maybe, it won't matter. Things will have taken
their direction by then; but now it's a question of the lead. The
Americans think they've got it, and unless we get imperial federation
of course they have. It's their plain intention to capture England
commercially."
"We're a long way from that," said Hesketh.
"Yes, but it's in the line of fate. Industrial energy is deserting this
country; and you have no large movement, no counter-advance, to make
against the increasing forces that are driving this way from over
there--nothing to oppose to assault. England is in a state of siege, and
doesn't seem to know it. She's so great--Hesketh, it's pathetic!--she
offers an undefended shore to attack, and a stupid confidence, a kindly
blindness, above all to Americans, whom she patronizes in the gate."
"I believe we do patronize them," said Hesketh. "It's rotten bad form."
"Oh, form! I may be mad, but one seems to see in politics over here a
lack of definition and purpose, a tendency to cling to the abstract and
to precedent--'the mainstay of the mandarin' one of the papers calls
it; that's a good word--that give one the feeling that this kingdom is
beginning to be aware of some influence stronger than its own. It lies,
of course, in the great West, where the corn and the cattle grow; and
between Winnipeg and Chicago choose quickly, England!"
His companion laughed. "Oh, I'm with you," he said, "but you take a
pessimistic view of this country, Murchison."
"It depends on what you call pessimism," Lorne rejoined. "I see England
down the future the heart of the Empire, the conscience of the world.
and the Mecca of the race."
CHAPTER XVII
The Cruickshank deputation returned across that North Atlantic which it
was their desire to see so much more than ever the track of the flag,
toward the middle of July. The shiny carriages were still rolling about
in great numbers when they left; London's air of luxury had thickened
with the advancing season and hung heavily in the streets; people had
begun to picnic in the Park on Sundays. They had been from the beginning
a source of wonder and of depression to Lorne Murchison, the people
in the Park, those, I mean, who walked and sat and stood there for the
refreshment of their lives, for whom the place has a lyrical value
as real as it is unconscious. He noted them ranged on formal benches,
quiet, respectable, absorptive, or gathered heavily, shoulder to
shoulder, docile under
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