NATIONALISM.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 132, 21 June 1937, Page 6

NATIONALISM.

Nationalism is a good thing, so long as we reihember it is not the final word. It is right to love our nation, so long as we renaember that there is a world outside the nation, and1 that all the nations in that world are embraeed in the larger unity of the race. But while the right kind of nationalism is a good and admirablc thing, it is idlc to pretend that there is no danger to the world in the fervid nationalism of these days. It menaces the world's peace. With its emphasis on national interests, national prestige, national honour, it breeds envy, jealousy, suspicion, hatred; it begets friction and strife. That is what we are suffering from just now — -what Lord Htigh Cecil called fan exaggerated nationalism." For nationalism, while right and good in itself, unless it is modiiipd hy the larger patriotisin of the race, may easily beeome a dangerous and deadly thing. " Corruptio optimi pessima." The truth.that needs to be hrought home to the minds and conscienees of men just now is the truth that the race is a unity, the whole of mankind is oue great hpusehold. We are all of the same family. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Swiss — whatever we oe — we are brothers together, for there is oue God and Father of all Our several nationalisms are reconciled and find their unity in this larger internationalism. And unless our national patriotisms are . modified by this sense of race relationships, our nationaligm ouf he I the torch to set the world on fire^-J. D. JoueSj C.H. d o