Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

AS REGARDS PATRIOTISM

Training does wonderful things. It moved the
people of this country to oppose the Mexican War;
them moved them to fall in with what they supposed
was the opinion of the majority-majority Patriotism is the customary Patriotism-and go down there
and fight. Before the Civil War it made the North
indifferent to slavery and friendly to the slave interest; in that interest it made Massachusetts hostile
to the American flag, and she would not allow it to
be hoisted on her State House-in her eyes it was
the flag of a faction. Then by and by, training
swung Massachusetts the other way, and she went
raging South to fight under that very flag and
against that aforetime protected interest of hers.
There is nothing that training cannot do. Nothing
is above its reach or below it. It can turn bad
morals to good, good morals to bad; it can destroy
principles, it can recreate them; it can debase angels
to men and lift men to angelship. And it can do any
one of these miracles in a year-even in six months.
Then men can be trained to manufacture their
own Patriotism. They can be trained to labor it
out in their own heads and hearts and in the privacy
and independence of their own premises. It can
train them to stop taking it by command, as the
Austrian takes his religion.

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