ENGLISH PATRIOTISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 May 1939, Page 9

ENGLISH PATRIOTISM

OBSERVATIONS BY DR INGE. We English love our country as a man loves his, wife, writes Dr W. R. Inge, in answering the question, “Are We Patriotic.” A husband does not go about praising his wife’s beauty and her virtues, and he is quite willing that other men should think their wives the best women in the world, though, of course, they are mistaken. Of course, it is mere common sense that, having everything to lose and nothing to gain by war, we must keep the peace at. almost any price. We ought not to forget that there have been times when we were arrogant and boastful enough. Shakespeare’s Henry V at Agincourt and Milton’s complacent remark that when there is anything great to be done God reveals it first to His Englishmen, makes us blush now. Some of Punch’s cartoons when Palmerston was Prime Minister makes us squirm. All this arrogance is quite over, but it is remembered against us, however mild our present manners may be. “The English are mentioned in the Bible,” said Mark Twain. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” We all hope and pray that the supreme ordeal may not be awaiting us. If it comes, I think we shall face it in the spirit of the famous words of Abraham Lincoln: ‘With malice toward fione; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right —let us strive bn to finish the work we are in.''