PERSONAL COLUMN
Patriotism is enough
Patrick Cosgrave
Churchill's last words are not recorded. But it would be appropriate to daydream that they were the same as the words of Pitt: "My country, oh, how I leave my country." It would be appropriate, not merely because Churchill did leave his country in a reduced and reducing condition, but also because he was the last great British statesman to make love of country a principle of policy. For him, indeed, patriotism was not merely a principle, but the principle; it was a boundlessly fertile source of inspiration, an intellectual as well as an emotional maxim, and an efficient yardstick for the judgement of plans and actions.
We live in less full-blooded, more attenuated, times. Our politicians are, of course, in the main, decent, honourable and patriotic men: but they do not wear their love of country on their sleeves, as Churchill did. Most patriotic expression nowadays is either cliche or cant; and the many able men in public life who do feel their patriotism as a motivating force seem unable to state its influence, and utter the conclusions that influence leads to, in a manner that inspires, and commands„ general assent, or at least respect.
The age of the EEC and the multinational company is not, of course, one that encourages a climate agreeable to simple patriotism. During the morning after the heyday of imperial glory the ebullience of patriotism seems out of place, ineffective, and hollow. The intellectual trends of the day are set dead against it. It Is held to be a principle too easily abused, and too readily exnloited by the unscrupulous political leader. We have applied as a general what Dr Johnson meant as a particular argument — that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Yet, it seems to me, the traditional constituent elements in patriotic feeling are ones we could do with nowadays. That ebullience is needed: in an age of introversion, the extrovert should have a place. There is about patriotism, properly conceived, a generosity of spirit, and a high concept of the national honour that can, and should, influence everything from social policy to defence planning. Again, properly conceived, patriotism is never solely a military, nor a militaristic, affair: it was merely the cheat of Kitchener's rhetoric in the first world war that made it so. After all, I have already used the synonym 'love of country' for patriotism: and something that is born in love must, of its nature, have an outgoing and large capacity for encouraging and sustaining love.
It is not, of course, in that light that we always look at our history, which is itself the record in which we find such evidence as there is for the existence and value of patriotism. Each generation, anyway, rewrites history, so that it gets the interpretation of the past it deserves and wants. So we now think of some of the great moments in English rhetoric as incidental to the men who used them, rather than as central expressions of their policies. Chatham's "I know that I can save this country — and that nobody else can"; Pitt's "But Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example "; Churchill's " solemn hour for the life of our country," are all thought of as splendid moments, but as moments only, individual, eccentric, splendid, each bearing the mark of a powerful historic personality, but not as statements of policy as sure, certain and determined as a White Paper or a Parliamentary Bill. Yet, statements of policy are precisely what these great moments are.
Save for one sentence — and that insignificant — Pitt's famous remark which I quoted above was the whole of his last speech as Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor's annual banquet: it was also, as Lord Rosebery said, "the noblest, the tersest " of his speeches. But it was a speech, on a traditionally great occasion when the Prime Minister — as he does now — unfolds the forward policy of the government to an important audience.
It was as fully a statement of intent and policy as any tour d'horizon of the economy, or of foreign affairs. It was not, obviously, a detailed rationalization of government plans. It was more important than that, and more comprehensible than such things usually are, for it was a statement of the spirit and aims of the government's policy, instantly intelligible to any listener or reader, and instantly appealing as well. It is to be praised, not merely for its nobility and brevity, but for the fullness of its exposition. It is, perhaps, the best known and most loved patriotic text. And it is not merely a splendid moment in a great man's rhetoric, but what amounts to a programme of action.
If there was a patriotic anthology, it would contain many moments and quotations equally terse. But it ought to be fuller and more detailed nonetheless, so that the reader could see the context and detail of the great sentences and paragraphs which are the epitomes, but not the verbatim records of patriotic policy. If such an anthology existed, and were subject to close yet sympathetic examination, it would show itself as the repository of a people's aspirations and strivings.
Such a repository would contain far more than interminable assertions of glory or military achievement. It would comprise the highest ideals and the most generous sentiments of moral, religious, social and intellectual thinking and philosophy. And, since it would be set in a national framework, it would give to those ideals a unity and a force they would not otherwise possess, a unity and a force that was organic and living, because it proceeded not merely from ratiocination but from sentiment as well. Of the Reformation Ranke wrote that it responded to the needs of the emerging European nation states of the sixteenth century. It did more. It injected into a nascent political structure a continuing and imperishable theistic element with which the individual nation states were able to identify themselves, and from which they were able to enrich themselves and their philosophies.
Being a feeling and sentiment, however, the patriotic principle, though it can be discussed and explained, is not an ideology. That is its strength and its weakness. It can never be outdated; but to survive in its full strength it must be constantly nurtured. It thrives, obviously, on great moments, great crises and great men. Also, though perfectly logical in principle, it is not tidy, and that offends the narrow mind. It offends because, once you start taking the patriotic argument seriously, you find a large number of nations and peoples all competing for the prize of being best, most admirable, of nations and people. I confess I find such vigorous competition in aspiration to virtue in no way distressing. Nor am I greatly disturbed by the cry that such competition, and the self-esteem of nations, is the main cause of war, for it is not true. War springs from the nature of man, not of men in nations, and is at its most cruel when the struggle is about the rise and fall of ideologies, such ideologies usually being internationalist rather than nationalist in character. Moreover, the patriotic principle is the statement of unity between classes, between governed and governors, of identity of interest through many differences. When it is not nurtured we have social division and fissure, the arrogance of the governors and the discontent of the governed. A patriotic policy is one in which everyone has both a part and a pride; it can be religious and atheistic, social and military, grounded in both wealth and poverty, scorning the mean, and seeking for the heights. Not only is patriotism a good guide to policy: it is the essential guide.
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