lish was due to their imperturbable tolerance. A breed that has been persecuted, or what comes to the same thing, bored by every persecuted refugee to whom it has given asylum, learns to tolerate anything. Their immensely mixed origins made them, too, in a real sense, akin to all the universe, and sympathetic in their dumb fashion toward remote peoples and strange gods. Above all, their long insular experience of imported brain storms had taught them the wisdom of the old proverb-That men should not try to do better than good for fear lest worse than bad might follow.

There has been a good deal of worse than bad in the world lately. Our national weakness for taking the easiest way till the last possible moment, sooner than inconvenience ourselves or our neighbors, has been visited upon us in full measure. After 99 years of peace there came a day when the English were given less than 96 hours to choose whether they would buy a little longer peace from the heathen in the North, as their fathers had bought it, or make peace with them, as our King Alfred had made it. As a race they had forgotten how to say "No" to any one who said "Yes" in a sufficiently loud voice; they had quite forgotten that they had broken a Church, killed one king, closed a Protectorate, and exiled another king sooner than be driven where they did not desire to go. But when their hour came again they decided once again, and once again by instinct, to go their own way; for, once again, they had prepared nothing, they had foreseen nothing. They had been assured that not only was there no need for preparation against war, but that the mere thought of it was absurd, where it was not criminal. Therefore, through the first two years of the war, it was necessary to throw up a barricade of the dead bodies of the nation's youth behind which the most elementary preparations could be begun.

Though there had been no such slaughter of the English in all history, the actual was no more than a large-scale repetition of national experience in the past. If an Elizabethan statesman or adventurer had returned to England during the war I think in a very short time he would have been able to pick up his office work where he had dropped it. His reports and his maps would have been enlarged, but otherwise he would have been

surprisingly abreast of the situation. Where the old English influences had struck deep the world over, he would have seen help and comfort hurried up to the fronts the world over without count or reckoning-without word or bond to limit or confirm them. Where the old alien influences, that he knew so well, had persisted, or where new influences inspired by the old were at work, he would have seen, as he would have expected, every help toward this war denied, withheld, or doled out piecemeal at a high price. He would have recognized that what held firm in the days of the Armada held firm at Armageddon, that what had broken beneath his hand in his time was rotten in ours.

Allowing for a few minor differences of equipment, he would have felt like any sailor or soldier returning to some bitterly familiar job of sea patrol or trench life between 1914 and 1918. Like those men, he would have taken for granted very many things on which other races might have wasted valuable time and thought. Our stories of Coronel, Zeebrugge, of the battalions of county regiments not a year old who died to the last man, as a matter of routine, on the front that they were ordered to hold, would have moved him no more and no less than the little affair of the late Sir Richard Grenville off Flores in the Revenge. That troopers of yeomanry in Mesopotamia, picked almost at random, could, single-handed and within a few days, by sheer force of character, conciliate and control turbulent Arab villages would have amazed them no more and no less than any story of Panama or our first venture round the globe told by any follower of Sir Francis Drake or some forgotten captain of that age. Being of the breed, he would have known the breed and taken the work of the breed for granted.

And herein, as I see it, lies the strength of the English-that they have behind them this continuity of immensely varied race experience and race memory, running through every class back to the very dawn of our dawn, which unconsciously imposes on them, even while they deride, standards of achievement and comparison; hard it may be and a little unsympathetic, but not low, and, as all earth is witness, not easily lowered. That is the reason why, in things nearest our hearts, we praise so little and criticize so lavishly. It is the only compliment that an English

man dares pay his country. As you know, these standards do not appear on the surface, or in men's mouths. When they do they are mostly translated into terms of sport or the slang of various games, but where the English deal with each other or the outside world in earnest, those standards are taken for granted, and it is by the things which we take for granted, without words spoken, that we live. It was taken for granted by all concerned during the war that every day was St. George's Day on one or other of our seven fronts.

