hether his brief were to defend
Belgium or to annex her. But alike the Englishman who acts and
the Englishman who talks look askance on the people who think. Our
national history is a history of action, in religion, in politics,
in war, in discovery. It is only now and then that an Englishman
can allow himself a moment for contemplation, for the endeavour
to "see into the life of things," for contact with those spiritual
realities of which phenomena are only the shadows. Burke did it,
but then he was an Irishman. Lord Beaconsfield did it, but then
he was a Jew. Gladstone did it, but then he was a Scotsman. May
I add that the present Prime Minister does it, but then he is a
Welshman? Englishmen, as a rule, are absorbed in action; it is
to them a religion, and it takes the place of a philosophy.

At this moment all England is acting, from the King and the War
Cabinet to the children who play at soldiers in the gutter. There
is no distinction of class, or sex, or temperament. All alike feel
that they must be doing something to win the war, and that they
would die or go mad if they were restrained from action. Limitations,
physical or mental, incapacities for effort, restrictions of
opportunity, gall as they never galled before. To compare great
things with small, the whole nation pulsates with the spirit of
the fiercely contested cricket-match:

"Oh, good lads in the field they were,
Laboured and ran and threw;
But we that sat on the benches there
Had the hardest work to do!"

Action, then, is the creed and the consolation of the English race,
and God forbid that we should disparage that on which national
salvation depends. The war must be won by action; but in the strain
and stress of these tremendous days we are tempted to forget that
there is something to be won or lost besides the war. It is possible
to conquer on the Western front, and at the same time to be defeated
on the not less important field of moral being. The promise which
heads this paper was uttered in full view of an impending agony
which should crush religion and civilization into powder. We can
realize the consternation with which a patriotic audience heard
those premonitions from the lips of a patriotic Teacher; but in
the midst of all that was harrowing and heart-rending came the
promise of triumph through endurance. "Ye shall make your souls
your own." The gloomy and the cheerful prediction were alike made
good.

"The East bow