ously, dishonest. Germany is
beating England in every matter upon which competition is possible,
because she attended sedulously to her collective mind for sixty
pregnant years, because in spite of tremendous defects she is still far
more anxious for quality in achievement than we are. I remember saying
that in my paper. From that, I remember, I went on to an image that had
flashed into my mind. "The British Empire," I said, "is like some of
those early vertebrated monsters, the Brontosaurus and the Atlantosaurus
and such-like; it sacrifices intellect to character; its backbone,
that is to say,--especially in the visceral region--is bigger than its
cranium. It's no accident that things are so. We've worked for backbone.
We brag about backbone, and if the joints are anchylosed so much the
better. We're still but only half awake to our error. You can't change
that suddenly."

"Turn it round and make it go backwards," interjected Thorns.

"It's trying to do that," I said, "in places."

And afterwards Crupp declared I had begotten a nightmare which haunted
him of nights; he was trying desperately and belatedly to blow a brain
as one blows soap-bubbles on such a mezoroic saurian as I had conjured
up, while the clumsy monster's fate, all teeth and brains, crept nearer
and nearer....

I've grown, I think, since those days out of the urgency of that
apprehension. I still think a European war, and conceivably a very
humiliating war for England, may occur at no very distant date, but I
do not think there is any such heroic quality in our governing class
as will make that war catastrophic. The prevailing spirit in English
life--it is one of the essential secrets of our imperial endurance--is
one of underbred aggression in prosperity and diplomatic compromise in
moments of danger; we bully haughtily where we can and assimilate where
we must. It is not for nothing that our upper and middle-class youth is
educated by teachers of the highest character, scholars and gentlemen,
men who can pretend quite honestly that Darwinism hasn't upset the
historical fall of man, that cricket is moral training, and that
Socialism is an outrage upon the teachings of Christ. A sort of
dignified dexterity of evasion is the national reward. Germany, with a
larger population, a vigorous and irreconcilable proletariat, a bolder
intellectual training, a harsher spirit, can scarcely fail to drive us
at last to a realisation of intolerable strain. So we