And now we, and our kin after the great years, are sick, shaken and dizzy-like all convalescents a little inclined to pity ourselves, a little inclined to live on invalid's slops as long as possible, and more than a little inclined to mistake the hysteria of convalescence for signs of new life and thought. But here, also, instinct tells us that our national past has dowered us with a sufficiency of ballast to navigate through whatever storms (or brain storms) may be ahead. We are threatened with several. One school of thought, Muscovite in origin, holds, as the Danes did 1200 years ago, that rapine and scientific torture will elevate our ideals, which up to the present have only taught us to do our duty to God and our neighbors. Others again are content to work for the organized bankruptcy of all things that are of good report, as well as for the systematic betrayal of our friends, very much indeed on the same lines as people used to panic after a crusade or a visitation of the Plague. We are further promised an unparalleled outbreak of education guaranteed to produce a standardized state-aided mind. The Church evolved a parallel system in the Middle Ages which, much to her surprise, produced the Reformation. Lastly, lest we should ever again lapse into pathetic contentment, the breed -which organized at a week's notice to achieve the impossible and achieved it, by earth, sea, and air achieved it-is as a reward to be ruthlessly reorganized in every detail of its daily life, walk, and conduct. This great work was begun by William the Conqueror, A.D. 1066, and has been before committee or commission ever since. Norman, Papist, Cromwellian, Stuart, Hollander, Hanoverian, aristocracy, middle class, democracy, have each in turn tried their fleeting hand on "the man akin to all the universe." From each in turn he has taken what he

wanted; he has given them each a fair trial, and when he has quite finished, an equally fair dismissal.

What will he do in the future? We are too close to the dust of the main battle to see clearly. We know that England is crippled by the loss or wastage of a whole generation. Her position from the civil point of view is that of our armies in the worst days of the war-that is to say, all leave is stopped for every man who can stand up to his job, no matter how sick or stale he may be; and there is undreamed-of promotion for untried men who, merely because they are not dead, will have to face heavier responsibility, longer hours and criticism that will certainly not grow milder as the years pass. But no miracles have occurred. This world, which some of us in our zeal to do better than good have created, and which we must all inherit, is no new world but the old grown harder. The wheel has come full circle. The whole weight of that world at the present moment lies again, as it used to lie in the days of our fathers, upon two nations, upon England and France. The sole force which, under God's good providence, can meet this turn of our fate, is not temperament, not opportunism, nor any attempt to do better than good, but character, and again charactersuch mere ingrained common-sense, hand-hammered loyal strength of character as one would humbly dare to hope 1500 years of equality of experience have given to us.

If this hope be true, as because we know the breed we feel it to be true, our children's children, looking back through the luminous years to where we here stumble and falter, may say: "Was it possible that the English of that age did not know, could not see, dared not even guess to what height of strength, wisdom, and enduring honor they had lifted their land?" [Cheers.]

But we will be circumspect. For what there is of it, for such as it is, and for what it may be worth, will you drink to England and the English?

SIR WILFRID LAURIER

CANADA

Speech of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of Canada, at a banquet given by the Imperial Institute to the Colonial Premiers, London, June 18, 1897, on the occasion of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee. The Prince of Wales presided. In introducing Sir Wilfred Laurier, he said: "Gentlemen, this is not the time nor is it necessary to allude to the loyalty of our great colonies. We have heard what has been spoken here to-night, and we shall hear still more. We know that our colonies look toward the mother country with affection; and in the hour of need and danger I feel convinced that they will always come forward to our assistance. [Cheers.] During the remarkable record reign of Her Majesty the Queen great changes have occurred. When she came to the throne, there were only thirty-two colonies; now there are sixty-five. [Cheers.] As Lord Lansdowne has said we have met here in times of peace. God grant that it may last, but should the occasion come when our national flag is endangered I have but little doubt, gentlemen, that the colonies will unite like one man to maintain what exists and what I hope will remain forever as integral parts of the British Empire. It is now my pleasant duty to propose the toast of the evening: 'Our Guests the Colonial Premiers.' We welcome them as ourselves. We hope that their stay here may not be made in any way irksome to them. I feel sure that no one will be more grateful than the Queen herself to see that these gentlemen have come here on the invitation of the Colonial Office to do honor to a great epoch in our history. This toast we connect with the health of the Hon. Wilfrid Laurier. I now beg you with all the honors to drink this toast-'Our Guests, I may say, our friends, The Colonial Premiers.'" Other speeches by Sir Wilfrid Laurier are given in Volumes VI and XIII.

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:-The toast which your Royal Highness has just proposed in such graceful terms is one which is important at all times and opens