"THE FOOL'S HOUR."

Clutha Leader, Volume XLI, Issue 41, 4 December 1914, Page 8

"THE FOOL'S HOUR."

A WARNING AGAINST HATRED. ' 'The Times' devotes a leader to a 1 warning against 'boastfulness and a comforting hatred of our enemies." The following are extracts from the article, which is headed "The Fool'# Hour'': "It is not difficult for a great nation to behave well when war first break* out. The 6udden change from peace to war sobers it. It is anxious, but has not yet been strained by a long anxiety; and it has not begun to suffer injuries, either fair or unfair, at the hands of the enemy. But gradually it becomes used to a state of war; and, at the same time, the strain of anxiety tells upon it ant it begins to feel the resentment caused by suffering, whether that suffering be necessarily or wantonh- iuUicted. At such a stage it is naiui-'ij; to men to seek some compensation foi what they have to endure, and if compensation is not given to them in the joy, of any dazzling victories, they are tempted to provide it for themselves in a kind of mental indulgence, in boastfulness, in a comforting hatred of their enemies, in a readiness to believe any evil of them or any rumor of their defeat or general dimoralisation. At such a time, and when a whole peoplp is thus tempted, the fool comes into hi 6 own.

"There are signs now: that we are threatened by this danger, that our fools are tempting us to share in their indulgence of their own folly; and now is the time for us to remember that wo have always been esteemed a great nation even by our enemies. The Germans, for all they may say, fear us; but their fear will grow less if we talk nonsense about them, or about ourselves; if we raise premature shouts of victory; if we believe falsehoods against them when there is so much that is true to believe; if we magnify the deeds of our army when they need no magnifying. There is nothing that awes an enemy so much as quiet Iteforo the stroke; every foolish boast of our.s that the Germans hear will convince them that we are mere boasters; every unjust accusation we make against them will persuade them that all our accusations are uhjust. When we read nonsense of theirs we are glad; and they, too, are glad when they read nonsense of our.s. In fact, the fools in each country hearten and exasperate the enemy; and that is the only effect they have upon the war. "There is a duty upon non-combat-ants as high as any duty in this war: and that is that we do not allow ourselves to suffer any spiritual defeat, whatever the national issue may be. In that way we shall fight for England, the England of our souls, against the baser part of ourselves, even though we are not fighting against the enemv. Hatred is the easiest and most worthless part of patriotism; it is the stimulant by which the coward persuades himself that he is brave; and the worse he thinks of his enemy the more In will fear him in disaster. The brave man knows that his task is to defeat the enemy, not to hate him, and he knows, too, that those who hate cannot understand. It is part of our task to understand the Germans, even when they seem most unintelligible to us, and that we may defeat them, and so that when the war is over we may make with them that lasting peace in the hope of which we had gone to war."