PART IITHE HABITUATION OF PATRIOTISM
CHAPTER IIIThe Deliberate Habituation
One way by which the impulses and dispositions of human character are amalgamated in patriotism is by habituation. The habits of patriotism are just as powerful and important as the impulses. The impulses, in fact, are molded into habits, and are profoundly modified by the environment and regimen to which they are subjected. The habits become the masters of the impulses. Thought at this point enters into the problem, but it is not the individual’s own thought; it is the thought of the society which surrounds him. His articles of faith are habits acquired from society. “... It is through habit that the influence of intelligence has most control over the lives of the majority of civilized men.”[29]On the part of the individual, the thought is involuntary, or at least unvoluntary, and is accompanied by like action. Most of man’s beliefs are nonrational, even though he supposes that he has come to hold them by his own free and deliberate choice. Society holds tremendous power over the building of character; in large measure, it controls the material that the mind has to work on. And this control is of primary importance. “... The essential fact which has made the Great Society possible is the discovery, handed down by tradition and instruction, that Thought can be fed by deliberately collected material, and stimulated, sustained, and to a certain extent, controlled by an effort of will.”[30]
Now, the patriotic spirit, along with other dispositions, may be acquired as a habit, and the mold into which patriotism runs is notoriously with most men a matter of circumstances and habituation. Along this line, it is interesting to speculate as to what American patriotism would be if this country had never separated from England, if the thirteen colonies had not been able to form a federation, or if the South had been successful in the Civil War. The loyalty of Americans would have been totally different, but no doubt would be just as devoted as it actually is. It is a historical fact that English patriotism has modified itself to correspond to the expansion of the empire. In view of all this, one can hardly resist the conclusion that patriotism depends quite largely upon habituation and use and wont. Patriotism is a national habit; and it is a habit which even were it proved to be nothing but evil, would not be easily broken, since it is acquired from life’s earliest years onward.
“The superstitions of our early years,E’en when we know them to be nothing more,Lose not for that their hold upon our hearts;Not all are free who ridicule their chains.”[31]
There are two kinds of the habituation of patriotism, deliberate and spontaneous, conscious and unconscious, direct and indirect. The more obvious of the two is that of conscious and deliberate habituation. There are agencies that are constantly being used with deliberate purpose towards the regimentation of the populace in patriotism. “Patriotism is systematically cultivated by anniversaries, pilgrimages, symbols, songs, recitations, etc.”[32]There are numerous patriotic societies, such as the Grand Army of the Republic, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Veterans, the Woman’s Relief Corps, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and others.[33]
But there are other and more important forces back of the inculcation of patriotism. In most countries the state with all its power is vigilant lest patriotism be allowed to become otiose. And it has means at its disposal that range from the selection and repression of news to the active use of all sorts of influences which sway the mind of the public. And these influences do not go unemployed. There are those in the state who have a special interest in arousing a strong sentiment of patriotism. Conspicuous among such are the professional soldiers. They, of course, want a solidified population. Their training has emphasized their appreciation of the value of obedience and uniformity. These virtues are essentials in the discipline of an army, and in terms of military logic they seem to be essentials in the organization of a country. J. M. Robertson has a division of a book which he has devoted to a discussion of the regimentation of militarism.[34]But the guardianship of the patriotic fire within the state is not turned over entirely into soldierly hands. Other interests, whose nature and motives in contrast with the straightforward purposes of the country’s guardians are such as to make it difficult to describe them in the dispassionate spirit of scientific and philosophic discourse, are ready with their assistance. And, of course, the ordinary civilian temper is not averse to the rigorous regimentation of patriotic loyalty.
Hegel[35]thought that it was both right and necessary that the state should control public opinion. He considered that the people had no opinions of very great worth. “... The people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens, does not know what itwills. To know what we will, and further what the absolute will, namely, reason, wills, is the fruit of deep knowledge and insight, and is therefore not the property of the people.”[36]Public opinion without the guidance of the state was unorganized and dangerous. “The many as individuals, whom we are prone to call the people, are indeed a collective whole, but merely as a multitude or formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, void of reason, violent, and terrible.”[36]Therefore it was necessary for the proper source of authority to organize public opinion. And, of course, this work of organization and direction was to be the task of the officials of the state. “The highest state officials have necessarily deeper and more comprehensive insight into the workings and needs of the state, and also greater skill and wider practical experience.”[37]There are others who do not hold Hegel’s philosophical system that yet agree with him in upholding the high sovereignty and controlling supervision of the state.
