March i, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
II 
Fighting and Voting 
By Principal L. P. Jacks 
THE war has already taught vis that we are able 
to live wihout many things we once thought 
indispensable. For example, I know of a large 
family whose merribers had been accustomed aU 
their Hves to be waited on, hand and foot, by servants. 
Now, at the call of economy, they have got rid of their 
servants and are astonished to find how well they can get 
on. Had the suggestion been made three years ago to 
this family, that they should live without servants, they 
would have treated it not only as rank nonsense but as 
sa\'ouring of blasphemy. 
Since military Government became necessary for the 
pin-pose of the war, our votes have been virtually put out 
of commission. We retain them, but we cannot use 
them and have to content ourselves with doing what we 
are told to do — by the War Office, by the Censorship, by 
f.ord Devonport, by Mr. Neville Chamberlain, by Mr. 
Prothero and many others. A good many of the excellent 
arrangements these authorities are making will probably 
remain in force after the war, and so be added to the vast 
number of permanent institutions, like the National 
Debt, or even the British Empire itself, which were never 
\oted into existence by the people, but have to be 
accepted (and paid for) whether we like them or not. 
This temporary suspension of our voting proclivities, 
necessary though it be, is not altogether pleasant to any 
of us, especially to those — and they are a vast multitude — 
who attach enormous importance to the Vote and regard 
it as the heaven-appointed instrument of progress and 
the Open Sesame to Utopia. Had these persons been told 
a few years ago that a time, was coming when their votes 
would be useless, either for imposing their own will on 
other people or for preventing other people imposing 
their wills upon themselves, they would have felt that 
the skies were about to fall. The proposition would have 
seemed monstrous, incredible, blasphemous — like telling 
a well-to-do family that they would have to live without 
servants. Yet the first thing is no more impossible than 
the second. It has actually come- to pass. 
I say, this state of things is not altogether pleasant, 
but it has some advantages, the chief of which is that 
now, while the voting cult, or the voting epidemic, or 
the voting mania (I care not which term is used) is in 
temporary abeyance, we have leisure to take a detached 
view of the nature of the Vote and to ask ourselves 
frankly whether we are not in the habit of exaggerating 
its importance. It is not a question of whether or no we 
are to believe in the Vote. That we shall continue to do 
under any circumstances. The question is whether we 
have not believed in it too much, believed in it fanatically 
and blindly, so that our belief in it has led us to expect 
from it blessings which it can never yield and destroyed 
our belief in things which are more important to progress. 
There is an opportunity just now for correcting our 
sense of proportion in regard to this thing, which has 
been greatly over-emphasised, and at the same time of 
renewing our acquaintance with other forces which 
exclusive devotion to this one had caused us to neglect 
and to under -estimate. For example, it will be readily 
■granted that human life has more to gain from common 
sense, kind feeling and good manners, than it has from 
voting for any one of the political parties now existing or 
likely to exist. Well, then, might we not usefully employ 
the present interlude in setting our imaginations to work 
along those lines — in devising some form of human society 
in which, so to speak, the present proportions between 
voting on the one hand, and common sense, kind feehng 
and good manners on the other shall be reversed ? Of 
course, this may be impossible ; but is it not worth trying, 
especially when we remember that it has never been tried 
so far ? Just as the family I have mentioned had always 
believed that servants were the basis of their happiness 
and have now found out that this was a mistake, so 
pcrhapf^ we have all been making a mistake in thinking 
that " politics " are the supremely important thing — - 
the thing without which we can't get on. 
Just now we ha\-e no politics, or at all events far less 
than formerly, and military considerations apart, who 
can doubt that we are the better for it ? Is it not an 
immense relief to have done for a time with so many of 
our quarrels ? Are we not glad to be spared the attentions 
of those doubtful looking individuals who came round 
soliciting our votes ? Is it not a good thing to be wwre- 
presented for a time, especially by those individuals ? 
A Blessed Truth 
Are we not becoming dimly aware of this blessed truth — 
that each one of us has legs of his own to stand upon and 
that, though there are many things one man can do for 
another, there is one thing which no man can ever do for 
another — namely, to re/'/'^cw/. him. Do we not feel that 
a great deal of pettiness and humbug has disappeared ? 
Are we not on better terms with one another and 
readier to unite about things that really matter — such 
as education ? Are we not thinking more than in the 
days before the war, when we were all trjdng to A'ote 
each other down ; and are not some of the questions 
we are thinking about much bigger than any on which 
we were ever invited, or ever can be invited, to 
give our votes ? And do we not now see that the 
cause which was preventing us from thinking about 
the big things was precisely our concentration on the 
little things — in other words the botheration about our 
votes ? How pitiful it now seems, for instance, that at a 
time when ihe Empire was in deadly peril — -nay, when 
the very basis of civilization was crumbling under our 
feet, we should have spent all our intelligence and energy 
in voting ourselves into that miserable deadlock about 
Home Rule ! What an amount of intellect and will, 
so sorely needed for greater things, was spent over that 
controversy, and with no fruits to show but bad temper 
and a hopeless tangle of cross purposes ! Had the nation 
possessed common sense — to say nothing of kind feeling 
and good manners — we should have acted differently. 
Even now perhaps it is not too late to learn that the 
Cult of the Vote may be a very dangerous obsession. 
The fate of the nation which becomes its victim is neither 
Peace nor Progress, but muddle, and the deadlock of 
mutual oppositions. For a vote is a public licence to 
tamper with the individuality of our neighbours, and 
this tampering our neighbours to the end of time will 
resent and resist, even as we resist them when they use 
their licence upon ourselves. Hence the muddle ! Hence 
the deadlock ! 
The discovery that voting is a better method of settling 
disputes than fighting is considered the peculiar glory 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. Unfortunately it has led to the. 
notion that the settlement of disputes is the essential 
business of human life, until in course of time disputing 
itself has come to be regarded as the most sacred occupation 
of man and the source of everything that is good. But 
the best things of life are not attained by disputes nor 
by settling them. They are attained in amicable fellow- 
ship, by the exercise of common sense, kind feeling and 
good manners — to which perhaps may be added the 
thing called " genius " — though this is only a rare form 
of common sense.. They are such things as art, beauty, 
joy, friendship, self-respect, family affection and the love 
of man and woman — matters in which voting is entirely 
out of the question. 
Even as a mode of settling disputes the Vote docs not 
possess one tithe of the virtues commonly ascribed to it. 
For each dispute which it enables us to settle it causes at 
least ten more. Nine-tenths of -the quarrels which absorb 
our intelligence in normal times, or drain it away 
from far more important matters, turn precisely on the 
ciucstion of what we are to do with our votes. True, we 
are enabled by the vote to carry on these quarrels without 
the shedding of blood, except for a little now and 
tlien. But the absence of blood from our quarrels 
does not pro\'e that the quarrels are good for us, 
nor that we are well advised in spending on them 
the energies that are needed for greater things. Of this 
