|
so:text
|
That glorification of national virtues and achievements on which I have been dwelling, might at other times have been a harmless form of pleasure. But it came at a time of keen rivalry, when everything that tended to stimulate racial vanity was caught up and used by those statesmen and other leaders who sought to embark on policies of expansion and aggression even at the cost of rousing national jealousies or embittering national animosities. We all know how vanity may, in individual men, become a powerful spring of action, and intensify energy even while it disturbs the balance of judgment. It is the same with nations. When convinced of their own superiority they may wish to assert it by force, contemning their neighbours, and fancying that they hold a commission from Providence or Fate to improve the rest of the world against its will. As we see to-day that science has made war more hideous and terrible, so we must also confess that learning and literature have done something to prepare nations for war. A sounder learning and a deeper insight might have corrected this danger and taught the peoples that they have at least as much to gain by co-operation as by competition and more to gain from friendship than from hatred. But there is a faculty in man that is sometimes prone to choose the evil and reject the good (en) |
