first and greatest of British investments and upon the moral dividends
derived from its possession was founded the imperial greatness of this
Island Empire. That other peoples possessed the Bible and had even
translated it before England was not so much as hinted at. That the
Bible was Greek and Hebrew in origin was never whispered. It began and
ended with the English Authorised Version. The British Bible was the
Bible that counted. It was the Bible upon which the sun never sets,
the Bible that had blown Indian mutineers from its muzzle in
the 'fifties and was prepared to-day to have a shot at any other
mutineers, Teuton or Turk, who dared to dispute its claim that the
meek shall inherit the earth. The unctuous rectitude that converts the
word of God into wadding for a gun is certainly a formidable opponent,
as Cromwell proved. To challenge English supremacy becomes not merely
a threat to peace, it is an act of sacrilege. And yet this world-wide
empire broad based upon the British Bible and the English navy, and
maintained by a very inflexible interpretation of the one and a very
skilful handling of the other, rests upon a sunk foundation that is
older than both and will surely bring both to final shipwreck.

The British Empire is founded not upon the British Bible or the
British dreadnought but upon Ireland. The empire that began upon an
island, ravaged, sacked and plundered shall end on an island, "which
whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or the influence
of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of
her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiet state still
for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England, it is
hard to be known but yet much to be feared." Thus Edmund Spenser
340 years ago, whose muse drew profit from an Irish estate (one of
the first fruits of empire) and who being a poet had imagination
to perceive that a day of payment must some day be called and that