t the stage when it is ceasing to be national and
selfish.

It must be said of England, in her treatment of her colonies subsequent
to our Revolution, that she took this greatest of all her national
blunders to heart. As a result, Canada and Australia and New Zealand
have sent their sons across the seas to fight for an empire that refrains
from coercion; while, thanks to the policy of the British Liberals--which
was the expression of the sentiment of the British nation--we have the
spectacle today of a Botha and a Smuts fighting under the Union Jack.

And how about Ireland? England has blundered there, and she admits it
freely. They exist in England who cry out for the coercion of Ireland,
and who at times have almost had their way. But to do this, of course,
would be a surrender to the German contentions, an acknowledgment of the
wisdom of the German methods against which she is protesting with all her
might. Democracy, apparently, must blunder on until that question too,
is solved.

V

Many of those picturesque features of the older England, that stir us by
their beauty and by the sense of stability and permanence they convey,
will no doubt disappear or be transformed. I am thinking of the great
estates, some of which date from Norman times; I am thinking of the
aristocracy, which we Americans repudiated in order to set up a
plutocracy instead. Let us hope that what is fine in it will be
preserved, for there is much. By the theory of the British constitution
--that unwritten but very real document--in return for honours,
emoluments, and titles, the burden of government has hitherto been
thrown on a class. Nor can it be said that they have been untrue to
their responsibility. That class developed a tradition and held fast to
it; and they had a foreign policy that guided England through centuries
of greatness. Democracy too must have a foreign policy, a tradition of
service; a trained if not hereditary group to guide it through troubled
waters. Even in an intelligent community there must be leadership. And,
if the world will no longer tolerate the old theories, a tribute may at
least be paid to those who from conviction upheld them; who ruled,
perhaps in affluence, yet were also willing to toil and, if need be,
to die for the privilege.

One Saturday afternoon, after watching for a while the boys playing fives
and football and romping over the green lawns at Eton, on my way to the
head master's ro