A Google user
Fact: The sentence imposed by the court martial in that story would have had the same effect on the defendant even if the story had been set in the worst totalitarian entity ever concocted by history or fiction because any country, any homeland, is better than no homeland at all.
Fact: The message that the story conveyed was not patriotism but distrust of one’s mentors and courts – specifically it conveyed the message to never expect so much as a sequitur response to any expressed protest.