Christianity and Patriotism
same way in Germany, France, England, and America give up doing all that is, with just the same energy, being done there, too, by the ruling classes to work up patriotism and obedience to the existing Government, and then we should see how far this supposed patriotism is characteristic of the peoples of our times.
As it is, from childhood the people are hypnotized always in the same direction by every possible means—by school books, by church services, sermons, speeches, books, newspapers, poems, monuments. Then some thousands of people are brought together by force or by bribes, and when these assembled thousands, joined by all the loafers, always glad to be present at any spectacle, to the sounds of cannon firing and bands, and to the sight of magnificence and splendour of all sorts, begin shouting what is shouted before them, we are told that this is the expression of the feelings of the whole people. But, in the first place, these thousands—or, if you like, tens of thousands—of people who shout something at such celebrations make up only a tiny ten-thousandth of the population. In the second place, of those tens of thousands of people shouting and waving their caps, the greater part, if not assembled by force as amongst us in Russia, have been artificially attracted by one allurement or another. In the third place, of, all
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