Michelet found in England 'human pride personified in a people,' at a
time when the characteristic of Germany was 'a profound impersonality.'
It may be doubted whether even the arrogant brutality of the modern
Prussian is more offensive to foreigners than was the calm and haughty
assumption of superiority by our countrymen at this time. Our
grandfathers and great-grandfathers were quite of Milton's opinion,
that, when the Almighty wishes something unusually great and difficult
to be done, He entrusts it to His Englishmen. This unamiable
characteristic was probably much more the result of insular ignorance
than of a deep-seated pride. 'A generation or two ago,' said Mr. Asquith
lately, 'patriotism was largely fed and fostered upon reciprocal
ignorance and contempt.' The Englishman seriously believed that the
French subsisted mainly upon frogs, while the Frenchman was equally
convinced that the sale of wives at Smithfield was one of our national
institutions. This fruitful source of international misunderstanding has
become less dangerous since the facilities of foreign travel have been
increased. But in the relations of Europe with alien and independent
civilisations, such as that of China, we still see brutal arrogance and
vulgar ignorance producing their natural results.

Another cause of perverted patriotism is the inborn pugnacity of the
_bête humaine_. Our species is the most cruel and destructive of all
that inhabit this planet. If the lower animals, as we call them, were
able to formulate a religion, they might differ greatly as to the shape
of the beneficent Creator, but they would nearly all agree that the
devil must be very like a big white man. Mr. McDougall[8] has lately
raised the question whether civilised man is less pugnacious than the
savage; and he answers it in the negative. The Europeans, he thinks, are
among the most combative of the human race. We are not allowed to knock