Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/311



for the impending commercial designs of Germany upon South Africa If the British Lion is indeed sleeping, it is time to wake, but to some of us the Great Creature seems never to have slept, but to have been caught unsuspectingly in a trap of restrictive legislation and vested interests, and so bound hand and foot unawares. The Lion is a generous animal, but in certain old fables he is represented as being no match for the Fox. If, as the Prince of Wales says, the old country is to maintain her position of pre-eminence against foreign competition, she has some right to demand that she be not swamped and throttled by it under the very shelter of her own sea wall."

Referring to what she satirically termed the evidence of our "love" for Germany, she pointed out that though Germans were guilty of one of the grossest insults ever recorded in history against our brave army, we, nevertheless, had clothed that army in the German uniform, and had made free and independent Tommy Atkins turn himself into a copy of his Teuton conscript brother. Not only that, we have accepted a German design for the new postage stamps. She also alluded to the rumor that the Coronation medal was to be struck from a German design.

Miss Corelli concluded with the following words:—

"The greatest, strongest, most splendid and