Idealism is out of fashion to-day because—let us not burke the truth—our idealists were deceived about Germany's intentions, and those in high places unconsciously misled the people. Yet let us cling to our ideals, for they may prove our best possession, and let us realise that the cry of "Comrades!" may, as years pass and the old bitterness dies away, extend across frontiers and bind in a common brotherhood the sons of the men who sought to destroy one another. Such is the potency of a word that revivifies life, laughs at wounds and disarms death. It sums up the aspirations of the greatest reformers and social workers of old time, of the men, from John Ball to William Morris, who strove for England. Only the French people, with their innate sense of selection, could have picked upon a word that can sum up the best of the ideals of the human race. We are their debtors for it, and there is no nobler way of paying the debt than by developing the cry until it resounds from one end to the other of our Empire. It will renew our youth, it will destroy many of the old evils that were even worse than war, it will realise the ambitions of men who lived and died for England in times of peace, when there is no reward for social heroism other than the consciousness of a supreme effort made on behalf of people one may never see, people who will never understand.
If the future of the world is with sane, wide-eyed democracies; if man is to be free to do the world's work and develop human destiny without turning aside at the bidding of kings and rulers; if humanity, with its common lot and destiny, is to develop the spirit of brotherhood that makes life beautiful,—we could have no finer rallying cry than France has offered. I do not believe that the country capable of originating and responding to it can be beaten by sheer weight of numbers; I feel that it is one of the world's assets, and that somewhere in the background the Great Force we strive to comprehend, and, comprehending, to worship, will guard it against ultimate defeat. To doubt this were to believe that the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, and that the man who can invent the most efficient machinery can dominate God's world. Such a belief is to me the most unpardonable form of atheism. This world was not made, was not populated, was not instructed, that soulless machinery might hold it in thrall at last. The French know this, hence the battle cry that thrills me as I write.
IX THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY
In the great gale that sweeps over Europe the few rags that hide the nakedness of monarchy flutter like scarecrows; I find myself watching for the gust that will reveal to the gaze of the least discerning what a dangerous and ridiculous thing the bare bones of kingship have become.
England has filed the teeth of the serpent, it can bite no more—the phrase is Swinburne's not mine. We keep our kings as we keep the Regalia in the Tower, well housed and well looked after, and between the ruler and the ruled there is a pleasant, but indefinite relationship. Kingship for us is the focus of patriotism and loyalty, but we should not go to war because the house of Guelph were jealous of the house of Hapsburg, or on bad terms with the house of Hohenzollern.
Those German pundits who believe that King Edward made the Anglo-German war have never grasped our national attitude toward monarchy, or King Edward's ungrudging recognition of the merits of the German people.
With us monarchy is an abstraction, very little more.