reached that stage, and as we cannot even explain why we are quarrelling—­the matter being so complex—­we are fain to adopt a phrase and fight on the strength of that.  It is useless to call this hypocrisy.  It is a psychological necessity.  It is the same necessity which makes a mistress dismiss her maid on the score of a broken teapot, though really she has no end of secret grievances against her; or which makes the man of science condense the endless complexity of certain physical phenomena into a neat but lying formula which he calls a Law of Nature.  He could not possibly give all the real facts, and so he uses a phrase.

In war, therefore, each nation adopts a motto as its reason for fighting.  Sometimes the two opposing nations both adopt the same motto I England and Germany both inscribe on their banners:  “Culture versus Barbarism.”  Each believes in its own good faith, and each accuses the other of hypocrisy.

In a sense this is all right, and could not be better.  It does not so much matter which is really the most cultured nation, England or Germany, as that each should really believe that it is fighting in the cause of Culture.  Then, so fighting for what it knows to be a good cause, the wounds and death endured and the national losses and depletion are not such sad and dreadful things as they at first appear.  They liberate the soul of the individual; they liberate the soul of the nation.  They are sacrifices made for an ideal; and (provided they are truly such) the God within is well-pleased and comes one step nearer to his incarnation.  Whatever inner thing you make sacrifices for, the same will in time appear visibly in your life—­blessing or cursing you.  Therefore, beware I and take good care as to what that inner thing really is.

Such is the meaning of the use of a phrase or “battle-cry”; but we have, indeed, to be on our guard against how we use it.  It can so easily become a piece of cant or hypocrisy.  It can so easily be engineered by ruling cliques and classes for their own purposes—­to persuade and compel the people to fight their battles.  The politicians get us (for reasons which they do not explain) into a nice little entanglement —­perhaps with some tribe of savages, perhaps with a great European Power; and before the nation knows where it is it finds itself committed to a campaign which may develop and become a serious war.  Then there is no alternative but for Ministers to repair to a certain Cabinet where the well-dried formulae they need are kept hanging, and select one for their use.  It may be “Women and Children,” or it may be “Immoral Savages,” or it may be “Empire,” or it may be “Our Word of Honour.”  Having selected the right one, and duly displayed and advertised it, they have little difficulty in making the nation rise to the bait, and fight whatever battles they desire.