THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 4.



CHAPTER VII

AN EXCURSION

I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in
agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was
endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a
Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia
the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so
freely. During these years signs of dissolution, of death, were not
wanting.

In the city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women
were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be
left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new
monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again
the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a
power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had
wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat
among the highest, to share with them the responsibilities of manhood.