It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patriotic, but only that he is a patriot hampered with a plodding and uneasy sense of right and honest dealing, and that one must make up one's account with this moral bias in looking to any sustained and concerted action that draws on the sentiment of the common man for its carrying on. But the moral sense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum of equity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or in case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. In those cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, even very attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would under ordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating circumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication for any extravagant course of action to which the craving for national prestige may incite. The higher the pitch of patriotic fervor, the more tenuous and more thread-bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulative excitation some very remarkable results have latterly been attained along this line. * * * * * Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of aliency and animosity between contrasted groups of persons; it lives on invidious comparison, and works out in mutual hindrance and jealousy between nations. It commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse and obstructing traffic that would patently serve the material and cultural well-being of both nationalities; and not infrequently, indeed normally, it eventuates in competitive damage to both.