ABSTRACT
There is, however, no special puzzle about the devotion and service of public-spirited citizens. Any organisation or institution —a school, a hospital—can command such devotion. Identification of the State with religion or economic dogma is uncommon today. There is also the problem of a criterion. Language is rejected by many nationalists. The identification of the State with any non-political purpose or ideal inevitably meets with two difficulties. No doubt leaders of States often cultivate such monopolies with their eyes open to the consequences. There is no tendency in Britain to treat the Scots or the Welsh as second-rate citizens or ‘sub-men’; nor do similar discriminations of action or attitude assail Italian-speaking Swiss or French Canadians. So it is the highest compliment to the reader that they have no political religion capable, like fascism and communism, of unifying all the lives of all the citizens and of crushing out every activity and every enthusiasm not subservient to its aims.
