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The Psychology of Jingoism

individuals of any nation been placed in such quick touch with great political events that their opinions, their passion, and their will have played an appreciable part in originating strife, or in determining by sanction or by criticism any important turn in the political conduct of a war. In a long-continued war, the passion of a whole people has, even in old times, been gradually inflamed against another people's, with whom, for reasons usually known to few, a state of war existed; and such martial animus, once roused, has lasted far beyond the limits of the strife, sometimes smouldering for decades or for centuries.

The quick ebullition of national hate termed Jingoism is a particular form of this primitive passion, modified and intensified by certain conditions of modern civilization. One who is curious of etymological origins will find true significance in the mode by which the word Jingo first came into vogue as an expression of popular pugnacity.

The oft-quoted saying of Fletcher of Saltoun, 'Let me make the ballads of a people, and let who will make the laws,' ever finds fresh illustration. A gradual debasement of popular art attending the new industrial era of congested, ugly, manufacturing towns has raised