Looking in at one of these desecrated drawing-rooms, where at the moment a peer of the realm was teaching a marchioness to turkey-trot, a lady of the old order wished to know “What, what would Queen Victoria say?”
“Madam,” replied her escort, also of the epoch of square dances and the genteel crinoline, “the late Queen was above all things else a gentlewoman. She had no language with which to describe the present civilization!”
It is not a pretty civilization, surely; it is even in many ways a profane one. Yet in its very profanities there is a force, a tremendous and splendid vitality, that in the essence of it must bring about unheard-of and glorious things. Our sentimentalism rebels against motor-buses in Park Lane, honking taxis eliminating the discreet hansom of more leisurely years; we await with mingled awe and horror the day just dawning, when the sky itself will be cluttered with whizzing, whirring vehicles. But give us the chance to go back and be rid of these things—who would do it?
Underwood & Underwood
LINKING THE NEW ERA AND THE OLD
As a matter of fact, we have long since crossed from the sentimental to the practical. We are desperately, fanatically practical in these days; we want all we can get, and as an afterthought hope that it will benefit us when we get it. England has caught the spirit less rapidly than many of the nations, but she has caught it. No longer does she smile superciliously at her colonies; she wants all that they can give her. Far from ignoring them, she is using every scheme to get in touch; witness the Island Site and the colonial offices fast going up on that great tract of land beyond Kingsway. No longer does she sniff at her American cousins, but anxiously looks to their support in the slack summer season, and has everything marked with dollar-signs beforehand! Since the Entente Cordiale, too, she throws wide her doors to her neighbours from over the Channel: let everyone come, who in any way can aid the old island kingdom to realize its new ideal of a great Empire federation.
Doctor Johnson’s assertion that “all foreigners are mostly fools,” may have been the opinion of Doctor Johnson’s day; it is out-of-date in the present. English standards are as exacting, English judgments as strict, as ever they were; but to those who measure up to them, whatever their race or previous history, generous appreciation is given. And I know of no land where the reformer, the scientist, the philosopher—the man with a message of any kind—is granted fairer hearing or more just reward; always provided his wares are trade-marked genuine.
“Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of ninnies,” was the conclusion of one of the wisest Englishmen who ever lived. And the critical country has adopted it as a slogan; writing across the reverse side of her banner: “Freedom and fair play for all men.”
THE END