If song-writer Sammy Cahn was right when he said that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, he was giving us something to think about as well as sing about. Browning knew this when he wrote one of the best-known poems in the language. ‘Oh, to be in England’. Perhaps we have to depart from England to appreciate this. ‘What should they know of England who only England know?’ as Kipling put it. Rupert Brooke went further in praising his homeland when he thought about the possibility of dying in some corner of a foreign field.
Patriotism resembles nostalgia. It is not what it used to be. In the days when trousers had cuffs and galoshes could still be seen on wet days, an English patriot wore his buttonhole with pride. We can still love our native land but it is best not to make too much of it. Samuel Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel and sometimes it is a last resort to wrap ourselves in a union flag. It still makes sense for a leader to dampen down dissent at home by turning attention to to a foreign quarrel.
It is globalisation that is changing our patriotism. The best ships in the world are no longer built on the Clyde or in Belfast. Our Dyson vacuum-cleaners are made in the Far East. We go in pursuit of the best and the best is often somewhere other than in the UK. Just as a black horse is the same wherever it is to be found, so gifted IT specialists are the same whatever their origins or present placement.
Patriotism flourishes with the nation-state. We know only too well how pliable national boundaries are in Europe. We English like driving BMWs and seeing ‘Bosch’ on our kitchen equipment. Perhaps Sammy Cahn saw marriage as becoming something with hardly more permanence than national boundaries. Sadly, perhaps he was right.
THE FRENCH WAY
The national anthem that raises all the questions comes from France. It was written in 1792 and could never be called soporific. Robust? Aggressive? Bloodthirsty? Yes, all those things. Durable, too. Like many memorable songs it reflects the world it came from. Not unlike ‘Onward, Christian soldiers, as you might say.
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