Loaded pistols and lighted torches are magical quickeners of slow intellects; a deaf man would understand such arguments as these. If I took by the collar the first lad I came across in Germany, and, lifting my stick to his head, shouted into his ear: "You young rascal, I will knock your head off," I will warrant he would understand me as quickly as if I spoke the purest German.
If we have any spare time, let us learn German that we may be able to read Goethe and Schiller; from the practical point of view, the utility of German is but secondary. If we should ever demand of Germany the provinces that she wrenched from us, we shall find we have enough German-speaking mouths, if we can only put into the field as many mouths of cannon as Wilhem II.
CHAPTER XX.
ENGLAND WORKS FOR HERSELF. THE WORLD OWES HER NOTHING.
"If," as M. Rénan says,[6] "those nations which have an exceptional fact in their history expiate this fact by long sufferings and pay for it with their national existence—if the nations that have created unique things by which the world profits often die victims of their achievements," England may hope to live a considerable time yet, for everything that she undertakes is national, never universal. She works for herself and herself alone. Whenever she is asked to co-operate in the execution of a great project of universal interest, she refuses pointblank, unless it appears quite clear to her that she alone will reap the profits and honors of the undertaking. An Englishman's sphere of action is always England and her colonies; his only aim, British interests—two magic words to his ears.
If the Channel Tunnel could be made so that it could only be used by the English, it would be commenced to-morrow.
Lord Beaconsfield pronounced patriotism to be the most rational form of egotism. Would to Heaven it might be so interpreted in France!
When shall we, in France, cease to strive after the extraordinary and the universal? When shall we cease to concern ourselves about the happiness of the whole human race and, minding our own business, undertake only the possible and the practical? When shall we cease to become inventors and be men of business?
There is not much discovered in England nowadays, except new ways of dodging the arch-enemy.