National traditions and purposes always contain a large
infusion of dubious ingredients; but loyalty to them does not
necessarily mean the uncritical and unprotesting acceptance of the
national limitations and abuses. Nationality is a political and social
ideal as well as the great contemporary political fact. Loyalty to the
national interest implies devotion to a progressive principle. It
demands, to be sure, that the progressive principle be realized without
any violation of fundamental national ties. It demands that any national
action taken for the benefit of the progressive principle be approved
by the official national organization. But it also serves as a ferment
quite as much as a bond. It bids the loyal national servants to fashion
their fellow-countrymen into more of a nation; and the attempt to
perform this bidding constitutes a very powerful and wholesome source of
political development. It constitutes, indeed, a source of political
development which is of decisive importance for a satisfactory theory of
political and social progress, because a people which becomes more of a
nation has a tendency to become for that very reason more of a
democracy.
Pages:
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454