ally to like war, carnage, slaughter, for their
own sake, when peaceful alternatives are offered?"

"No, I suppose not; and, indeed, I feel that all you say is true, Mr.
Mordan."

"Please don't say 'Mr. Mordan,' Sylvia. Even your mother and sister call
me Dick. No, no, the other nations would be only too glad to follow our
lead, and we, as the greatest Power, should take that lead. What could
their soldiers do to a soldierless people, anyhow; and even if we lost
at the beginning, why, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?' Of what use is the dominion of a huge,
unwieldy empire when even a tiny country like this is so administered
that a quarter of its population live always on the verge of starvation?
Let the Empire go, let Army and Navy go, let us concentrate our energies
upon the arts of peace, science, education, the betterment of the
conditions of life among the poor, the right division of the land among
those that will till it. Let us do that, and the world would have
something to thank us for, and we should soon hear the last of these
noisy, ranting idiots who are eternally waving flags like lunatics and
mouthing absurd phrases about imperialism and patriotism, national
destiny, and rubbish of that sort. Our duty is to humanity, and not to
any decayed symbols of feudalism. The talk of patriotism and imperialism
is a gigantic fraud, and the tyranny of it makes our names hated
throughout the world. We have no right to enforce our sway upon the
peace-loving farmers and the ignorant blacks of South Africa. They
rightly hate us for it, and so do the millions of India, upon whom our
yoke is held by armies of soldiers who have to be maintained by their
victims. It casts one down to think of it, just as the sight of those
ridiculous rifle-butts and the thought of the diseased sentiment behind
them depresses one."

"It all seems very mad and wrong, but--but I wish you would not take it
so much to heart," said Sylvia.

"That is very sweet of you," I told her; "and, indeed, there is not so
much real cause to be downhearted. The last elections showed clearly
enough that the majority of our people are alive to all this. The leaven
of enlightenment is working strongly among the people, and the old
tyranny of Jingoism is dying fast. One sees it in a hundred ways. Boer
independence has as warm friends in our Parliament as on the veld. The
rising movements of internationalism, of Pan-Isl