For the Lord our God Most High,
He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth.
But that is because Mr Kipling seems to be one of those who believe we are one of the lost tribes of your Chosen race. I gather that is so from another of his poems in which he cautions us against
Such boastings as the Gentiles use
And lesser breeds without the law.
But Mr Kipling is only a curiosity among us. We are much more modest than that. But you are like that. You are not only a nation. You are, except the Chinese, the most isolated, the most tenacious, the most exclusive nation in history. Other races have changed through the centuries beyond recognition or have disappeared altogether. Where are the Persians of the spacious days of Cyrus? Who finds in the Egyptians of to-day the spirit and genius of the mighty people who built the Pyramids and created the art of the Third Dynasty? What trace is there in the modern Cretans of the imperial race whose seapower had become a legend before Homer sang? Can we find in the Greeks of our time any reminiscence of the Athens of Pericles? Or in the Romans any kinship with the sovereign people that conquered the world from Parthia to Britain, and stamped it with the signature of its civilisation as indelibly as it stamped it with its great highways? The nations chase each other across the stage of time, and vanish as the generations of men chase each other and vanish. You and the Chinese alone seem indestructible. It is no extravagant fancy that foresees that when the last fire is lit on this expiring planet it will be a Chinaman and a Jew who will stretch their hands to its warmth, drink in the last breath of air, and write the final epitaph of earth. No, it is too late by many a thousand years to deny your nationhood, for it is the most enduring fact in human records. And being a nation without a fatherland, you run like a disturbing immiscible fluid through the blood of all the nations. You need a home for your own peace and for the world's peace. I am going to try and help you to get one.
