hanged the
face of the world. Are we to abjure the doctrine which wrought
this change, and give heed to the blind guides who would lure us
straight back to barbarism?

"What though they come with scroll and pen,
And grave as a shaven clerk,
By this sign shall ye know them,
That they ruin and make dark;

"By thought a crawling ruin,
By life a leaping mire,
By a broken heart in the breast of the world,
And the end of the world's desire;

"By God and man dishonoured,
By death and life made vain,
Know ye the old Barbarian,
The Barbarian come again."[*]

[Footnote *: G. K. Chesterton.]

VII

_THE TRIUMPHS OF ENDURANCE_

"By your endurance ye shall make your souls your own." If the origin
of this saying were unknown, one could fancy much ingenious conjecture
about it; but no one, I think, would attribute it to an English
source. An Englishman's idea of self-realization is action. If
he is to be truly himself he must be doing something; life for
him means energy. To be laid on one side, and to exist only as
a spectator or a sufferer, is the last method of making his soul
his own which would occur to him. _Dolce far niente_ is a phrase
which could never have originated on English soil. The greater the
difficulties by which he is confronted, the more gnawing becomes
the Englishman's, hunger for action. "Something must be done!" is
his instinctive cry when dangers or perplexities arise, and he
is feverishly eager to do it. What exactly "it" should be, and
how it may be most wisely done, are secondary, and even tertiary,
considerations. "Wisdom is profitable to direct"; but the need
for wisdom is not so generally recognized in England as the need
for courage or promptitude or vigour.

Some of the shallower natures find a substitute for action in speech.
If only they talk loud enough and long enough, they feel that they
are doing something valuable towards the desired end, and they
find others, still weaker than themselves, who take their words
at their own valuation. Who does not recall moments of the present
war when the man-in-the-street has exclaimed, "That was a splendid
speech of Blower's! I feel now that we are on the right line"; or,
"After what Bellowell said last night, there can be no going back
to the discredited policy"? The man-in-the-street did not realize
that Blower's words are only articulated air, or that Bellowell
could speak with equal effect w