Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/112

82 slumbers and heeds not. Rude indeed may be that awakening, and maybe the day is not far off that it comes. It is a struggle between races, great forces, not between mere countries.

In the Homeland they sit down to their feeble aims and amusements, unseeing and unheeding, wrapped in their insular ignorance, regardless of the restless, ambitious, capable blood flowing from their shores to vivify the lone lands beyond the seas. If they see or notice, “We did it—England did it,” they cry complacently and with smug satisfaction. Would only they would wake up into comprehension as to what has happened, what is happening. This great, huge, unwieldy nation blundered on its way without opposition, almost infallible in its own eyes. Now there is opposition—strong, strenuous opposition—and it is not realised, or where realised, it is with a howl of angry, derisive scorn—How dare the jackal invade the den of the lion and worry, snap, and snarl! But why does the lion allow it? Is she chloroformed, and feels not the treading on her tail? is she suffering from sleeping sickness, or what? It is but a feeble roar when she does roar, and it remains a feeble roar alone the stillness in the forest is no longer that of fear and awe, it is that of a derisive pity. “Wake up, mother!” cry unceasingly the lion cubs but she heeds not, is peevish, fretful, bewildered; is she afraid?

In their handsome Gothic Club by the Thames the representatives of the people play about with catch phrases and tiresome closures, commissions, regulations, and the like, imagining because they write M.P. after their names that they are Wise Men. They are Conservatives, Radicals, Socialists, Labour Members, and the like, but they are not Statesmen, Empire-Builders, or Patriots—that they most certainly are not. Perhaps some bad