s we will. The over-taxed, under-productive, army-burdened men of the
Old World--alas! I read a settled melancholy in much of their
statesmanship and in more of their literature. The most cheerful men in
official life here are the High Commissioners of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and such fellows who know what the English race is doing and
can do freed from uniforms and heavy taxes and class feeling and such
like. . . .

* * * * *

. . . The two things that this island has of eternal value are its gardens
and its men. Nature sprinkles it almost every day and holds its moisture
down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive
as the lawns do--the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You
and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this
stock. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield
good scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them--for their
dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread
and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. They build their great
law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an
entrance hall of imposing proportions which they use once a year; and to
get this fine hall they have to make their court rooms, which they must
use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible. They think as much of
that once-a-year ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the
even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel that the justice
depends on the ceremony.

This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of it very pretty
and most of it very comfortable--it's soft and warm) is of no great
consequence--except that they think they'd die if it were removed. And
this state of mind gives us a good key to their character and habits.

What are we going to do with this England and this Empire, presently,
when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our
hands? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the
world and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go about it
heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman
rather than to a rustic) and throw away--gradually--our isolating fears
and alternate boasting and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn
from you?" I asked a gentle and bejewelled nobleman the other Sunday, in
a country garden that invited confidences. "If I m