" Our country, right or wrong ! " is a war-cry
of savagery, not of civilization. " Our coun-
try — may it always be right ! *' is the peace-
word which prevents war. That parties,
differing in domestic affairs, should perforce
unite in any quarrel, however unjust, with
foreign peoples, is a superstition directly in-
citing party leaders to foreign wars when
domestic dominance is in jeopardy. The
bravest patriotism is that of the citizen who
dares stay his country from wrong-doing in

215



THE ARTS OF LIFE

face of that wild overwhelming of public
opinion — " By Jingo, we will ! " — with which
the savagery latent in humankind breaks out
in each generation. The horrid argument
that wars " better business/' — which means
for the time the diverting of workers from
productive pursuits into a consuming army,
the lessening of their number by killing and
maiming, the waste of material and destruc-
tion of property, and the misdirection of
transportation and other industries to un-
productive purposes, — means also that the
fire which reduces a city to ashes amid a
holocaust of human lives is for the common
weaL This is the devil's logic of half truth
— and this sowing of tares indeed brings bit-
ter harvest

As the wide earth has been " settled," as
The Out- the migratory tendency therefore becomes
Democracy ^^ss tribal and more individual, as travel,
commerce, education, civilization, the unifi-
cation of the world, break down the barriers
of race; as, on the other hand, men, less
" subject " to the forces of nature or to brute-
force of men, are their own masters, come to
their own, own themselves — the evolution
of manhood develops toward self-governing
democracy, and msJces for peace. Thus at

216



OF POLITICS

the close of the great century of progress,
despite outbreaks of war and conquest and
injustice among the nations of the earth,
national relations have broadened into inter-
national relations, a court of arbitration for
all nations is growing from a hope to a ful-
fillment, and an injustice to one man con-
vulses the whole world. A true Democracy,
in world-wide brotherhood, will lead mankind
toward an age of golden peace.
