it is infinitely the most patriotic thing that a man can do. I have no
illusions either about our past or our present. _I_ think our whole
history in Ireland has been a vulgar and ignorant hatred of the
crucifix, expressed by a crucifixion. I think the South African War was
a dirty work which we did under the whips of moneylenders. I think
Mitchelstown was a disgrace; I think Denshawi was a devilry.

Yet there is one part of life and history in which I would assert the
absolute spotlessness of England. In one department we wear a robe of
white and a halo of innocence. Long and weary as may be the records of
our wickedness, in one direction we have done nothing but good. Whoever
we may have wronged, we have never wronged Germany. Again and again we
have dragged her from under the just vengeance of her enemies, from the
holy anger of Maria Teresa, from the impatient and contemptuous common
sense of Napoleon. We have kept a ring fence around the Germans while
they sacked Denmark and dismembered France. And if we had served our God
as we have served _their_ kings, there would not be to-day one remnant
of them in our path, either to slander or to slay us.



IX--_The Awakening of England_


In October 1912 silent and seemingly uninhabited crags and chasms in the
high western region of the Balkans echoed and re-echoed with a single
shot. It was fired by the hand of a king--real king, who sat listening
to his people in front of his own house (for it was hardly a palace),
and who, in consequence of his listening to the people, not unfrequently
imprisoned the politicians. It is said of him that his great respect for