QUOTES
No
doubt there is a good deal that is attractive about the nationalist idea. It has
a great history and it has a great deal of appeal to sentiment in itself admirable.
But if we examine what it leads to, I do not doubt that we shall all agree that
it must be rejected as a guiding principle of the nations of the world. For it
necessarily leads to an exaggeration of the authority and dignity of the state
to an extent which practically destroys individual action and individual responsibility.
Nationalism leads to totalitarianism, and totalitarianism leads to idolatry. It
becomes not a principle of politics but a new religion and, let me add, a false
religion. It depends partly on a pseudoscientific doctrine of race which leads
inevitably to the antithesis of all that we value in Christian morality.
On
the other hand, if we accept the view that all nations are interdependent, as
individuals in any society are, we get precisely the opposite result. Such a principle
leads to friendliness and good neighbourhood and, indeed, it is not too much to
say that it leads to everything that we have hitherto understood as progress and
civilization.
