terances that he was spoiled by the freedom of his life,
unprepared to sacrifice anything for a land in such a condition.
Threaten that country, and with it his liberty, and you will find that
his grumbles have meant less than nothing. You will find, too, that
behind the apparent slackness of every arrangement and every individual
are powers of adaptability to facts, elasticity, practical genius, a
latent spirit of competition and a determination that are staggering.
Before this war began it was the fashion among a number of English to
lament the decadence of the race. These very grumblers are now foremost
in praising, and quite rightly, the spirit shown in every part of their
country. Their lamentations, which plentifully deceived the outside ear,
were just English grumbles, for if in truth England had been decadent
there could have been no such universal display for them to be praising
now. But all this democratic grumbling and habit of "going as you
please" serve a deep purpose. Autocracy, censorship, compulsion destroy
humor in a nation's blood and elasticity in its fibre; they cut at the
very mainsprings of national vitality. Only free from these baneful
controls can each man arrive in his own way at realization of what is or
is not national necessity; only free from them will each man truly
identify himself with a national ideal--not through deliberate
instruction or by command of others, but by simple, natural conviction
from within.

Two cautions are here given to the stranger trying to form an estimate
of the Englishman: The creature must not be judged from his press,
which, manned (with certain exceptions) by those who are not typically
English, is too highly colored altogether to illustrate the true English
spirit; nor can he be judged by such of his literature as is best known
on the Continent. The Englishman proper is inexpressive, unexpressed.
Further, he must be judged by the evidences of his wealth. England may
be the richest country in the world per head of population, but not 5
per cent. of that population have any wealth to speak of, certainly not
enough to have affected their hardihood, and, with inconsiderable
exceptions, those who have enough are brought up to worship hardihood.
For the vast proportion of young Englishmen active military service is
merely a change from work as hard, and more monotonous.

From these main premises, then, we come to what the Englishman really
is.

When, after month