She continued:
“I believe it is the first time in all the annals of English History that any Prince of Wales has deemed it necessary to tell the old country, which gave him his birth and heir-apparency, to ‘wake up’! It has been called a ‘statesmanlike utterance’ in many quarters of our own always courteous Press, but by our Continental neighbors it has been simply taken as a royal and official statement of British incompetency. It has even been said that no Prince of Wales should ever have admitted any possible likelihood of weakness in his own country. We must remember, however, that the warning of his Royal Highness was directed against foreign competition, and may have been intended to prepare British trade for the impending commercial designs of Germany upon South Africa.... If the British Lion is indeed sleeping, it is time to wake, but to some of us the Great Creature seems never to have slept, but to have been caught unsuspectingly in a trap of restrictive legislation and vested interests, and so bound hand and foot unawares. The Lion is a generous animal, but in certain old fables he is represented as being no match for the Fox. If, as the Prince of Wales says, the old country is to maintain her position of pre-eminence against foreign competition, she has some right to demand that she be not swamped and throttled by it under the very shelter of her own sea wall.”
Referring to what she satirically termed the evidence of our “love” for Germany, she pointed out that though Germans were guilty of one of the grossest insults ever recorded in history against our brave army, we, nevertheless, had clothed that army in the German uniform, and had made free and independent Tommy Atkins turn himself into a copy of his Teuton conscript brother. Not only that, we have accepted a German design for the new postage stamps. She also alluded to the rumor that the Coronation medal was to be struck from a German design.
Miss Corelli concluded with the following words:—
“The greatest, strongest, most splendid and hopeful ‘sign of the times’ is the advancing and resistless tide of Truth, which is approaching steadily—which cannot be kept back, and which in the first breaking of its great wave shall engulf a whole shore of weedy shams. A desire for Truth is in the hearts of the people: Truth in religion, Truth in Life, Truth in work. We are all aiming for it, pushing towards it, and breaking down obstacles on the way. And, because God is on the side of Truth, we shall obtain it; more speedily, perhaps, than we think—especially if we are not too weakly ready to be led away by the first Anti-Christ of religious, political, or social example.
“‘Truth, like the sun in the morning skies,
Shall clear the clouds from the days to be;
“Each for himself” is a Gospel of Lies,
That never was issued by God’s decree.’”
Such are a few examples of Miss Corelli’s utterances in public. It is hardly necessary to add that these speeches were liberally punctuated with applause by those who had the privilege of listening to them.
If those who condemn the novelist so readily will only take the trouble to study what she has said, they cannot, if they wish to be regarded as honest men, deny her possession of many of the qualities that make for greatness. There are people who fear and dislike this lady because the attitude she takes up, on many questions, is significant of Battle. She hits very hard; her enemies wince beneath her blows, and revile her in wholesale terms because they cannot overcome her in fair combat. But newspaper sneers will do little to affect the judgment of the Public, which is, after all, the critic whose opinion is abiding and final.