Ecclesiastical institutions often serve as habituators of nationalistic spirit. The rise of nationalism in Spain affords an interesting example, for religious motives were at the height of their strength in those days. Ferdinand and Isabella got control of the hierarchical religious organizations in their dominions by taking from the Pope and to themselves the power to name the prelates of the Catholic church in Spain. The Crusading Orders had great vogue in the country, and Ferdinand got himself elected to the office of Grand Master in the most important of them. These measures accomplished, they were made to tell by the rulers of Spain in the process of furthering their dynastic and nationalistic ambitions. In Japan, Bushido, a mixture of Confucian and Shinto elements, is a spirit of patriotism which is at the disposal of the state. In Germany, the pastors of the established churches are state officials; they are state-appointed and state-paid, and they reflect the state’s purposes. In all Christian countries, including our own, the churches observe the national patriotic holidays both in time of war and peace, and in time of war preach patriotism from the pulpits, sometimes at the solicitation of the state, sometimes of their own volition.
The newspapers are of cardinal importance as agencies of the inculcation of patriotism. It is natural that the newspapers should be insurgently patriotic. They are dependent upon the public for their subsistence. And the mass of the public is conservative. Consequently, the newspapers are as a rule conservative also. Now patriotism is a venerable virtue easy for the public to believe in, and it is almostinevitable that journalism should play up that virtue. It is also almost as inevitable that the patriotism of the press should be of the militant kind. To take that character is simply to follow the line of least resistance. Public opinion reacts upon the press and circumscribes its initiative. And when a people becomes inflamed against another people, the newspapers as a rule (there are, of course, some that are independent in their thought and leadership) have to fall in line; the sheet that opposed the trend of public emotion would have to pay for its folly. The newspapers, moreover, on the whole represent the gentlemanly business class, and wars promise most to the interests of that class. Conflict is quite apt to grow out of economic rivalry, whence it naturally follows that those who are most nearly concerned in that rivalry (and the newspapers are controlled by such as are of that class) will be most interested in the prosecution of a war which bids fair to enlarge the economic opportunities of their own country.
Along with the newspapers as habituators of patriotism go also less ephemeral kinds of literature. “The Man Without a Country,”[38]for instance, has a definite patriotic purpose. And patriotic orations, songs, and poetry have the same purpose. Sometimes these compositions are not jingoistic, but very often they are. Wordsworth’s poetry, for instance, is of the nonjingoistic character; it is strongly marked by love of the soil. But Wordsworth was of unusually broad sympathies, and his is not the kind of poetry usually made use of in teaching patriotism. J. M. Robertson has written an essay in which he called attention to the proclivity of poets to write in a jingoistic strain.[39]Virgil, himself a man of broad sympathies, wrote the Æneid at the request of Augustus, whose empire-building purposes needed an epic after the model of Homer about the founding of Rome.
An important habituator of patriotism in the training of the young is the public school system. The public schools are almost always used by those who have them in charge for the maintenance of the existing order. But the “existing order” quite regularly means the political one, and hence the road is opened for the teaching of patriotism. Prussia seems to be an extreme case of the deliberate use of the schools for pushing the pet programs of the politically favored classes. “In Prussia the avowed use of the schools, not for the spread of truth but for the ‘War against social-democracy’ may be in part responsible for that absence of Love between members of different classes, that class-war of which the growth of social-democracy is only one symptom.”[40]Prussia also exhibits a peculiarly active brand of patriotism. It has been commonlyassumed in the United States that education will make for democracy but it is not necessarily so. Education, instead of being aimed at freeing and developing the mind, may be aimed only at regimentation in a certain system of ideas. The fact of the business is that as a rule it is so aimed, even where there is no such clear and persistent purpose as there is in Prussia; it is all too easy to fall into the rut of doing the same old things in the same old way. It is simply easier to inculcate the same old ideas than it is to teach the ever-varying young idea how to shoot. And what education turns out under such methods is not free and independent thinkers, but a habituated uniform product. “School education, unless it is regulated by the best knowledge and good sense, will produce men and women who are all of one pattern, as if turned in a lathe.... Any institution which runs for years in the same hands will produce a type.... In the continental schools and barracks, in newspapers, books, etc., what is developed by education is dynastic sentiment, national sentiment, soldierly sentiment.”[41]And so the schools are used for the maintenance of patriotism,—patriotism which only too often is narrow and militaristic. An example of the better kind of purpose to teach patriotism is that in view in Bosanquet’s lecture on the subject.[42]An example of the kind which is likely not to be so temperate and well-considered is that which grows out of the demand for the teaching of patriotism which arises under the stimulus of war. On May 17, 1917, there appeared in a small-town newspaper[43]an article dated from New York City, and which was evidently furnished by some news association. The headlines were as follows: “College Course in Patriotism. Chicago’s Mayor Starts Chair in Lincoln University. Students True Americans.” The opening paragraph ran thus: “For the first time in the history of American education a chair has been established for the teaching of American Patriotism. Inspired by the work being done by the Lincoln Memorial University, William Hale Thompson, Mayor of Chicago, will provide $25,000 for this purpose.” A little further on occurred the sentence, “Plans have already been made for the opening of the Patriotism Department.” These plans may not have been actually carried out, and if they were, may have obtained solid results, but the sound of the article was such as would lead one to suspect that what was accomplished would rather prove to be superficial and sensational. This whole attempt has been cited here not because it is an isolated incident, but for the reason that it is an illustration, extreme though it may be, of a tendency.
