Note (return) — Chapter I

In war, the vague political tradition that there is something unfair in influencing the will of one's fellow-men otherwise than by argument does not exist. This was what Napoleon meant when he said, 'À la guerre, tout est moral, et le moral et l'opinion font plus de la moitié de la réalité.'[55] And it is curious to observe that when men are consciously or half-consciously determining to ignore that tradition they drop into the language of warfare. Twenty years ago, the expression 'Class-war' was constantly used among English Socialists to justify the proposal that a Socialist party should adopt those methods of parliamentary terrorism (as opposed to parliamentary argument) which had been invented by Parnell. When Lord Lansdowne in 1906 proposed to the House of Lords that they should abandon any calculation of the good or bad administrative effect of measures sent to them from the Liberal House of Commons, and consider only the psychological effect of their acceptance or rejection on the voters at the next general election, he dropped at once into military metaphor. 'Let us' he said, 'be sure that if we join issue we do so upon ground which is as favourable as possible to ourselves. In this case I believe the ground would be unfavourable to this House, and I believe the juncture is one when, even if we were to win for the moment, our victory would be fruitless in the end.'[56]