independence is first indispensable. Here again, however, while
insisting among our own ranks on our conception of the end, it will grow
on the mind of the enemy. They may put it by at first as a delusion or a
snare, but one intimate moment will come when it will light up for them,
and a new era is begun. In such a moment is evil abandoned, hate buried
and friendship reborn. There is one honest fear that our independence
would threaten their security: it will yet be replaced by the conviction
that there is a surer safeguard in our freedom than in our suppression;
the light will break through the clouds of suspicion and a star of stars
will glorify the earth. For this end our enemy must have an ideal as
high as our own; if thus an objector, he is right. But if in the gross
materialism and greed of empire that is now the ruling passion with the
enemy there is apparently little hope of a transformation that will make
them spiritual, high-minded and generous, we must not abandon our ideal:
while the meanness and tyranny of contemporary England stand forward
against our argument and leave our reasoning cold, we can find a more
subtle appeal in spirit, such an appeal as comes to us in a play of
Shakespeare's, a song of Shelley's, or a picture of Turner's. From the
heart of the enemy Genius cries, bearing witness to our common humanity,
and the yearning for such high comradeship is alive, and the dream
survives to light us on the forward path. We must travel that path
rightly. We can so travel whatever the enemy's mind. More difficult it
will be, but it can be done. That is the great significance and
justification of Nationalism: it is the unanswerable argument to
cosmopolitanism. If the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be
the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep
alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest
and inspire the world. If this ultimate dream is still floating far off,
in its pursuit there is for us achievement on achievement, and each
brave thing done is in itself a beauty and a joy for ever. For the good