one another and about the food resources to be sure that there was food sufficient for all.  When eating in common became the vogue, table manners made their appearance and they have been waging an uphill struggle ever since.  The custom of raising the hat when meeting an acquaintance derives from the old rule that friendly knights in accosting each other should raise the visor for mutual recognition in amity.  In the knightly years, it must be remembered, it was important to know whether one was meeting friend or foe.  Meeting a foe meant fighting on the spot.  Thus, it is evident that the conventions of courtesy not only tend to make the wheels of life run more smoothly, but also act as safeguards in human relationship.  Imagine the Paris Peace Conference, or any of the later conferences in Europe, without the protective armor of diplomatic etiquette!

Nevertheless, to some the very word etiquette is an irritant.  It implies a great pother about trifles, these conscientious objectors assure us, and trifles are unimportant.  Trifles are unimportant, it is true, but then life is made up of trifles.  To those who dislike the word, it suggests all that is finical and superfluous.  It means a garish embroidery on the big scheme of life; a clog on the forward march of a strong and courageous nation.  To such as these, the words etiquette and politeness connote weakness and timidity.  Their notion of a really polite man is a dancing master or a man milliner.  They were always willing to admit that the French were the politest nation in Europe and equally ready to assert that the French were the weakest and least valorous, until the war opened their eyes in amazement.  Yet, that manners and fighting can go hand in hand appears in the following anecdote: 

In the midst of the war, some French soldiers and some non-French of the Allied forces were receiving their rations in a village back of the lines.  The non-French fighters belonged to an Army that supplied rations plentifully.  They grabbed their allotments and stood about while hastily eating, uninterrupted by conversation or other concern.  The French soldiers took their very meager portions of food, improvised a kind of table on the top of a flat rock, and having laid out the rations, including the small quantity of wine that formed part of the repast, sat down in comfort and began their meal amid a chatter of talk.  One of the non-French soldiers, all of whom had finished their large supply of food before the French had begun eating, asked sardonically:  “Why do you fellows make such a lot of fuss over the little bit of grub they give you to eat?” The Frenchman replied:  “Well, we are making war for civilization, are we not?  Very well, we are.  Therefore, we eat in a civilized way.”