Article September 10, 1921 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from George Bernard Shaw, William S. Bovard, Frank L. Cobb, Edward Earle Purinton

[From "Newer Notions of Patriotism," an Editorial in The Saturday Evening Post]

Recent national experiences in war and peace have done much to clarify and enrich our old ideas of patriotism. The very word but lately had a signification so narrow that our thoughts were bound to outgrow it or enlarge its meaning. Love of native land meant to most of us pride in and acceptance of the principles of freedom laid down in the Declaration of Independence and exemplified in the Constitution; an abiding conviction that the United States is the best country the sun ever shone on, and willingness to rush to the national defense in time of war. Such were the bare bones of our patriotism, swathed, to be sure, in tingling recollections of Independence-Day eloquence, stirring legends of gallant sea fights, visions of old battle fields, of Yorktown and Valley Forge, memories of unhealed scars of Northern France and echoes of well remembered martial strains.

This, in the rough, was our old masculine patriotism that is to our new body of standards what Uncle Sam is to Miss Columbia. Indeed, these reigning deities of our national mythology fairly typify the partnership of old and new that has gradually, almost imperceptibly, sprung up. In the new patriotism we have a taskmaster who is far more exacting than the old. Uncle Sam, except in war time, was a tolerably easy boss, but Miss Columbia invents fresh tasks for every week in the year. She makes the faithful report for duty on the occasion of primaries and on election day just as regularly as Uncle Sam requires demonstrations of loyalty on July Fourth. She is irksomely practical. Sometimes she is almost sordid. She is forever talking of brass tacks. Ignoring our firm allegiance to the principles of political freedom, she asks embarrassing questions about our local school system. Always she makes us work uphill. Instead of encouraging a militant citizenry to begin at the top and reform the country on the way down, starting with Congress and ending with the village school committee, she inverts the old spectacular order and sends love of country into action in our own block, perhaps at our very hearthstone. She even hints in pretty plain terms that patriotism, like charity, begins at home. . . . No one who sums up and reflects upon our newer notions of what constitutes true love of country and compares them with those of other generations can lament the change or deplore the influence that brought it about.

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