PATRIOTISM: SWISS VERSION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 1 June 1943, Page 5

PATRIOTISM: SWISS VERSION

Reasons for celebrating our (Swiss) national holiday and for loving our country are many. But let us take care! Not all reasons are of equal worth! Some are good, are legitimate; others are false and dangerous There is a patriotism nourished on ambition, stimulated by the will for power and domination. It engenders arrogance and hate. It leads to war. There is also a comfortable patriotism, based on collective selfishness and fear of risk, and inspired solely by the wish to be sheltered from tempest. It has for its motto: If only we pull through all right! True love of country has no part with chauvinism or with cowardice. One certainly could not think of God in connection with that caricature of patriotism. God cannot be mobilised on the side of vain ambitions, or be drawn into safety-first calculations. To serve God —not to make use of Him—is what we are called to do. . . A nation is truly Christian only so far as its citizens are imbued with the Spirit of the Christ and obedient to all that this means and implies. The charitable work of the Swiss assures us, so they say, respect and protection. That remains to be seen. In any case, we should not carry it on for this reason, but solely to fulfil the mission to which God has called us. . . . Our task is to at whatever cost, the moral and spiritual values which are our sole reason for existing: the rights of the weak, the defence of the oppressed, mutual understanding and co-operation, in spite of diversity in language and race. In the midst of the unleashed forces of war, our lit f le country, in the name of God Almighty, raises the cross of its flag, symbolic of the invincible power which alone can bring peace to the world, in that genuine new order which God ordains.—Statement by the evangelical churches of Neuchntel. nublished in “Feuille d’Avis de Neuchatel.”