neutral Powers, questions of devising a common organization for efficient propaganda, questions concerning the political aspect of the maritime blockade, questions that affect the utilization to the best advantage of resources of all kinds--armament, ships, food, coal, steel, and so forth-in the interests of the coalition as a whole, such questions can most profitably be discussed and decided by an international body, furnished with a permanent staff. That body does not stand in need of an appointed chieftain-of a Premierissimo. Still, such an officer might prove less objectionable than a generalissimo in the field. But if foreigners were disposed to cast their suffrages for Mr. Lloyd George as his Press encourages us to believe, not a few Englishmen would prefer M. Clemenceau as the natural leader of Western Europe.

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PHRASES

WHEN it became evident in the early days of August 1914 that England would either have to fight or take a licking, reasons had to be found to persuade Parliament to agree to the declaration of war. Many Englishmen, and all Frenchmen, thought that the spirit and intention of the Entente would have been enough to satisfy honourable men. The account of the interviews between our own Foreign Secretary and the French Ambassador during the days of fate is not very pleasant reading. No Englishman would have ever been able to look a Frenchman in the face if the British Army had not been sent to France. It is even possible that an earlier and a stouter announcement that we would stand by our friends might have prevented the war. But Ministers had found it convenient before the war to keep the Entente in the background, and indeed after the Agadir affair, when awkward questions were asked about our obligations to France, to go very near to denying it altogether. So the Foreign Secretary came down to the House of Commons on August 3, 1914, and prepared the mind of Parliament for war mainly on the ground of vindicating the neutrality of Belgium. But the mind of the nation must have perceived that there was a great deal more in it than this. If not our own existence, then our word to France and Russia would have been quite enough for most people. Ministers were fortified by the famous and invaluable letter signed by Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Bonar Law, promising the support of the Opposition if the Government went to war to fulfil our duty to our Allies. But public sentiment was rated differently, and it was decided to appeal to it on behalf of Belgium rather than on behalf of the Entente.

Now the neutrality of Belgium is something more than a phrase. But the importance of Belgium gave birth to a phrase known as "the rights of small nationalities," on which I will say a word later on. Since the outbreak of war we have been flooded with phrases invented and reiterated either to conceal our own unreadiness for war, or to tell us what we are fighting for, or to illustrate from the war the political abstractions of the coiner or circulator of the phrase. All those who have thought the matter out have long ago come to the conclusion that, in

&

fact, we entered upon and are now waging the war for such dull things as our food and clothes and homes, and all the primary elements of individual and national existence. But some of us are easily captivated by phrases. Indeed, we were once warned by a great patriot and thinker that our reckless appetite for government by phrases was one of our greatest dangers. It therefore seems to be vital that we should try to realize what we are really fighting for, and whether the real reason is not being camouflaged by rhetoric.

All phrasemakers and all who try to make the world square with their own pet abstract theories rather than apply the test of experience and common sense to things as they find them-in a word, all whom Disraeli used to call "the abstract-principle gentlemen❞—generally get into difficulties when they are brought up against hard facts. Some of us were sanguine enough to hope that the hard facts of the war would have cured them of the old habit. Not at all. The rhetoricians have given themselves full rein. And now that the strain of war is tighter than ever before, and may well be still tighter before long, those who in their hearts are fighting or working for England, and not for any abstract theory, may justly try to examine one or two ideas, and ask their authors for some justification and practical definition. We have not lately heard so much of "the rights of small nationalities." But we want to know what is a "nationality" and what are its rights," and whether these "rights" are to be the exclusive property of small "nationalities." Is Ireland a "nationality"? If the rights of small "nationalities" include self-expression by means of the exercise of sovereign power, are those who so glibly use this phrase prepared to grant full sovereign power and independence to Ireland? Those who since the war began have been talking so much about "the rights of small nationalities" seem to have forgotten that they were fitting out an expedition against Ulster at the very moment when Germany was waiting at the end of the wire to know when the British Government had let loose the dogs of war at home, in order that she might with the greater safety do the same thing in Europe. But, on the other hand, diplomacy may have dictated the appeal to small nationalities." If it be seriously intended to back up this formula and to vanquish Pan-Germanism, and so to hasten the end of the war by enlisting on the side of England all the peoples who are bullied and oppressed by Germany according to the policy indicated by M. André Chéradame in the January number of the National Review, well and good. But very few soldiers would be induced to "go over the top," and very few women would be induced to wait patiently for several hours in a food queue, with no further stimulant than "the rights of small nationalities."

