ury. From these it
will be seen that even the people and journals in whom devoted
patriotism survived, even the leaders who gave up their time and energy
(politics gave us such a man, the Army another, the Navy another,
literature another, and journalism gave us an editor in whom the right
fire burned brightly) to the task of warning and adjuring the public,
and seeking to awaken the nation to the lost sense of its dangers, its
duties, and its responsibilities; even these were forced by the weight
of public selfishness into using an almost apologetic tone, with
reference to the common calls of patriotism and Imperial unity.

People dismissed an obvious challenge of the national conscience with a
hurried and impatient wave of the hand. They were tired of this; they
had heard enough of the other; they were occupied with local interests
of the moment, and could not be bothered with this or that consideration
affecting the welfare of the world-wide shores of greater outside
Britain. And, accordingly, we find that the most patriotic and
public-spirited journal was obliged, for its life, to devote more
attention to a football match at the Crystal Palace than to a change of
public policy affecting the whole commercial future of a part of the
Empire twenty times greater than Britain. There were other journals,
organs of the self-centred majority, that would barely even mention an
Imperial development of that sort, and then but casually, as a matter of
no particular interest to their readers; as indeed it was.

I do not think that retrospection has coloured my view too darkly when I
say that my brief experience in Fleet Street made me feel that the
_Daily Gazette_ party, the supporters of "The Destroyers" (as naval folk
had named the Government of the day) consisted of a mass of smugly
hypocritical self-seekers; and that the party I served under Clement
Blaine were a mass of blatantly frank self-seekers. Such
generalizations can never be quite just, however. There were earnest and
devoted men in every section of the community. But, as a generalization,
as indicating the typical characteristics of the parties, I fear that my
view has been proved correct.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that in the political world the
shortcomings were all on one side. Writers like myself, even men like
Clement Blaine, had only too much justification for the contempt they
poured upon the Conservative party. Selfishness, indolence, and th