to predict the splendours of the youth of this Empire--splendours which
are now a part of our history? We are adepts at self-criticism and
self-depreciation. We hate the language of emotion. Some of us, if we
were taken to heaven and asked what we thought of it, would say that it
is decent, or not so bad. I suppose we are jealous to keep our standard
high, and to have something to say if a better place should be found.
But in spite of all this, we do now know, and it is worth knowing, that
we are not weaker than our fathers. We know that the people who inhabit
these islands and this commonwealth of nations cannot be pushed on one
side, or driven under, or denied a great share in the future ordering of
the world. We know this, and our knowledge of it is the debt that we owe
to our dead. It is not vanity to admit that we know it; on the contrary,
it would be vanity to pretend that we do not know it. It is visible to
other eyes than ours. Some time ago I heard an address given by a friend
of mine, an Indian Mohammedan of warrior descent, to University students
of his own faith. He was urging on them the futility of dreams and the
necessity of self-discipline and self-devotion. 'Why do the people of
this country', he said, 'count for so much all the world over? It is not
because of their dreams; it is because thousands of them are lying at
the bottom of the sea.'

Further, we have not only found ourselves; we have found one another. A
new kindliness has grown up, during the War, between people divided by
the barriers of class, or wealth, or circumstance. A statesman of the
seventeenth century remarks that _It is a Misfortune for a Man not to
have a Friend in the World, but for that reason he shall have no Enemy_.
I might invert his maxim and say, _It is a Misfortune for a Man to have
many Enemies, but for that reason he shall know who are his Friends_. No
Radical member of Parliament will again, while any of us live, cast
contempt on 'the carpet Captains of Mayfair'. No idle Tory talker will