est doubt on either point. No man doubts
when he knows, whether or no he cares. Do you seriously imagine that
those who know, that those who care, are so idolatrously infatuated
with Rufus Daniel Isaacs as to tolerate such risk, let alone such
ruin? Are we to set up as the standing representative of England a
man who is a standing joke against England? That and nothing else is
involved in setting up the chief Marconi Minister as our chief
Foreign Minister. It is precisely in those foreign countries with
which such a minister would have to deal, that his name would be, and
has been, a sort of pantomime proverb like Panama or the South Sea
Bubble. Foreigners were not threatened with fine and imprisonment for
calling a spade a spade and a speculation a speculation; foreigners
were not punished with a perfectly lawless law of libel for saying
about public men what those very men had afterwards to admit in
public. Foreigners were lookers-on who were really allowed to see
most of the game, when our public saw nothing of the game; and they
made not a little game of it. Are they henceforth to make game of
everything that is said and done in the name of England in the
affairs of Europe? Have you the serious impudence to call us
Anti-Semites because we are not so extravagantly fond of one
particular Jew as to endure this for him alone? No, my lord; the
beauties of your character shall not so blind us to all elements of
reason and self-preservation; we can still control our affections;
if we are fond of you, we are not quite so fond of you as that. If we
are anything but Anti-Semite, we are not Pro-Semite in that peculiar
and personal fashion; if we are lovers, we will not kill ourselves
for love. After weighing and valuing all your virtues, the qualities
of our own country take their due and proportional part in our
esteem. Because of you she shall not die.

We cannot tell in what fashion you yourself feel your strange
position, and how much you know it is a false position. I have
sometimes thought I saw in the faces of such men as you that you felt
the whole experience as unreal, a mere masquerade; as I myself might
feel it if, by some fantastic luck in the old fantastic civilisation
of China, I were raised from the Yellow Button to the Coral Button,
or from the Coral Button to the Peacock's Feather. Precisely because
thes