time. The novel is being superseded by the knitting-pin—[hear, hear]—music by the muffler, and in a thousand other ways there is a quiet change taking place in the habits of the people which lead the student to sometimes reflect how much better, perhaps, the world might have been if it had taken place a little earlier, in the days of peace, and had not been left so late.
How far these changes may affect the permanent life of the community when the war is over is a matter that we need not speculate upon. Personally, I hope we shall some day return to the robust self-dependence and reliance which has always been the characteristic of the British race, and which has been, in my opinion, the secret of its strength in past times. [Cheers.] I am one of those who do not believe in the stamina of a spoon-fed nation. I prefer to remember that from earliest history, from Alfred the Great, from Edward the Confessor, from King John, whenever the British nation has demanded some new measure of freedom, it has always demanded it as an inheritance, and not as a grant. That is the fundamental distinction between the Teutonic and the Anglo-Saxon character. You see it in regard to their possessions and their dependents. Take Alsace, take German Poland today; both yearning to shake off those whom they regard as their oppressors. On the other hand, the glorious spectacle of India, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia—the whole British Empire—rallying to the flag, because they have been nurtured on the principles of freedom. I don't much like reading extracts, but I was tremendously struck the other day by a passage in a speech of Mr. Burke's, delivered nearly 140 years ago, at the time of the American trouble. It is so prophetic and so enlightening that I make no excuse for quoting it:
"As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience; slavery they can have anywhere; it is a weed that grows in every soil; they may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia; but until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of which you have the monopoly."