But a much more favourite formula, though probably quite as unconvincing to the man in the trench and to the woman in the queue, is that we are at war to overthrow "Prussian militarism." Many, indeed, who have no lurid past to conceal sometimes use this term for the simple reason that it has by constant repetition found its way into the glossary of the war. It is, however, used with special unction by those who flouted Lord Roberts, and view with profound alarm any system of universal military training after the war as being fatal to their own plan of political and social reconstruction. This frame of mind is prone to select those aspects of Germany which correspond to things that it dislikes, and to hold them up to public odium as a warning to England. The exhortation to overthrow "Prussian militarism" has been employed with a view to preserving the old fallacy that the good old fat German of the beer-garden and the picture-book has no hatred of England, but forms part of a submissive peasantry under the heel or before the toe of the Prussian jack-boot. Now this is a dangerous fallacy. Let us hope that it is weakening in its hold; but it cannot too often be pointed out that we are at war with the whole German nation. We ought to have learnt by now that all Germans hate the English with that deadly hatred that is the more remorseless, unscrupulous, and vindictive because it is inspired, not by any wrong we have done to Germany, but by jealousy, and perhaps by fear, and may be, as a clever writer who knows Germany has recently suggested, by a spice of admiration into the bargain. Before the war no sensitive Englishman could stay very long in Germany without feeling in his bones the universal German dislike of the English. Since the war began abundant and authentic evidence of the malice of the whole German nation has come to hand. Trustworthy witnesses who know Germany from within have told us of it. And if we want further evidence, the reception of our prisoners of war by a mob of German civilians is more than enough. The chagrin caused by our taking up arms against Germany at the last minute after all our smooth words and Pacifist talk and neglect of military preparation may, quite unreasonably, have intensified the hatred.

A right understanding of ourselves and Germany requires something more than phrases. Those who would know the German outlook cannot do better than study Mr. A. D. McLaren's masterly article in the January number of the National Review on "The Mind and Mood of Germany To-day." He tells us that

No one section of the German people should be singled out in this way as the sole cause of the war. . . . No military caste or bureaucracy ever created the German national spirit out of nothing. Innate qualities, quite as much as the "enlightened despotism" of personal government, determine the character of the German people,

The German military machine is something more than the creation of Junkers and Prussians. The German military machine is the German people. Every German man is either a soldier or the possible father of soldiers. Every German woman wishes to be the mother of soldiers. The machine must sooner or later be beaten in the field, and so discredited, if we are to have anything like a durable peace in Europe. But even then there is no guarantee that Deutschland über alles will not still try to expand by force of arms at the expense of some other Power. The spirit will have to be dealt with in the future, and as far as we are concerned it would seem to be our duty to deal with it by the security and independence of the British Empire.

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Even more common than the use in speeches of "rights of small nationalities" and "Prussian militarism" is the use of the word "Democracy." No speech is complete without it. It is enough to say that a certain thing is "treason to democracy" to condemn it without further hearing. What is democracy? Does it mean a peer on a motor-bus," or does it mean a wholesale and shameless pandering to the proletariat under the colourable pretext of obeying "the voice of the people," that most meaningless of all phrases? Lord Morley once described democracy as government by public opinion. Disraeli makes a curious prophecy about democracy. In 1859 he said in the House of Commons:

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

Lord Courtney said in the House of Lords not long ago that there is a vast amount of cant talked about democracy. The Prime Minister has lately defined it as government by the majority and the negation of privilege. Now there seems to be a real danger in making a fetish of any particular form of government by resolving beforehand to test what one believes to be right or wrong by the absolutism either of a majority or of a single despot. Either may make mistakes. Perhaps a safe description of a democracy is that it is a form of government by which the legislation and the executive are responsible to an appreciable number of electors. We had such a government in this country before the war. The faults of such a democracy as prevailed in England before the war were clearly demonstrated. They are faults which will probably be exhibited by any democracy, unless, indeed, the