The patriotic spirit is at cross purposes with modern life, but in any test case it is found that the claims of life yield before those of patriotism; and any voice that dissents from this order of things is as a voice crying in the wilderness.
* * * * * To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular discrepancies of human life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profound speculation.

The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait of human nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types.
It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, and apparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education, experience or selective breeding.
Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculable period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today appears to be no lower than it ever was.

At the same time, with the advance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism has grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance as ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem.
The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modern peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high among the virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, an hereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a product of habituation.

It is, in substance, not something that can be learned and unlearned.

From one generation to another, the allegiance may shift from one nationality to another, but the fact of unreflecting allegiance at large remains.