[2] “The cheapest form of pride,” says Schopenhauer, “is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation it follows that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with his fellow-men.... Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.... National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity, and baseness of mankind take in every country.”... “Narrowness, prejudice, vanity, and self-interest are the main elements of patriotism.”... “Does not all history show that whenever a king is firmly established on the throne, and the people reach some degree of prosperity, he uses it to lead an army, like a band of robbers, against adjoining countries? Are not almost all wars ultimately undertaken for purpose of plunder?”... Schopenhauer prophetically warns his countrymen: “All war is a matter of robbery, and the Germans should take that as a warning.”