United States or Norfolk Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


So that the undisturbed and undiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population, early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability or disserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture and technology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last; except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under the conditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of these Europeans, one with another.

It is evidence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicable presence of this quality in human nature; all the more since it continues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in spite of the fact that a modicum of reflection should make its disserviceability plain to the meanest understanding.

The privileged classes of the United Kingdom should by this time be able to see the danger there may be for them and their vested interests, pecuniary and moral, in an excessive prolongation of the war; in such postponement of peace as would afford time for a popular realisation of their incompetence and disserviceability as touches the nation's material well-being under modern conditions.

So much, however, would seem evident, that the received virtues and ideals of patriotic animosity and national jealousy can best be guarded against untimely decay by resolutely holding to the formal observance of all outworn punctilios of national integrity and discrimination, in spite of their increasing disserviceability, as would be done, e.g., or at least sought to be done, in the installation of a league of neutral nations to keep the peace and at the same time to safeguard those "national interests" whose only use is to divide these nations and keep them in a state of mutual envy and distrust.