I have had a question sent to me which in one form or another I have been expecting for some time. The question is in what way patriotism, which we now all praise (though Dr. Johnson did say that it was the last refuge of a scoundrel), differs from nationalism, which we now all brand as the enemy which must be destroyed. And my correspondent also asks if true Christianity can find any room for patriotism at all where all men should be valued equally and all lands should have equal claims.

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To take the second part of the question first, I would say that I am sure no true religion condemns love of one’s own native country or indeed of the shire or town or village where one was born. I wonder how many letters I have received during the present war from lads serving in India, Burma, Madagascar, Africa, Italy, or France who have echoed in their own words the cry of David when he said, “Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate.” Nothing so natural to human nature can be contrary to true religion. Indeed I am sure that it is not possible to love all lands unless one first loves some special place, nor to love all men unless one first loves one’s neighbours. Even as a small boy I always delighted in Dickens’s description, in Bleak House, of the “contentious gentleman who said it was his mission to be everybody’s brother but who seemed to be on terms of coldness with the whole of his large family.”

The subject of patriotism, or love of country, and the subject of philanthropy, or the love of one’s fellow-men, cannot be considered unimportant at such a time as this. But I have still not touched the main point in my correspondent’s question – namely, where true patriotism differs from evil nationalism. Well, here, as in all moral questions, the important factor is the individual. Good patriotism will be the patriotism of a good man and the wrong sort of patriotism will be the patriotism of a man who is at any rate not good in this relation. Hard as it may be, the true patriot will say, in any great crisis of the world’s history, that he would rather that his country should come down in ruin than be false to the principles of justice, of liberty, and of the equality of all men before the law. The bad man will say, “My country, right or wrong,” or even, “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation perish not.”

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This does not mean, of course (and the fact is an important one that certainly needs to be constantly remembered), that occasions do not occur when thoroughly good men may have to do things which they believe to be wrong; for the alternative may be to do something else which they believe to be morally worse. This is a point upon which I have often insisted in this column because it is a point which many people seem to overlook. Many people talk as if the choice with which one may be confronted in private or public life were always one between what is morally right and what is morally wrong. It is not always so. It is not infrequently a choice between the good and the better or between the bad and the worse. And it is just such cases which test a private man or a politician. It is so easy to say that as neither course is ideally right he may as well adopt the one which is the easier or the most profitable to himself. But the difference may lie in this; that one leaves open and the other shuts a door to something better in the future. To sum up, one can only say that the true patriot will be as jealous of his country’s honour as of his own.