t she writes is of peculiar interest to the United States. We have
suffered, or are suffering, in exaggerated form, from most (not all) of
the evils that were eating into the fibre of the British character three
years ago--and in addition from some purely indigenous ills of our own.
If we are to cure ourselves it must be by our own exertions; our destiny
will certainly not be shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few towering
autocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. Mrs. Ward shows us the
people of England in the act of curing their own ills, of making good,
by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly and
selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The fact that
England, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her strength and
strode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us in
America, who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness and greed
and soft slackness that for some years we have been showing.

As in America, so in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced a
lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much
confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was
especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name.
An unhealthy sentimentality--the antithesis of morality--has gone hand
in hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The result
was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly; and of
these the most noxious was professional pacificism. The professional
pacificist has at times festered in the diseased tissue of almost every
civilisation; but it is only within the last three-quarters of a century
that he has been a serious menace to the peace of justice and
righteousness. In consequence, decent citizens are only beginning to
understand the base immorality of his preaching and practice; and he has
been given entirely undeserved credit for good intentions. In England as
in the United States, domestic pacificism has been the most potent ally
of alien militarism. And in both countries the extreme type has shown
itself profoundly unpatriotic. The damage it has done the nation has
been limited only by its weakness and folly; those who have professed it
have served the devil to the full extent which their limited powers
permitted.

There were in England--just as there are now in America--even worse foes
to national honour and efficiency. Greed and selfishness, am