Page:The battle of Dorking; (IA battleofdorking00chesrich).pdf/15

Rh excesses and indolence. More recent critics have dwelt on the extravagant time and expense devoted to golf. General Chesney would have branded the sensationalist effeminacy of our football-gloating crowds of thousands who might be recruits. Reviewers laugh wearily over the horrors or absurdities of the latest poetic monstrosity or "futurist" nightmare. But in one phase or another the consciousness is present to all, and not unnoticed by our enemies.

And it adds a sting to our inevitable anxiety if we cannot yet feel sure how far we can "recollect" our true best selves in the very moment of action, how far there has been given to us that saving grace of a storm-tost nation, "l'art de porter en soi le remède de ses propres défauts."

Every race, doubtless, has its own special weaknesses and delusions, the "idols" of its patriotic "cave," and it is a commonplace of history that the moral, physical, or intellectual "decadence" of one age is revived and actualized by the material cataclysm of another.

And the readiness, spiritual and material, of the nation in utrumque paratus is the index of its harmony with its environment.

On the other hand there are wars to be fully prepared for which would almost mean to be a partner in their criminality. There is an attitude of defence which, if successful, would lose all dignity were it allied with a permanent distrust in the morality and humanity of other nations.