led well off depend on the continuance of health and
opportunity for their incomes. The vast majority of those who believe
that our cause is righteous are not exultant jingoes, neither are they
millionaires. They are care-worn toilers, hard-worked fathers and
mothers of children. They have in many cases given sons and brothers and
husbands to our ranks; their hearts are aching with passionate sorrow
for the dead. Many more are enduring the racking agony of suspense.
Multitudes, besides, spend their lives in a hard fight to keep the wolf
from the door. Already they are pinched, and they know that in the
months ahead their poverty will be deeper. Yet they have no thought of
surrender. They do not even complain, but give what they can from their
scanty means to succour those who are touched still more nearly. It is
quite possible to slander a nation when one simply intends to tell it
plain truths. The British nation, we are inclined to believe, is a great
deal better and sounder than many of its shrillest censors of the
moment. And, for our part, we find among our patient, brave, and silent
people great seed-beds of trust and hope."[39]

These are noble words, because words of faith--worthy of the Roman,
Varro--to whom his fellow-citizens presented a public tribute of
gratitude because "he had not despaired of his country in a dark and
troubled time."

It can hardly be supposed that I underrate the horrors of war. I have
imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if I beheld
it with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in South
Africa. The spirit of Jingoism is an epidemic of which I await the
passing away more earnestly than we do that of any other plague. I
deprecate, as I have always done, and as strongly as anyone can do,
rowdyism in the form of violent opposition to free speech and freedom of
meeting. It is as wholly unjustifiable, as it is unwise. Nothing tends
more to the elucidation of truth than evidence and freedom of speech
from all sides. Good works on many hands are languishing for lack of
the funds and zeal needful to carry them on. The Public Press, and
especially the Pictorial Press, fosters a morbid sentiment in the public
mind by needlessly vivid representations of mere slaughter; to all this
may be added (that which some mourn over most of all) the drain upon our
pockets,--upon the country's wealth. All these things are a part of the
great tribulation which is upon us. They