ch says that in God's sight a thousand years
are as yesterday that is passed as a watch in the night, do not realise
the full force of the meaning. To God a thousand years are not only a
watch but an exciting watch. For God time goes at a gallop, as it does
to a man reading a good tale.

All this is, in a humble manner, true for romance. Romance is a
shortening and sharpening of the human difficulty. Where you and I have
to vote against a man, or write (rather feebly) against a man, or sign
illegible petitions against a man, romance does for him what we should
really like to see done. It knocks him down; it shortens the slow
process of historical justice. All romances consist of three characters.
Other characters may be introduced; but those other characters are
certainly mere scenery as far as the romance is concerned. They are
bushes that wave rather excitedly; they are posts that stand up with a
certain pride; they are correctly painted rocks that frown very
correctly; but they are all landscape--they are all a background. In
every pure romance there are three living and moving characters. For the
sake of argument they may be called St. George and the Dragon and the
Princess. In every romance there must be the twin elements of loving and
fighting. In every romance there must be the three characters: there
must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the
Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who
is a thing that both loves and fights. There have been many symptoms of
cynicism and decay in our modern civilisation. But of all the signs of
modern feebleness, of lack of grasp on morals as they actually must be,
there has been none quite so silly or so dangerous as this: that the
philosophers of to-day have started to divide loving from fighting and
to put them into opposite camps. There could be no worse sign than that
a man, even Nietzsche, can be found to say that we should go in for
fighting instead of loving. There can be no worse sign than that a man,
even Tolstoi, can be found to tell us that we should go in for loving
instead of fighting. The two things imply each other; they implied each
other in the old romance and in the old religion, which were the two
permanent things of humanity. You cannot love a thing without wanting to
fight for it. You cannot fight without something to fight for. To love a
thing without wishing to fight for it is not love at all; it is lust. I