itten in history that neither
king nor army can bar the path to the man who having twopence in his
strong box, and knowing well where he can turn it to threepence, sets
his mind to that one end. And as the frontier has broadened the mind of
Britain has broadened too, spreading out until all men can see that the
ways of the island are continental, even as those of the Continent are
insular.

But for this a price must be paid, and the price is a grievous one. As
the beast of old must have one young human life as a tribute every year,
so to our Empire we throw from day to day the pick and flower of our
youth. The engine is world-wide and strong, but the only fuel that will
drive it is the lives of British men. Thus it is that in the grey old
cathedrals, as we look round upon the brasses on the walls, we see
strange names, such names as they who reared those walls had never
heard, for it is in Peshawur, and Umballah, and Korti, and Fort Pearson
that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind
them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no
frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever
show how high the Anglo-Celtic tide had lapped.

This, then, as well as the waters which join us to the world, has done
something to tinge us with romance. For when so many have their loved
ones over the seas, walking amid hillmen's bullets, or swamp malaria,
where death is sudden and distance great, then mind communes with mind,
and strange stories arise of dream, presentiment, or vision, where the
mother sees her dying son, and is past the first bitterness of her grief
ere the message comes which should have broken the news. The learned
have of late looked into the matter and have even labelled it with a
name; but what can we know more of it save that a poor stricken soul,
when hard-pressed and driven, can shoot across the earth some
ten-thousand-mile-distant picture of its trouble to the mind which is
most akin to it. Far be it from me to say that there lies no such power
within us, for of all things which the brain will grasp the last will be
itself; but yet it is well to be very cautious over such matters, for
once at least I have known that which was within the laws of Nature seem
to be far upon the further side of them.

John Vansittart was the younger partner of the firm of Hudson and
Vansittart, coffee exporters of the Island of Ceylon, three-quarters
Dutchman by desce