Holland, North Germany and the rest. He is anxious to see whether _Britain_
will fail the mass of civilization in its ordeal.

He notes the keenness of the fight in England and its long endurance; how
all the forces of wealth--especially the old families such as the Howards
and the merchants of the City of London--are enlisted upon the treasonable
side; how in spite of this a tenacious tradition prevents any sudden
transformation of the British polity or its sharp severance from the
continuity of Europe. He sees the whole of North England rising, cities in
the South standing siege. Ultimately he sees the great nobles and merchants
victorious, and the people cut off, apparently forever, from the life by
which they had lived, the food upon which they had fed.

Side by side with all this he notes that, next to Britain, one land only
that was never Roman land, by an accident inexplicable or miraculous,
preserves the Faith, and, as Britain is lost, he sees side by side with
that loss the preservation of Ireland.

To the Catholic reader of history (though he has no Catholic history to
read) there is no danger of the foolish bias against civilization which
has haunted so many contemporary writers, and which has led them to frame
fantastic origins for institutions the growth of which are as plain as an
historical fact can be. He does not see in the pirate raids which desolated
the eastern and southeastern coasts of England in the sixth century the
origin of the English people. He perceives that the success of these small
eastern settlements upon the eastern shores, and the spread of their
language westward over the island dated from their acceptance of Roman
discipline, organization and law, from which the majority, the Welsh to
the West, were cut off. He sees that the ultimate hegemony of Winchester
over Britain all grew from this early picking up of communications with