It is primarily a name, which, like other names, calls up when it is heard or seen an ‘image’ that shades imperceptibly into the voluntary realisation of its meaning.  As in other cases, emotional reactions can be set up by the name and its automatic mental associations.  It is the business of the party managers to secure that these automatic associations shall be as clear as possible, shall be shared by as large a number as possible, and shall call up as many and as strong emotions as possible.  For this purpose nothing is more generally useful than the party colour.  Our distant ancestors must have been able to recognise colour before they recognised language, and the simple and stronger emotions more easily attach themselves to a colour than to a word.  The poor boy who died the other day with the ribbon of the Sheffield Wednesday Football Club on his pillow loved the colour itself with a direct and intimate affection.

[17] Thoughts on the Present Discontents (Macmillan, 1902), p. 81.

A party tune is equally automatic in its action, and, in the case of people with a musical ‘ear,’ even more effective than a party colour as an object of emotion.  As long as the Marseillaise, which is now the national tune of France, was the party tune of the revolution its influence was enormous.  Even now, outside of France, it is a very valuable party asset.  It was a wise suggestion which an experienced political organiser made in the Westminster Gazette at the time of Gladstone’s death, that part of the money collected in his honour should be spent in paying for the composition of the best possible marching tune, which should be identified for all time with the Liberal Party.[18] One of the few mistakes made by the very able men who organised Mr. Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform Campaign was their failure to secure even a tolerably good tune.

[18] Westminster Gazette, June 11, 1898.

Only less automatic than those of colour or tune come the emotional associations called up by the first and simplest meaning of the word or words used for the party name.  A Greek father called his baby ’Very Glorious’ or ‘Good in Counsel,’ and the makers of parties in the same way choose names whose primary meanings possess established emotional associations.  From the beginning of the existence and activity of a party new associations are, however, being created which tend to take the place, in association, of the original meaning of the name.  No one in America when he uses the terms Republican or Democrat thinks of their dictionary meanings.  Any one, indeed, who did so would have acquired a mental habit as useless and as annoying as the habit of reading Greek history with a perpetual recognition of the dictionary meanings of names like Aristobulus and Theocritus.  Long and precise names which make definite assertions as to party policy are therefore soon shortened into meaningless syllables with new associations derived from the actual history of the