Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/28

 22 quiet in which to consolidate her strength and enjoy the good things already won.

Germany will fight with far other purpose and one that must inspire a far more vigorous effort. She will fight, not merely to keep what she already has. but to escape from an intolerable position of inferiority she knows to be unmerited, and enforced not by the moral or intellectual superiority of her adversary or due to her own shortcomings, but maintained by reason of that adversary's geographical position and early seizure of the various points of advantage.

Her effort will be not merely military, it will be an intellectual assertion, a fight in very truth for that larger freedom, that citizenship of the world England is studious "to engross and accumulate" for herself alone and to deny to all others. Thus, while English attack at the best will be actuated by no loftier feeling than that of a man who, dwelling in a very comfortable house with an agreeable prospect, resists an encroachment on his outlook from the building operations of his less well-lodged neighbor, Germany will be fighting not only to get out of doors into the open air and sunshine, but to build a loftier and larger dwelling, fit tenement for a numerous and growing offspring.

Whatever the structure Germany seeks to erect England objects to the plan and hangs out her war sign "Ancient Lights."

Who can doubt that the greater patriotism and stronger purpose must inspire the man who fights for light, air and freedom, the right to walk abroad, to learn, to teach, aye, and to inspire others, rather than him whose chief concern it is to see that no one but himself enjoys those opportunities. The means, moreover, that each combatant will bring to the conflict are, in the end. on the side of