Later on, when we are older and wiser, you will call us to your council-chambers. And we shall bring something with us of the freedom of the large spaces, some vaulting ambitions from new countries where life is a young man's adventure, some clearness of vision brought from the solitary places.
We shall bring Home some of the sweeping perspective of a land of magnificent distances. Freighted, too, we shall be with that love for England which only those can feel who have left her shores behind to strike the long trail of Empire. But we can never bring back such gifts to the mother county as she first dowered us with when she sent us out to the great new lands with a love for freedom which she nourished through the centuries with her own blood.
Ah, London of the crazy chimney-pots! what we like about you specially is your marvellous courage. London afraid, shrinking, timorous! Only madmen would think it! How you wrestled with your mighty problems!--problems of transport (you plant mighty railway systems in your heart, and dig ways underground for your people), and problems of administration greater than those of many nations!
But your courage is still challenged. You will not fail us, Great Mother of Cities! We look to you for a lead. You are going to root out your slum public-houses. You are going to do more for the housing of your people. And in the larger sphere of the politics of the world you are still going to hold aloft the banner of freedom and righteousness. Send out your life-blood of brave endeavour, and we shall feel every heart-beat and respond to it, away under the Southern Cross, and wherever the Union Jack flies or English is spoken.
VIII
HORSEFERRY ROAD
Hail to the brave!
Who, going, come no more;
Th' imperious call broke on their slumb'ring souls,
And woke to action all their manhood strong,
And bade them go, that Right might conquer wrong.