Nation

What is a Nation?

As AE Russell the Irish poet, painter, economist and journalist once said

It is but an imagination shared by millions of people

A Nation is but a host of men united by some God-begotten mood

some hope of liberty or dream of power or beauty or justice or brotherhood

and until that master idea is manifested to us

there is no shining star to guide the ship of our destinies

He went on to say that some time in the heroic future

some nation in a crisis will act nobly rather than passionately, and will be prepared to risk national extinction rather than continue existence at the price of killing myriads of other human beings,

and it will oppose moral and spiritual forces to material forces, and it will overcome the world by making gentleness its might

as all great spiritual teachers have done

It comes to this

we cannot overcome hatred by hatred

or war by war

but by the opposite of these

Evil is not overcome by evil but by good

Nations hate other Nations for the evil which is in themselves

when humanity looks on its own image and finds it terrible it changes its heart or else it breaks the mirror

We are not quite there yet although what he says rings true

Evil is not overcome by evil