nds on the
strength of the fine meshes, Earl Grey, who died last year, will always
be remembered in our history. Not many men have his opportunity to make
acquaintance with the domain that is their birthright, for he had
administered a province of South Africa, and had been Governor-General
of Canada, He rediscovered the glory of the Empire, as poets rediscover
the glory of common speech. 'He had breathed its air,' a friend of his
says, 'fished its rivers, walked in its valleys, stood on its mountains,
met its people face to face. He had seen it in all the zones of the
world. He knew what it meant to mankind. Under the British flag,
wherever he journeyed, he found men of English speech living in an
atmosphere of liberty and carrying on the dear domestic traditions of
the British Isles. He saw justice firmly planted there, industry and
invention hard at work unfettered by tyrants of any kind, domestic life
prospering in natural conditions, and our old English kindness and
cheerfulness and broad-minded tolerance keeping things together. But he
also saw room under that same flag, ample room, for millions and
millions more of the human race. The Empire wasn't a word to him. It was
a vast, an almost boundless, home for honest men.'

The War did not dishearten him. When he died, in August, 1917, he said,
'Here I lie on my death-bed, looking clear into the Promised Land. I'm
not allowed to enter it, but there it is before my eyes. After the War
the people of this country will enter it, and those who laughed at me
for a dreamer will see that I wasn't so wrong after all. But there's
still work to do for those who didn't laugh, hard work, and with much
opposition in the way; all the same, it is work right up against the
goal. My dreams have come true.'

One of the clear gains of the War is to be found in the increased
activity and alertness of our own people. The motto of to-day is, 'Let
those now work who never worked before, And those who always worked now
work the more.' Before the War we had a great national reputation for
idleness--in this island, at least. I remember a friendly critic from
Canada who, some five or six years ago, expressed to me, with much
disquiet, his opinion that there was something very far wrong with the
old country; that we had gone soft. As for our German critics, they
expressed the same view in gross and unmistakable fashion. Wit is not a
native product in Germany, it all has to be imported, so they