NATIONAL CONCENTRATION.
AWORD or two of explanation seems necessary in regard to the attitude which we and others have taken up towards football displays, racing, and drinking during the war. Some people seem to think that those who hold our views want to find in the war an excuse for introducing Puritanism by a side-wind. Others seem to imagine that we think a war can only be waged successfully with sour faces and grim looks, and that there is no place for that gaiety and gallantry which have always marked, and, thank Heaven! still mark, the British fighting man. Let us say with all the emphasis at our command that nothing is further from our thoughts, when we ask that racing and drinking should be stopped during the war, than the introduction of Puritanism, or the creation of a mournful and joyless nation. Our object is something very different.
To make our attitude clear we must consider the nature of war. War, as our philosophic enemy has always insisted, means in the last resort the imposition of your will upon those with whom you are at war. But the source of will- power is concentration of mind. Therefore, other things —i.e., numbers, equipment, leadership—being equal or nearly equal, that individual or group of individuals who can achieve the greatest concentration of mind during war will attain the mastery. Now no one can doubt the concen- tration of mind that has been attained by the German people. They have only one thought—how to wage the war
successfully, bow to impose their will upon the Allies. For this they have thrown aside the costumes of peace with indifferent hand. For this their opera music has been put on one side. To this one object the brow of every man and woman, old and young, has been bent. Such an odious phenomenon as the " hate " campaign against England is, if traced to its source, only an example of this con- centration of mind, this effort to impose their wilL For the German the war " Lies in his bed, walks up and down with [him]."
He thinks and dreams of nothing else but the war and how to win it—how to dominate his enemies. Very different is still the attitude of the British nation towards the war. Some of our people no doubt show the true concentration of mind, keep eye and heart fixed hard upon the object, and allow no intruding thought to prevent the necessary exercise of will-power. They are inspired by the one thought. The mass of Englishmen, however, know no such concentration. For them the seriousness of the war comas and goes in light gusts of passion. One day some portent of disaster will make us all vigilant
and serious. The next some little thing will act as a distraction and take the nation's mind off the great essential. As a people we have often been accused of a want of high seriousness. We may now well be arraigned
for a lack of that undivided attention which alone can make victory secure. There are too many things to distract us, too many diversions, too many excuses for letting our thoughts wander into other channels than that of beating our enemies. There are too many anodynes.
Chief of these, and that is why we have attacked them, are racing and drinking. Racing is partly a business con-
nected with horse-breeding, but still more is it a sport and pastime, and most of all an occasion for gambling. It is on its gambling side, not on the side of the horse- flesh or the glorious thunder of the flying hoofs, that racing really holds the nation. Whether we like it or not, we must acknowledge that gambling attracts mankind as an anodyne, as a supreme sedative. To wager money on a horse takes men out of themselves, lifts some of the
care and dulness of the world of them, and relieves them of that tension of brain in business and in life
generally which for most men is a burden and for many almost a torture. Gambling, in fact, is for many the greatest of relaxations. We willingly greet that in ordinary times to say this is to give it a character, and to knock over the argument that it is senseless, nay, mad, for men to want to risk their hard-earned money on the power of a horse they have never seen to get a yard, or even an inch or two, in front of another horse equally unknown to them. But if the anodyne and sedative excuse for racing is a sound one in peace time, it affords a stronger argument for stopping racing during war. When there is such dire and heavy work to do as there is now, we want no anodynes and no sedatives. It is far better for the nation to be rest. less and discontented and " on edge " than sleepy or satisfied. We cannot afford to think now of the strain.
Strain there must be if we are to win, and the sooner we recognize that the better. You cannot make war under peace conditions. If you are on guard—and the whole nation is on guard now—you cannot sit down and play pitch-and-toss with a brother-sentry. If you do, the men who are crawling through the long grass will have their bayonets into you while you are disputing whether it is a head or a tail. If any one wishes to judge whether racing is not a great distraction for the ordinary man, let him go into the street and note how the news of, say, the Lincoln Handicap will bring men running to the newsboys for a paper when the war news leaves them indifferent. Let us put away the anodyne of the gaming-table till a more con- venient season and save that vast amount of human energy and concentration of mind which now goes in betting for the defeat of our foes. When they are beaten and the war is over will be the time for the sedative, not now.
