Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/109

Rh it may be possible to remake the ways of national life more in accordance with man's place in the universe. When that time comes, France, this country, and England, the three countries which have done the most for liberty, will have deciding voices in that remaking. They will be able to declare in what ways of freedom the men and women of the future will walk. I trust that our three great nations may be able to substitute some co-operating system of internationalism for the competing nationalism which led to the present bonfire.

And when that time comes, I hope that one other thing may be possible. I hope that my people, the English, may, as your comrades in this war, do something or be something or become something which will atone in some measure for the wrongs we did to you in the past, and for the misunderstandings which have arisen between us since then. I'm afraid that the memory of those old wrongs may never pass, for nations, like people, do not forget their childhood. Yet I hope for the sake of the world, that it may be set aside, so that your country and mine, which have one great key to understanding, which other nations have not,