the matter? I was putting on your brand." And I answered: "Yes, my
friend, and if you will steal _for_ me you will steal _from_ me."
Now, the same principle which applies in private life applies also in
public life. If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he
will do something wrong _in_ your interest, you can be absolutely
certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something
wrong _against_ your interest.
So much for the citizenship of the individual in his relations to his
family, to his neighbor, to the State. There remain duties of
citizenship which the State, the aggregation of all the individuals,
owes in connection with other states, with other nations. Let me say
at once that I am no advocate of a foolish cosmopolitanism. I believe
that a man must be a good patriot before he can be, and as the only
possible way of being, a good citizen of the world. Experience teaches
us that the average man who protests that his international feeling
swamps his national feeling, that he does not care for his country
because he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proves
himself the foe of mankind; that the man who says that he does not
care to be a citizen of any one country, because he is a citizen of
the world, is in very fact usually an exceedingly undesirable citizen
of whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in. In
the dim future all moral needs and moral standards may change; but at
present, if a man can view his own country and all other countries
from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrust
him, just as it is wise to distrust the man who can take the same
dispassionate view of his wife and his mother. However broad and deep
a man's sympathies, however intense his activities, he need have no
fear that they will be cramped by love of his native land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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