Without Frontiers by Oscar Wilde — Read

Goethe -- you will not misunderstand what I say -- was a German of the / Germans. He loved his country -- no man more so. Its people were dear to / him; and he led them. Yet, when the iron hoof of Napoleon trampled upon / vineyard and cornfield, his lips were silent. 'How can one write songs / of hatred without hating? ' he said to Eckermann, 'and how could I, to / whom culture and barbarism are alone of importance, hate a nation which / is among the most cultivated of the earth and to which I owe so great a / part of my own cultivation? ' This note, sounded in the modern world by / Goethe first, will become, I think, the starting point for the / cosmopolitanism of the future. Criticism will annihilate / race-prejudices, by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the / variety of its forms. If we are tempted to make war upon another nation, / we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own / culture, and possibly its most important element. As long as war is / regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is / looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. The change will of / course be slow, and people will not be conscious of it. They will not / say 'We will not war against France because her prose is perfect,' but / because the prose of France is perfect, they will not hate the land. / Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than / those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalist. It will give us / the peace that springs from understanding. -- _The Critic as Artist_.