r, for she has solid virtues and good
instincts. It is her intellect that has gone wrong. Bishop Butler was
one day found pondering the problem whether, a whole nation can go mad.
If he had lived to-day what would he have said about it? Would he have
admitted that that strangest of grim fancies is realized?

It would be vain for Germany to take the world; she could not keep it;
nor, though she can make a vast number of people miserable for a long
time, could she ever hope to make all the inhabitants of the world
miserable for all time. She has a giant's power, and does not think it
infamous to use it like a giant. She can make a winter hideous, but she
cannot prohibit the return of spring, or annul the cleansing power of
water. Sanity is not only better than insanity; it is much stronger, and
Might is Right.

Meantime, it is a delight and a consolation to Englishmen that England
is herself again. She has a cause that it is good to fight for, whether
it succeed or fail. The hope that uplifts her is the hope of a better
world, which our children shall see. She has wonderful friends. From
what self-governing nations in the world can Germany hear such messages
as came to England from the Dominions oversea? 'When England is at war,
Canada is at war.' 'To the last man and the last shilling, Australia
will support the cause of the Empire.' These are simple words, and
sufficient; having said them, Canada and Australia said no more. In the
company of such friends, and for the creed that she holds, England might
be proud to die; but surely her time is not yet.

Our faith is ours, and comes not on a tide;
And whether Earth's great offspring by decree
Must rot if they abjure rapacity,
Not argument, but effort shall decide.
They number many heads in that hard flock,
Trim swordsmen they push forth, yet try thy steel;
Thou, fighting for poor human kind, shalt feel
The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew
A chasm sheer into the barrier rock,
And bring the army of the faithful through.

THE WAR OF IDEAS

_An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute, December 12, 1916_

I hold, as I daresay you do, that we are at a crisis of our history
where there is not much room for talk. The time when this struggle might
have been averted or won by talk is long past. During the hundred years
before the war we have not talked much, or listened much, to the
Germans. For fifty of those years at least the head of wat