The words used in the two countries are in themselves an indication of the state of feeling. The word _pays_, as employed by journalists and politicians for the whole of France, is exactly equivalent to “the country” as employed by English politicians; but the word _pays_, as it is employed by a French peasant to mean locality to which he is bound by ties of birth and affection, has no equivalent in English, and it cannot be translated without a phrase. To get the force of it I must explain that it is a part of the country to which I and my family belong. But the greatest difference in language is the entire absence, in English, of any word having the peculiar emotional value, the sacredness, of _patrie_. The word _patrie_ is reserved entirely for emotional use, it is _never_ employed for common purposes. “Country” fails as an equivalent because it is used in various non-emotional senses, as when a minister appeals to the country by general elections, a huntsman rides across country, a gentleman’s residence is situated in a pretty country, a townsman goes to live in the country, a landowner is a country squire. Here the word stands for the everyday words _pays_ and _campagne_, but _patrie_ never stands for anything but the land that we should be ready to die for, and it is never used without visible or suppressed emotion.[18] The English are themselves fully aware of the power of a word, and of all that may be indicated by the possession of a word. They are proud, with just reason, of the word “home,” and think that the absence of it in the French language shows a want of tenderness of domestic sentiment in the French mind. The absence of any equivalent for _patrie_ may indicate a like want of tenderness in the patriotic sentiment. [Sidenote: Want of Cruel Experience in England.] [Sidenote: The Sacred Soil.] Happily the English have not for many centuries been educated by the kind of experience most favourable to tenderness in patriotism. Their country has not been invaded. No Englishman knows what it is to have foreign soldiers ruling irresistibly in his own village and in his own home. No Englishman has seen his corn trampled by an enemy’s cavalry, or his fruit-trees cut for fuel. In default of this experience no Englishman can imagine the sense of cruel wrong to their country that men feel when its sacred soil is violated.[19] The attempt to imagine it for the French only takes him from feeling to reason. He sees clearly that the French would have done as much on German soil had they been able to reach it, and from a reasonable point of view he perceives that no earthly soil is sacred. But the tender sentiment of patriotism, like other tender sentiments, is not amenable to reason. CHAPTER II PATRIOTIC PRIDE In the first chapter I indicated certain causes which make the patriotic sentiment less tender in England than in France. The same causes make English patriotism prouder than French patriotism.