TRUE PATRIOTISM AS A CONTAGION OF GOODNESS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2608, 2 November 1915, Page 6

TRUE PATRIOTISM AS A CONTAGION OF GOODNESS

(To tho Editor.) Sir, —It is said that throe words, savagery, barbarism, civilisation, mark the three stages of human progress. 1 expross no opinion with regard to tho accuracy of tiiis statement, but I may say that a good many things have been done, and are being done, m tho name ol' patriotism that savour of an ago of baroarism. It is said that Nero fiddled when Rome was burning, and in t-his crisis of our Empire, when the wounded are returning to our shores in hundreds, grown-up men are spending their time in senseless wrangling in the newspapers, and each is extolling tho special excellency of his own patriotism. The spectacle is by no means an edifying one.

By your courtesy I would supplement my letter in your issue of Saturday by saying one or two things about true patriotism as contagion of goodness: There are books of great moral worth so cheap that a man loses money by not. buying them. Among such books is Bolton King's "Life of Joseph Mazzini" in the Everyman's Library. lam satisfied that if somo of your correspondents had road and studied the chapter on "Nationality" in that book, they would never havo written their morally depressing letters to your coluins. Few men over lived who had a better right to speak on patriotism than Joseph Mazzini. Mr., King says: "His patriotism was a silent, manly thing, that hated display and braggart talk; it was as a steady spiritual flame that never roared to heaven and sank to ashes." Why should officials of patriotic societies prevent us from seeing in such words an admirablo description of their patriotism. True patriotism such as was preached and lived by Joseph Mazzini is a contagion of goodness. It converted Joseph Garibaldi when little more than a lad, and made him tho soldier of the Liberation of Italy. "What more does a patriot want?" asked Garibaldi of his soldiers in Sicily, "when he has his bowl of soup and a good cause?" As Dictator of Sicily lio was smiling cheques for thousands of francs daily, and yet his own salary was only ten francs a day, and when a suit of clothes got burned, he made his old clothes answer the purpose, because he could not afford a new. suit. After he had won the whole of Southern Italy to the cause of liberation and union, Victor Emmanuel wanted to pour honours and rewards upon him and upon his family, but he refused all them, and with a bag of seed corn as his only spoil, he retired to his island home. The true patriotism of Garibaldi was a contagion of goodness to our Tennyson and Henry Taylor, and it moved the latter to write when he saw Garibaldi with Tennyson: "And there was lie, that gentle ihero, who By virtue and the strength of his right arm, Dethroned an unjust King, and then withdrew To tend his farm."

It would answer a good purpose if this chapter on "Nationality" from Bolton King's book on Mazzini were printed as a tract for study in the higher forms of our primary schools and col-, leges, and used by patriotic societies, as setting forth the principle which such societies stood for. Wo need to be saved from a coarse, vulgar Chauvinism, and the principles of this chapter would cast out - such a spirit. Mazzini held that 110 ill-living man was a true patriot. "Let country," he said, "be incarnated' in each one of you ; cach one of you feel and mako himself responsible for his brothers; cach of you so act that in yourselves men may respect and love your country." There arc tens of thousands of our soldiers in tho fighting line from the Southern Hemisphere, who have suffered and are suffering, whose patriotism is a veritable contagion of goodness. Let me mention one case. A fenmonths ago a young, gifted student, a sou of a manse, heard tho call of tho Empire and its need in his Victorian home and college. Ho told the st-ory of his call' in, a patriotic song, which was sent to you for publication, and whioh appeared in your columns. Here is the closing verse: "0, England, I heard blie ory of those that died for thee, Sounding like an organ voico across the

winter 6ea, They loved, and died for, England, and gladly went their wav^ England! 0, England! How could I stay?"

So wrote young Jamos Burns, grandson of tho well-known hymn-writer, tho Rev. I. D. Bums. He went to the front and was early in the fighting line, and then he gavo his all, himself, for his country. When the news came tn his college the other week that Burns was killed in action, the headmaster could not trust himself to announce with his voice tho news, and so ho wrote it up on tho blackboard. He is"dead, and of him it may bo said: "His patriotism was a silent, manly thing that hated display and braggart talk; it was a steady, spiritual flarno that never soared to heaven and sank to ashes." It is this kind of patriotism and no other kind that will bring victory to our arms and stability to our Einpiro.— I am, etc., ROBERT WOOD. Island Bay, October 31.