[26] It is necessary to recall that the United States did not enter the last war ‘in defence of principles’, but with the very practical object of safeguarding their prestige, which had been lowered by the facts that the Germans had torpedoed three of their ships? Nevertheless, their desire to pose as having been purely idealistic in this affair is noteworthy. [27] It may be said that religious passions, at least in the West, only exist as a reinforcement to national passions; in France, a man sets up as a Catholic in order to pose as being ‘more French’; in Germany as a Protestant in order to declare himself ‘more German’. [28] Here are two remarkable cases of idealistic passions which in the past successfully opposed national passion and are now submissive to it: (_a_) In France, the monarchic passion, which in 1792 was stronger than national feeling in many people, whereas in 1914 it was completely effaced by national feeling. (Everyone will agree that attachment to a certain form of government, i.e. at bottom, the attachment to a certain metaphysical conception, is an infinitely more idealistic passion than nationalist passion; however, I do not claim that all the Emigrés were inspired by this idealism.) (_b_) In Germany, the religious passion, which only fifty years ago was stronger than national feeling in more than fifty per cent of Germans, and to-day is entirely subject to national feeling (in 1866 the German Catholics desired the defeat of Germany; in 1914 they ardently desired it to be victorious). The Europe of to-day, compared with the Europe of the past, seems to contain many less chances of civil wars and many more chances of national wars; nothing could show better how much Europe has lost in idealism. (See Note D at the end of this book for additional matter on the attitude of the modern Catholics towards Catholicism when it is in opposition to their nationalism.) [29] For example, in words like the following, uttered at Venice on the 11th December, 1926, by the Italian Minister of Education and Fine Arts: ‘Artists must prepare themselves for the new imperialist function which must be carried out by our art. Above everything, we must categorically impose a principle of _Italianita_. Whoever copies a foreigner is guilty of _lèse-nation_ (an insult to the nation) like a spy who admits an enemy by a secret doorway.’ These words have to be approved by every adept of ‘_integral_ nationalism’. Moreover, we hear much the same thing in France from certain adversaries of Romanticism. [30] ‘Discipline from the lowest to the highest must be essential and of a religious type.’ (Mussolini, 25th October, 1925.) This is new language in the mouth of a statesman, even of the most realist kind; it may be asserted that neither Richelieu nor Bismarck would have applied the word ‘religious’ to an activity whose object is exclusively materialistic. [31] Notably for Renan and ‘speculative a-moralism’. (H. Massis, _Judgments_, i.)