American Greatness
Michael Walsh
Nov. 14, 2018
The French say many silly things, along with a few wise ones, although since the deaths of Voltaire, Descartes, and la Rochefoucauld, not lately. One of the silliest came out of the mouth of M. le President, Emmanuel Macron, at the centenary observance of the end of World War I on November 11. Calling nationalism a “betrayal of patriotism,†the fey popinjay went on to caution the world against “old demons coming back wreak chaos and death.â€
The media, of course, loved it, promptly casting Macron’s words as a “rebuke†to (who else?) Donald J. Trump and his soul mate, Vladimir Putin, who were both in attendance. Far from fighting for the survival of the French nation in 1914, said Macron, the French soldiers were fighting for the “universal values†because—get this—“patriotism is exactly the opposite of nationalism.†This statement ignores all the contemporary evidence from a century ago outlining the patriotic motives that moved the French and British soldiers who went to war against the Kaiser; all you have to do is read the poetry of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, or read Robert Graves’ classic memoir, Goodbye to All That.
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https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/14/did-nationalism-cause-world-war-one/