and titles, the burden of government has hitherto
been thrown on a class. Nor can it be said that they have been untrue to
their responsibility. That class developed a tradition and held fast to
it; and they had a foreign policy that guided England through centuries
of greatness. Democracy too must have a foreign policy, a tradition of
service; a trained if not hereditary group to guide it through troubled
waters. Even in an intelligent community there must be leadership. And,
if the world will no longer tolerate the old theories, a tribute may
at least be paid to those who from conviction upheld them; who ruled,
perhaps in affluence, yet were also willing to toil and, if need be, to
die for the privilege.

One Saturday afternoon, after watching for a while the boys playing
fives and football and romping over the green lawns at Eton, on my way
to the head master's rooms I paused in one of the ancient quads. My eye
had been caught by a long column of names posted there, printed in heavy
black letters. 'Etona non, immemora'! Every week many new names are
added to those columns. On the walls of the chapel and in other quads
and passages may be found tablets and inscriptions in memory of those
who have died for England and the empire in by-gone wars. I am told that
the proportion of Etonians of killed to wounded is greater than that
of any other public school--which is saying a great deal. They go back
across the channel and back again until their names appear on the last
and highest honour list of the school and nation.

In one of the hospitals I visited lay a wounded giant who had once been
a truckman in a little town in Kent. Incidentally, in common with his
neighbours, he had taken no interest in the war, which had seemed as
remote to him as though he had lived in North Dakota. One day a Zeppelin
dropped a bomb on that village, whereupon the able-bodied males enlisted
to a man, and he with them. A subaltern in his company was an Eton boy.
"We just couldn't think of 'im as an orficer, sir; in the camps 'e used
to play with us like a child. And then we went to France. And one night
when we was wet to the skin and the Boschs was droppin' shell all
around us we got the word. It was him leaped over the top first of all,
shouting back at us to come on. He tumbled right back and died in my
arms, 'e did, as I was climbin' up after 'im. I shan't ever forget 'im."

As you travel about in these days you become conscious, among t