Patriotism. This is a quote from C.S. Lewis, from THE FOUR LOVES, and I post it here because I am reminded of certain issues of the current day. He wrote his forty years ago:
“Those who would reject patriotism entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step (has already begun to step) into its place. For a long time yet, perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentitment 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, 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 country’s cause was just; but it was still their country’s 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 home from a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye on purely moral grounds (wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question is mine) I become insufferable. The pretense that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side (as some neutral Don Quixote might be) for that reason alone, is spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the Cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things 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 sentiment. Wars could be heroic without pretending to be Holy Wars. The hero’s death was not confused with the martyr’s.”
