Page:The battle of Dorking; (IA battleofdorking00chesrich).pdf/18

xii man. We have not wormed ourselves into his confidence, nursing through long years secret stores of explosive jealousy. His art, his learning, have had their full meed of admiration from his kindred here.

But we recognize—dull, indeed, would they be who needed a more striking reminder that beneath the defective "manner" of the Teuton lurks an element of crude barbarity with which we cannot pretend to fraternize.

The violence of the Goths and Huns had its place in history; but that would be a strange international morality which would give the rein now to mediæval instincts of egoistic tyranny and perfectly organized brute force, as against the gentler instincts, the higher social civilization largely associated with the Latin and Celtic races.

In these matters the Balance of Power is no less vital to international life and the evolution of true cosmopolitan ideals than in mere Politics. And if we stand up in battle for the smaller races it is not merely because they are small and need defence, but because an element of the right, a share in the civilization which we mean to prevail, is with them and a part of their heritage.

The technical bond may be, as the scoffing enemy remarks (in words which will surely, as curses, return some day to roost), a mere "scrap of paper" signed with England's name.

But the civilized world will recognize that it is only by the increased sanctity of such ties that