PUBLIC MORALITY




CHAPTER XXIII


PATRIOTISM AND WORLD-PEACE

THE goal of personal morality is reached with the adoption of that
mode of life that leads to the stable and lasting happiness of the
individual. Such a happiness necessarily presupposes relations of
kindness and cooperation with those other persons that form the
immediate environment. But it is quite compatible with a neglect of
those wider aspects of duty that we call public morality. The Stoics,
the anchorites, some communities of monks, and many a well-to-do
recluse today, are examples of those who have found a selfish happiness
for themselves without taking any hand in forwarding the general
welfare. Yet the greatest total good is not to be attained in any such
way; if man is to win in his inexorable war with a hostile and grudging
environment, men must march EN MASSE, must work for ends that lie
far beyond their personal satisfactions, for the welfare of the State and
posterity. It is these larger, public duties that we must now consider.
And it is here that our greatest stress must be laid; for these
obligations are too easily overlooked, and toward them the contemporary
conscience needs most sharply to be aroused. The first great public
problem, historically, is that of war. And theoretically it may well
come first, since the attainment of peace is the prerequisite of all
other social advance. While a nation's energies are absorbed in war,