Potent as is the distraction of gambling, the sedative of drink is of course still greater. It has a vast physical as well as a vast mental operation. Drink, as it has often been remarked, is used by the Anglo-Saxon races not as a stimu- lant but as a sedative, as a Lethe in which to drown weariness and malaise, whether physical or mental. Men drink because, like Tam o Slander, they want for an hour or two to be " o'er a' the ills o' life victorious "—
victorious not by facing those ills, but by putting them aside and forgetting them. Here again we do not want to judge either physically or psychologically. It may be good, it may be necessary, that men should have this anodyne in normal times. What we are confident about is that it is neither necessary nor good for them to have it in war time. Drink, on its psychological side, more than anything else, prevents that concentration of will-power of which we have spoken. The man with his mind even mildly bemused by alcohol is not the man of the triumphant will. As all employers of labour—and we think we should not be wrong if we added "all Labour leaders and Trade Union officials "—are finding at the moment, the tempta- tions of drink which are given by a full purse are lowering the national output where we most want it heightened— in the production of the munitions of war. As we have said before, there never was a time when the temptation to revel in the luxury of drink was more yielded to than now. What does a wise professional or business man do when he has some great piece of work in the making, something upon which his whole future life may depend? He goes into training, as he will tell you, till he has got, through with it. He goes into training in order to attain to that concentration of mind which will give him the beet possible chance of success in what he is undertaking. Going into training means the abandonment of all anodynes and sedatives, or, as we call them by an inver- sion. all excitements, such as gambling and drinking. A man may be fond of his flutter on the racecourse, or fonder still of his glass of whisky or of champagne or port, but if he is a knowing man he abandons it or reduces it to the very minimum while he is in for a big business event. We want to see men concentrate their minds upon the war. When the war is over they can reward themselves by reindulgence in their great sedatives. They are masters of their own fate, and no one can prevent them from going back to the status quo ante bellum either in racing or in liquor. On the liquor question we do not want to push matters to extremes or to be unreasonable. If the Govern- ment will only try the experiment, neither they nor the country, we are convinced, will ever regret it. We believe that the result of stopping racing and betting and drinking would be felt almost immediately all along the line. If our national anodynes and sedatives were removed, a great many men who now deliberately muddle themselves with drink would begin to realize the full horror of the war, and, since at heart they are of the true breed, thousands who have not yet thought it necessary to do so would join the colours. Again, there can be no question that with the anodyne withdrawn the output of the workshops and factories would go up, as it has gone up in Russia. Nor would this be all. The mere act of forbidding racing and drinking during the war would bring home to many people as nothing else will the need there is for concentration upon the war issue, for taking the war seriously, for setting our teeth and saying : " We will keep our liberty ! We will remain free from the dreadful menace of German domination!" Still further, when our enemies learned of the determination expressed by such acts as we demand, we cannot doubt that the effect would be very great. As it is, the Germans are beginning to dread us even more than they hate us. When they understood what we had done, they would realize, as nothing else could make them realize, that we do not mean to be beaten but to beat.
We shall be told, perhaps, that the people of the Northern States beat the Southerners, though "Life and Business as usual" was the motto upon which the North conducted its existence during the Civil War. Men went to rams and drank liquor, enjoyed balls and operas, and generally acted—especially in distant States like California —as if there were no war. And yet they won! No doubt they did, but at what a cost in time and life ! The real lesson of the Civil War is that the South nearly beat the North because the South from the beginning showed a concentration of mind and purpose which can best be described as terrible. There was but one thought in the South. Nothing was allowed to distract men's minds from it. That thought was how to beat the North. No doubt we may beat the Germans even if we do not reach that concentration of mind of which we have spoken, but the beating under those conditions will be slow and laborious, and may be almost as fatal as defeat. If we want really to end the war, and to make sure that the war shall not end ax, there is only one motto which we can choose to guide us : Concentrate! Concentrate! Concentrate !
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