realities of the world, and what Life is close to the
earth--they are the same in all lands--they have at least the key to the
understanding of each other. The old needs of life, its destinies and
fatalities, its sorrows and joys, its exaltations and depressions
--these are the same everywhere; and to the manual workers
--the peasant, the labourer, the sailor, the mechanic--the
world-old trades, pursuits, crafts, and callings with which they are so
familiar supply a kind of freemasonry which ensures them even among
strangers a kindly welcome and an easy admittance. If you want to travel
in foreign lands, you will find that to be skilled in one or two manual
trades is better than a high official passport.

Among such people there is no natural hatred of each other. Despite all
the foam and fury of the Press over the present war, I doubt whether
there is any really violent feeling of the working masses on either side
between England and Germany. There certainly is no great amount in
England, either among the country-folk or the town artisans and
mechanics; and if there be much in Germany (which is quite doubtful) it
is fairly obviously due to the _animus_ which has been aroused and the
_virus_ which has been propagated by political and social schemers.

We have had enough of Hatred and Jealousy. For a century now commercial
rivalry and competition, the perfectionment of the engines of war, and
the science of destruction have sufficiently occupied the nations--with
results only of disaster and distress and ruin to all concerned. To-day
surely another epoch opens before us--an epoch of intelligent
helpfulness and fraternity, an epoch even of the simplest common sense.
We have rejoiced to tread and trample the other peoples underfoot, to
malign and traduce them, to single out and magnify their defects, to
boast ourselves over them. And acting thus we have but made the more
enemies. Now surely comes an era of recognition and understanding, and
with it the glad assurance that we have friends in all the ends of the
earth.

We--and I speak of the European nations generally--have talked loudly of
our own glory; but have we welcomed and acclaimed the glory and beauty
of the other peoples and races around us--among whom it is our privilege
to dwell? We have boasted to love each our own country, but have we
cared at all for the other countries too? Verily I suspect that it is
because we have _not_ truly loved our own countries, b