y consideration, either of individual or partisan interest, above the
welfare of all the world. Yet once more: It is for Americans
individually to ask their consciences whether any considerations
whatever, actual or conceivable, justify them in withholding from all
humanity the boon which it is in their power, and theirs alone, to
give,--the blessing of Universal and Perpetual Peace.

* * * * *

And yet, when this much has been said, it seems that so little has been
told. It was pointed out, in one of the earlier chapters, how the people
of each country in looking at the people of the other are apt to see
only the provoking little peculiarities of speech or manner on the
surface, overlooking the strength of the characteristics which underlie
them. So, in these pages, it seems that we, in analysing the individual
traits, have failed to get any vision of the character of either people
as a whole. It is the trees again which obscure the view of the forest.

We have arrived at no general impression of the British Empire or of the
British people. We have shown nothing of the majesty of that Empire; of
its dignity in the eyes of a vast variety of peoples; of the high
ambitions (unspoken, after the way of the English, but none the less
earnest), which have inspired and still inspire it; of its maintenance
of the standards of justice and fair dealing; of its tolerance or the
patience with which it strives to guide the darkened peoples towards the
light. Nothing has been said of the splendid service which the Empire
receives from the sons of the Sea Wife; yet certainly the world has seen
nothing comparable to the Colonial services of Great Britain, of which
the Indian Civil Service stands as the type.

Nor have we said anything of the British people, with its
steadfastness, in spite of occasional frenzies, its sanity, and its
silent acceptance, and almost automatic practice, of a high level of
personal and political morality. Above all we have seen nothing of the
sweetness of the home life of the English country people, whereof the
more well-to-do lead lives of wide sympathies, much refinement, and
great goodness; while the poor under difficult conditions, hold fast to
a self-respecting decency, little changed since the days when from among
them, there went out the early settlers to the New England over seas,
which never fails, notwithstanding individual weaknesses, to win the
regard of one who