It is not sufficient either with statesmen or peoples to set before them a chain of reasoning which is logically unanswerable. Somehow or other the new faith which it is desired to implant, must be rendered independent of logic and unassailable by logic. It must rise into a higher order of convictions than the intellectual before it can begin to operate upon human affairs. For it is matched against opinions which have been held and acted upon so long, that they have become unquestionable save in purely academic discussions. At those decisive moments, when action follows upon thought like a flash, conclusions which depend upon a train of reasoning are of no account: instinct will always get the better of any syllogism.
So when nations are hovering on the brink of war, it is impulse, tradition, or some stuff of the imagination--misused deliberately, as sometimes happens, by crafty manipulators--which determines action much more often than the business calculations of shopkeepers and economists. Some cherished institution seems to be threatened. Some nationality supposed--very likely erroneously--to be of the same flesh and blood as ourselves, appears--very likely on faulty information--to be unjustly oppressed. Two rival systems of civilisation, of morals, of religion, approach one another like thunder-clouds and come together in a clash. Where is the good at such times of casting up sums, and exhibiting profit-and-loss accounts to the public gaze? People will not listen, for in their view considerations of prosperity and the reverse are beside the question. Wealth, comfort, even life itself, are not regarded; nor are the possible sufferings of posterity allowed to count any more than the tribulations of to-day. In the eyes of the people the matter is one of duty not of interest. When men fight in this spirit the most lucid exposition of material drawbacks is worse than useless; for the national mood, at such moments, is one of self-sacrifice. The philosopher, or the philanthropist, is more likely to feed the flames than to put them out when he proves the certainty of loss and privation, and dwells upon the imminent peril of ruin and destruction.
The strength of the fighter is the strength of his faith. Each new Gideon who goes out against the Midianites fancies that the sword of the Lord is in his hand. He risks all that he holds dear, in order that he may pull down the foul images of Baal and build up an altar to Jehovah, in order that his race { 9} may not be shorn of its inheritance, in order that it may hold fast its own laws and institutions, and not pass under the yoke of the Gentiles. This habit of mind is unchanging throughout the ages. What moved men to give their lives at Marathon moved them equally, more than a thousand years later, to offer the same sacrifice under the walls of Tours. It is still moving them, after yet another thousand years and more have passed away, in the plains of Flanders and the Polish Marshes.