The Spectator

‘A pacifist protest’, a letter from the 15 August 1914 Spectator in response to a piece in the 8 August edition: SIR, - One is willing to believe that your article in last week’s issue called “Keep Your Temper” was not intentionally provocative, but it shows some lack of justice and of courtesy towards the pacifist. You divide pacifists into three classes. The first consists of obstinate fools who refuse to think their own country can do right; the second consists of cowards; and the third, which you are generous enough to admit to be a small one, of knaves. One would like to ask to which class you consign those pacifists par excellence, the members of the Society of Friends.

Let us say once more what we said as emphatically as we could last week – that the first thing to do is to get Lord Kitchener the five hundred thousand men who he must have to make the country safe. Till that is done, till we have got the men for the firing line, all philanthropic schemes, however good, nay, however essential in themselves, must wait. Sterilized dressings are absolutely necessary, but they must not get in front of the rifles. Therefore, once again, the first duty of ever man between nineteen and thirty is to join Lord Kitchener’s Second Army.  That is his way to help.

Neither Obama nor Cameron seem ready to return from their holidays to debate how best to respond to the events in Iraq. However, in our look at the week ahead, Isabel Hardman argues that the debate shouldn't just be taking place in newspapers, but also in the House of Commons. Could we see a recall of Parliament, asks Fraser Nelson, or is Cameron simply too scared after last year's disastrous debate over Syria? Douglas Murray suggests that however much we may care about the events in Iraq, the only country that can do anything about it is America.

‘Keep your temper’, from The Spectator, 8 August 1914: ‘When a nation goes to war the policy of the Government nearly always fails to carry with it the convictions of a minority.  It is, of course, very rare for a Government who make war to find themselves without the support of the majority – for, as a rule, they would not even contemplate war without ascertaining the general tendency of public opinion – yet such cases have happened. It is probable that the majority were opposed to the war of George III. and Lord North against the American colonists.