r even to think of it again if you could
help it.

Take the case of dolls. It is much easier to care for an educational
cause than to care for a doll. It is as easy to write an article on
education as to write an article on toffee or tramcars or anything else.
But it is almost as difficult to look after a doll as to look after a
child. The little girls that I meet in the little streets of Battersea
worship their dolls in a way that reminds one not so much of play as
idolatry. In some cases the love and care of the artistic symbol has
actually become more important than the human reality which it was, I
suppose, originally meant to symbolize.

I remember a Battersea little girl who wheeled her large baby sister
stuffed into a doll's perambulator. When questioned on this course of
conduct, she replied: "I haven't got a dolly, and Baby is pretending to
be my dolly." Nature was indeed imitating art. First a doll had been a
substitute for a child; afterwards a child was a mere substitute for a
doll. But that opens other matters; the point is here that such devotion
takes up most of the brain and most of the life; much as if it were
really the thing which it is supposed to symbolize. The point is that
the man writing on motherhood is merely an educationalist; the child
playing with a doll is a mother.

Take the case of soldiers. A man writing an article on military strategy
is simply a man writing an article; a horrid sight. But a boy making a
campaign with tin soldiers is like a General making a campaign with live
soldiers. He must to the limit of his juvenile powers think about the
thing; whereas the war correspondent need not think at all. I remember
a war correspondent who remarked after the capture of Methuen: "This
renewed activity on the part of Delarey is probably due to his
being short of stores." The same military critic had mentioned a few
paragraphs before that Delarey was being hard pressed by a column which
was pursuing him under the command of Methuen. Methuen chased Delarey;
and Delarey's activity was due to his being short of stores. Otherwise
he would have stood quite still while he was chased. I run after Jones
with a hatchet, and if he turns round and tries to get rid of me the
only possible explanation is that he has a very small balance at his
bankers. I cannot believe that any boy playing at soldiers would be as
idiotic as this. But then any one playing at anything has to be serious.
Whereas, as I ha