspapers, are equally stupid in time of peace; and I fear that fundamentally this is true. War does not change their nature, but only brings to the bubbling surface the dregs and vileness and scum. War does not change any one's nature; and that is why it is vain to expect that under its influence those crowds will love their country who never loved anything before. But if war cannot create it may at least be supposed to discover and test the existent patriotism of the nation. And this supposition is corroborated at first sight by the realisation that hundreds of thousands, that actually millions of previously ordinary young men have implied by enlisting their willingness to die for England. One might, of course, reason that no individual recruit really believes he is going to be killed, that each boy thinks he will be one of the lucky ones who escape all the bullets unhurt to enjoy an honoured return, that recruiting would have failed entirely if the barracks