[An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation by Thorstein Veblen]@TWC D-Link book
An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation

CHAPTER III
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As the outcome of further unremitting intrigue and contention among feudal chiefs, of high and low degree, the populace fell into larger parcels, under the hands of feudal lords of larger dominion, and the bias of allegiance and service came to hold with some degree of permanence and uniformity, or at least of consistency, over a considerable reach of country, including its inhabitants.

With the rise of States came allegiance to a dynasty, as distinguished from the narrower and more ephemeral allegiance to the semi-detached person of a victorious prince; and the relative permanence of territorial frontiers under this rule gave room for an effectual recrudescence of the ancient propensity to a sentimental group solidarity; in which the accredited territorial limits of the dynastic dominion served to outline the group that so was felt to belong together under a joint dispensation and with something of a joint interest in matters of fame and fortune.

As the same notion is more commonly and more suggestively expressed, a sense of nationality arose within the sweep of the dynastic rule.

This sense of community interest that is called nationality so came in to reenforce the sense of allegiance to the dynastic establishment and so has coalesced with it to produce that high-wrought loyalty to the State, that draws equally on the sentiment of community interest in the nation and on the prescriptive docility to the dynastic head.

The sense of national solidarity and of feudal loyalty and service have coalesced, to bring this people to that climax of patriotic devotion beyond which there lies no greater height along this way.


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