step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but
eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do
not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck
of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid
and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in
most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from
securely sheltered crowds who hound victims to the combat, bloodthirsty
as spectators at a bull-fight. In the sweat and twilight and crudity of
the actual event, when so much is merely ludicrous and discomforting,
and all is enveloped in the element of fear, it is rare to perceive a
glory shining, or to distinguish greatness amid the mud of contumely and
commonplace.

Take the story of Italy's revival--the "Resurrection," as Italians call
it. In the summer of 1911, Italy was celebrating her jubilee of national
rebellion, and English writers who spend their years, day by day or week
by week, sneering at freedom, betraying nationality, and demanding
vengeance on rebels, burst into ecstatic rhapsodies about that glorious
but distant uprising. They raised the old war-cry of liberty over
battle-fields long silent; they extolled to heaven the renown of the
rebellious dead; their very periods glowed with Garibaldian red, white,
and green; and rising to Byronic exaltation they concluded their
nationalist effusions by adjuring freedom's weather-beaten flag:

"Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind!"

So they cried, echoing the voice of noble ghosts. But where in the
scenes of present life around them have they hailed that torn but flying
banner? What have they said or done for freedom's emblem in Persia, or