ABSTRACT
Nations have their periods of birth, youth, maturity and decay. Like individuals, they are influenced, through all the stages of their existence, by the conditions and circumstances they create for themselves, as well as those which exist independently of them. The policy of a nation is well defined as "the art of ordering all things for the common benefit of the citizens of a free state". Patriotism does not consist alone in fighting the battles of one's country, - although that is one of the most attractive forms in which it displays itself. It is a sentiment firmly embedded in the mind, and is exhibited as well in peace as in war. Peoples have become great by the power of arms, but only at times when monarchs justified their conquests and maintained their oppressions by the claim of "divine right". But these times are passing away as the relations of the nations to each other are changing.
