Any time I think about loyalty to organisations or countries I am reminded of what E.M. Forster wrote in his essay "What I believe" in 1938:
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying
my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the
guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalize the
modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the
telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have
shocked Dante, though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the
lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their
friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome.
[NB It is also worth noting that Forster was an associate of the members of the infamous Soviet spy ring started at Cambridge - although this wouldn't become public until a long time after this essay was written.]
It is also worth noting between the world wars Germany and Japan operated such that the rule of law, "country" if you will, counted for a good deal less than other loyalties. No doubt Forster was thinking of someone much more like himself, rather than of the assassins of Erzberger or of assorted Japanese Army putschists. The Weimar Republic, though, is probably a far better representation of a world run by the rules he proposes than the England of the late 1930s was.
That's a great quote. I would hope that such a choice would not "scandalize" today's modern reader, as I don't think that nationalism is as strong today as it was in 1938. At least, not in the US. I hope.
Which is basically Charlie's point, although he went ahead & worked it up into a theory ... a theory I don't think this foundation can quite support, per my post below.
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalize the modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have shocked Dante, though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome.
[NB It is also worth noting that Forster was an associate of the members of the infamous Soviet spy ring started at Cambridge - although this wouldn't become public until a long time after this essay was written.]