The patriot is provincial. He begins his life of attachment by being loyal to what is nearest the center of his own interests. And such attachment is natural. We are not likely to be so vitally interested in far-away things as in the things that are near. It is simply a case of where the power of gravitation varies in inverse ratio to the distance between the gravitating bodies. Now, the patriot’s own nation is nearer to him than is any other, and consequently to it he renders his warmest devotion. Even many who deplore the narrowness of nationalism and themselves do not share that narrowness, do nevertheless have a warm devotion for their own country. This devotion, strong in spite of a consciousness of the country’s shortcomings, shows itself in Cowper’s line: “England, with all thy faults, I love thee still.”[103] The patriot believes that he is an unnatural son if he is not devoted to his country. To turn against the country is comparable to turning against his own mother. And of course no real man of flesh and blood and the ordinary feelings of normal human beings, would do such a thing as that. The traitor is abnormal, and is something amounting to almost a monster. All normal men are believed to thrill to the sentiment, “This is my own, my native land!”[104] The country is so close that it is felt to be inhuman baseness not to be true to the ties that bind one to it. Patriotism is, then, in part a clinging to the nation as an expression of one’s own life. The patriot fiercely resents attacks upon the nation, for they are attacks upon himself. They assail the periphery of his personality. He wants his country to be free because in it he finds himself expressed, and because he claims the right to continue his self-expression through the country. Therefore he hates conquest by an enemy. He would rather die fighting than be subjugated, because in dying for his country he asserts himself in one last final defiant act. It is a supreme act of self-assertion. The country is the patriot’s, it is vital to him, and while life lasts he will not see it perish from the earth. CHAPTER VII THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF ONE’S COUNTRY