“I doubt it.”

Killing time in my office, I happened to pull Schopenhauer down from my shelf. There’s no one like Schopenhauer. Here he trashes both England and Germany (I myself am fond of both countries, of course, but that doesn’t stop this diatribe from being very funny):

“The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus re-imbursing himself for his own inferiority. For example, if you speak of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English nation with the contempt it deserves, you will hardly find one Englishman in fifty to agree with you; but if there should be one, he will generally happen to be an intelligent man.

The Germans have no national pride, which shows how honest they are, as everybody knows! And how dishonest are those who, by a piece of ridiculous affectation, pretend that they are proud of their country– the Deutsche Brüder and the demagogues who flatter the mob in order to mislead it. I have heard it said that gunpowder was invented by a German. I doubt it.”

(The Wisdom of Life, Dover edition, pp. 40-41)