eutralization artfully and sometimes
treacherously contrived of greater forces than its own. It had for
neighbors two great military states and several smaller ones; and had at
some time or another been at war with nearly all of them.
Often--generally in fact--it had come out of those wars more vanquished
than victorious (though Jingalese school-books carefully concealed the
fact): it had lost, for proof, more territory than any other power in
the world except England, and yet, like England, cherished the curious
conviction that it had won all the really important battles and dictated
each peace upon its own terms. Having been wholesomely driven out of
France in the fifteenth century, it had captured and carried away with
it as trophy the order of the White Feather, with its proud motto, "J'y
suis, j'y reste." In the eighteenth century it had adopted by compulsion
from Germany an alteration in its law of regal inheritance, and had
marked its adhesion to the new formula by the institution of the order
of the Dachshund, with the obsequious motto, "Das ist mir ganz Wurst,"
popularly mistranslated by the wags of the day into, "That is the worst
for me." Beaten by the infidel in the Crusades it had joined thenceforth
to its regalia the holy crown of Jerusalem; and having thrown over the
Papacy at the time of the Reformation, had added to its armorial
bearings the Keys of St. Peter, and to its royal claims and titles the
Kingship of Rome. A frequent and murderous deposition of its kings had
but accentuated its devotion to the monarchic system: while its solemn
confirmation of each fresh breach of continuity had stood to reaffirm
its general belief in the hereditary principle, and in divine providence
as controlled by Act of Parliament. The only other country in the world
which had acted with such scrupulous inconsistency, unrepentant and
unashamed, was England. It was no wonder, therefore, that in their
history the two countries had much in common; and it must have been
through sheer inadvertence, in view of their rival claims to be the
constitutional pace-makers of Europe, that while they had often stood
badly in the way of each other's interests they had never yet fallen to
blows.

International politics, however, were not for the moment the King's
chief concern, and he turned back from the pages of Europe to study in
detail the constitutional history of his own country and the powers it
still reserved for its kings.

Whi