they
have not been to be found, indistinguishable from their civilian
colleagues, except by the tiny button in the lapels of their coats.
Until Mr. Roosevelt, (and he won his spurs in another war) there has
been no man elected President of the United States, except Mr.
Cleveland, the one Democrat, who had not a distinguished record as an
officer in the Union armies--Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and
McKinley were all soldiers. You may still see that little button in many
pulpits. Farmers wear it, and cabinet ministers, millionaires, and
mechanics.

The Anglo-Saxon is a fighting breed. The population of the British Isles
sprang from the loins of successive waves of fighting men. It was not
the weaklings of the Danes or Normans, Jutes, Saxons, or Angles who came
to conquer Britain, but the bold, the hardy, the venturesome of each
tribe or people. It was not the mere mixture of bloods that made the
English character what it was, the race a race of empire builders; it
was because of each blood there came to Britain only of the most
adventurous. And through the centuries it has been the constant stress
and training of the perpetual turmoil in which the people have lived
that have kept the stock from degeneration. There has never been a time
in English history, save when the people have been struggling in wars
among themselves, when there has been an English family that has not at
any given moment had sons or fathers, uncles or cousins out somewhere
doing the work of the Empire.

And some are drowned in deep water,
And some in sight of shore,
And word goes back to the weary wife
And ever she sends more.

For since that wife had gate or gear
And hearth and garth and bield
She willed her sons to the white Harvest,
And that is a bitter yield.

. . . . . . .

The good wife's sons come home again
With little into their hands,
But the lore o' men that ha' dealt wi' men
In the new and naked lands,

But the faith o' men that ha' brothered men
By more than the easy breath,
And the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men
In the open book of death.[188:1]

I have already explained how far Americans are from understanding the
British Empire. It is a pity; they would understand Englishmen better
and like them better. And what the building of the Empire and the
keeping of it have done for Englishmen, the C