The public schools have textbooks for the purpose of training in patriotic loyalty, books which tell of the duties of citizens, and are replete with songs and poems to illustrate the points brought out.[44]The schools of our land make it a part of their chief business to teach loyalty to the country. For this business history is plastic material. “History, in every country, is so taught as to magnify that country: children learn to believe that their own country has always been in the right and almost always victorious, that it has produced almost all the great men, and that it is in all respects superior to all other countries. Since these beliefs are flattering, they are easily absorbed, and hardly ever dislodged from instinct by later knowledge.”[45]The unpleasant facts are not brought out. Americans, for example, do not usually have it called to their attention that in the War of 1812, most of their vessels were tied up in port at the end of the war, their national capital was captured by the enemy, they won only one important land battle and that after the war was over, and that their representatives in the peace negotiations had to surrender the principle for which the war was fought. The war ended because both sides were willing to return to thestatus quo ante. The patriotic bias dominates even the historian himself. “No historian ever gets out of the mores of his own society of origin.... Even if he rises above the limitations of party, he does not get outside the patriotic and ethical horizon in which he has been educated, especially when he deals with the history of other countries and other times than his own. Each historian regards his own nation as the torchbearer of civilization; its mores give him his ethical standards by which he estimates whatever he learns of other peoples.... In modern Russian literature may be found passages about the ‘Civilizing mission’ of Russia which might be translated,mutatis mutandis, from passages in English, French, or German literature about the civilizing mission of England, France, or Germany. Probably the same is true of Turkish, Hindoo, or Chinese literature. The patriotism of the historian rules his judgment, especially as to excuses and apologies for things done in the past, and most of all as to the edifying omissions,—a very important part of the task of the historian.... There is a compulsion on the historian to act in this way, for if he wrote otherwise, his fellow-countrymen would ignore his work.”[46]
The habituation of patriotism finds insymbolsan instrument admirably suited to its purpose. The mind really reacts more strongly to symbols than it does to the facts of sense-experience. The potencyof symbols does not suffer from the admixture of distractions by which direct sense-experience is accompanied. Symbols are more purely meaning, and they come with the momentum of their meaning. Now the word “country,” embodying an abstract and fairly simple idea, serves as a symbol and produces a pure emotion as in art. Other words and phrases could be named that are similar in the responses that they elicit. “The Monroe Doctrine” is one of the pet symbols of the United States. In patriotic poetry and hymnology the flag is featured. It is a symbol of the country. Children are taught to sing about the flag, by means of which a symbol is implanted in their minds, the love of music is appealed to, and patriotism is connected with their childhood sentiments. The appeal of symbols comes home to one when he stands at the dividing line between two countries, at Niagara Falls, let us say, and gazes upon two flags, one of them his own and the other not. At the present time Great Britain is our ally, but the emotion upon beholding the British flag is nothing as compared with the feeling of affection experienced upon beholding the American flag. The British emblem, though respected, is strange; the American flag is one’s own. Sumner discusses what he calls the tyranny of the apparatus of suggestion, that is, symbols or tokens, and from him is worth quoting the following pertinent passage: “The tyranny is greatest in regard to ‘American’ and ‘Americanism.’ Who dare say that he is not ‘American’? Who dare repudiate what is declared to be ‘Americanism’? It follows that if anything is base and bogus it is always labeled ‘American.’ If a thing is to be recommended which cannot be justified, it is put under ‘Americanism.’ Who does not shudder at the fear of being called ‘unpatriotic’? And to repudiate what any one chooses to call ‘American’ is to be unpatriotic. If there is any document of Americanism, it is the Declaration of Independence. Those who have Americanism especially in charge have repudiated the doctrine that ‘governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,’ because it stood in the way of what they wanted to do. They denounce those who cling to the doctrine as un-American. Then we see what Americanism and patriotism are. They are the duty laid upon us all to applaud, follow, and obey whatever a ruling clique of newspapers and politicians chooses to say or wants to do. ‘England’ has always been, amongst us, a kind of counter token, or token of things to be resisted and repudiated. The ‘symbols’ or ‘tokens’ always have this utility for suggestion. They carry a coercion with them and overwhelm people who are not trained to verify assertions and dissectfallacies.”[47]When one’s attention is called to these things, it cannot help but impose upon him the obligation of examining the bases and nature of his own patriotic enthusiasm.
The deliberate habituation of patriotism has a bearing upon the problem of peace. Knowledge of other peoples will not bring harmony and mutual goodwill unless it is sympathetic knowledge, and, if it is to be sympathetic, our mental prepossessions must be shaped so as to open our minds to a just appreciation of unwelcome facts and ways at variance with our own. And to accomplish this, the teaching of patriotism will have to be directed towards the realizing of the devoutly to be wished consummation.