CHAPTER X
EGO-FANATIC GOOD INTENTIONS AND THEIR RELATION TO NATIONAL DEFENSE
"If you will study history you will find that freedom, when it has been destroyed, has always been destroyed by those who shelter themselves under the cover of its forms, and who speak its language with unparalleled eloquence and vigor."—Lord Salisbury.
There is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human inconsistency.
Many of those who are most pretentious about the virtue of a meek and lowly spirit manifest characteristics the exact opposite of their self-vaunted pretensions. Often the most enthusiastic and devout workers for a principle are themselves, when put to trial, most pronounced violators of that principle.
Some years ago, while on ship for England, I formed the acquaintance of Sir William Wyndeer, of Australia. He told me that there was a famous woman pacifist on board, who wanted to meet me. She was a notorious militant moral reformer—the Carrie Nation of England. I went with him to where she was sitting on the deck in a steamerchair, and, on being introduced, sat down beside her.
She opened the conversation with the remark: "Do you know that men like you ought to be hanged; that hanging is too good for you; that men like you, who invent and make explosives and guns to kill people, ought to be killed with them yourselves? That would give you a dose of your own medicine."
I replied by asking her what she thought of the Armenian atrocities, which were at that time being perpetrated.
"What do I think of them?" she answered. "I think just this—that, if I were the Queen of England, I would put an end to that business pretty quick."
"How would you do it?" I asked.
"Why," she responded, "I would go there with an army, and exterminate those beastly Turks."