ould not fight, because to
"understand" would be to "forgive"; but as we have not 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