Page:A Memorial of John Boyle O'Reilly from the City of Boston.djvu/52

46 He loved Ireland as the greatest of his countrymen have loved it; but he loved America as well, and would have given the last drop of blood of his veins for America as cheerfully as for Ireland, if thereby he could have enhanced its glory. For a quality like this, nations have reared the proudest memorials to their sons, and given them the most glorious pages in their history; yet there are those who say that patriotism is a narrow virtue, that it fences off nations, breeds animosity between races, that you must not do anything to foster it, that future glory is a mere vanity, and that we must all put ourselves on the higher plane of humanity.

While I am a humanitarian, I do not believe in that doctrine. I believe that a sentiment engendered in human nature was planted there by God, is commendable, and to be fostered everywhere and on all occasions.

At all events, our friend did not hold his patriotism in any narrow fashion.

He was an Irishman with all the traditions, with all the wrongs of his country burned into his soul, and yet he had the grace to do justice to the grand achievements of Englishmen. He was an American citizen, not merely because he saw the possibility of the realization here of the dreams of his youth, the hopes and convictions of his maturer manhood, because, as some one has