Finally we reach the stage where patriotism in its demoniac form unconsciously denies itself. Chesterton picked on two lines from Kipling as the perfect example. It was unfair to Kipling, who knew wonderfully, for so homeless a man what the love of home can mean. But the lines, in isolation, can be taken to sum up the thing. They run:
If England was what England seems Ow quick wed drop er. But she aint!
Love never spoke that way. It is like loving your children only if theyre good, your wife only while she keeps her looks, your husband only so long as he is famous and successful. No man, said one of the Greeks, loves his city because it is great, but because it is his. A man who really loves his country will love her in her ruin and degeneration England, with all thy faults, I love thee still. She will be to him a poor thing but mine own. He may think her good and great, when she is not, because he loves her; the delusion is up to a point pardonable. But Kiplings soldier reverses it; he loves her because he thinks her good and great loves her on her merits. She is a fine going concern and it gratifies his pride to be in it. How if she ceased to be such? The answer is plainly given: Ow quick wed drop er. When the ship begins to sink he will leave her. Thus that kind of patriotism which sets off with the greatest swagger of drums and banners actually sets off on the road that can lead to Vichy. And this is a phenomenon which will meet us again. When the natural loves become lawless they do not merely do harm to other loves; they themselves cease to be the loves they were to be loves at all.
Patriotism has then, many faces. Those who would reject it entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step has already begun to step into its place. For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for their country they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics. Good men needed to be convinced that their countrys cause was just; but it was still their countrys cause, not the cause of justice as such. The difference seems to me important. I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine I become insufferable. The pretence that when Englands cause is just we are on Englands side as some neutral Don Quixote might be for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our countrys cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.
The glory of the old sentiment was that while it could steel men to the utmost endeavour, it still knew itself to be a sentiment. Wars could be heroic without pretending to be Holy Wars. The heros death was not confused with the martyrs. And (delightfully) the same sentiment which could be so serious in a rearguard action, could also in peacetime, take itself as lightly as all happy loves often do. It could laugh at itself. Our older patriotic songs cannot be sung without a twinkle in the eye; later ones sound more like hymns. Give me The British Grenadiers (with a tow-row-row-row) any day rather than Land of Hope and Glory.
It will be noticed that the sort of love I have been describing, and all its ingredients, can be for something other than a country: for a school, a regiment, a great family, or a class. All the same criticisms will still
apply. It can also be felt for bodies that claim more than a natural affection: for a Church or (alas) a party in a Church, or for a religious order. This terrible subject would require a book to itself. Here it will be enough to say that the Heavenly Society is also an earthly society. Our (merely natural) patriotism towards the latter can very easily borrow the transcendent claims of the former and use them to justify the most abominable actions. If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendoms specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of the World will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.
It may be thought that I should not end this chapter without a word about our love for animals. But that will fit in better in the next. Whether animals are in fact sub-personal or not, they are never loved as if they were. The fact or the illusion of personality is always present, so that love for them is really an instance of that Affection which is the subject of the following chapter.