his adversary, whether he would
not do well to give over, and so put an end to the weariness and the
strain, is no sort of a wrestler. They have never failed under a strain
of this kind, and they will not fail now. The people who do the
half-hearted and timid talking are either young egotists, who are angry
at being deprived of their personal ease and independence; or elderly
pensive gentlemen, in public offices and clubs, who are no longer fit
for action, and, being denied action, fall into melancholy; or feverish
journalists, who live on the proceeds of excitement, who feel the pulse
and take the temperature of the War every morning, and then rush into
the street to announce their fluttering hopes and fears; or cosmopolitan
philosophers, to whom the change from London to Berlin means nothing but
a change in diet and a pleasant addition to their opportunities of
hearing good music; or aliens in heart, to whom the historic fame of
England, 'dear for her reputation through the world,' is less than
nothing; or practical jokers, who are calm and confident enough
themselves, but delight in startling and depressing others. These are
not the people of England; they are the parasites of the people of
England. The people of England understand a fight.

That brings me to the first great gain of the War. We have found
ourselves. Which of us, in the early months of 1914, would have dared
to predict the splendours of the youth of this Empire--splendours which
are now a part of our history? We are adepts at self-criticism and
self-depreciation. We hate the language of emotion. Some of us, if we
were taken to heaven and asked what we thought of it, would say that it
is decent, or not so bad. I suppose we are jealous to keep our standard
high, and to have something to say if a better place should be found.
But in spite of all this, we do now know, and it is worth knowing, that
we are not weaker than our fathers. We know that the people who inhabit
these islands and this commonwealth of nations cannot be pushed on one
side, or driven under, or denied a great share in the future ordering of
the world. We know this, and our knowledge of it is the debt that we owe
to our dead. It is not vanity to admit that we know it; on the contrary,
it would be vanity to pretend that we do not know it. It is visible to
other eyes than ours. Some time ago I heard an address given by a friend
of mine, an Indian Mohammedan of warrior descent, to Universit