he contrary,
that they strongly disapproved. The "Great Illusion," so effectively
exposed by Norman Angell, is no longer universally entertained.
Capital has learnt the horrors of war, and organised labour has
emphatically declared against it. And yet, though there were few
English people who would not have stopped the Turco-Italian war and
mitigated the horrors of the Balkan war if they could have done so, it
is manifest that there were few who did not revel in the sensation,
just as some years ago even our most philanthropic classes deplored
and revelled in the spectacle of Macedonian atrocities. A fire at a
theatre, an appalling railway accident, and especially murder on a
vast, heroic scale, attracts, in these peaceful days, certainly not
less than in the days when barbarism was customary.

Now, violence and brutality are obviously one thing to a peaceful
people and a very different thing to people accustomed to violence in
their daily lives. Upon a man of sedentary occupation a prize-fight
must have a very different effect from that which it will have upon
men accustomed to the use of their fists. It is worth asking: What is
this love of violence which moves the breast of the man of peace? What
is this emotion which leads men to be heroic by proxy? Is it surviving
physical excellence which reveals itself in this way, or is it a
cumbrous atavistic relic like the appendix which the doctors remove?
We see, for instance, enormous crowds gathering at the football
matches where professional players show their prowess, and muscles
trained and hardened for the fray. We know that there was a crowd
looking forward to the Wells-Johnson contest. Contrast these events
with a cricket match, where there is practically no violence. Whatever
be the reason, any sportsman will testify to the fact that the crowd
which goes to see cricket is generally a cricketing crowd, but that
the crowd which goes to a cup-tie football match is by no means in
the same way a footballing crowd. In other words, so far as the
onlookers are concerned, the cricket match is more truly a sporting
event than is the professional football match or the Wells-Johnson
contest.

Whatever the answer be, it is certain that when we beat the big drum
of patriotism and set the guns firing, the thrill which it arouses in
the vocal populace is different from the thrill in a people accustomed
to violence and blood. We say the "vocal" populace, remembering that
there is