that
which we witness, say, in Santa Croce, at prime, when the first light
falls through the windows on Giotto's frescoes, Herod and Francis, St.
Louis and the Soldan, and on the few, the still worshippers--but dare
we assert that this alone is sincere, the other unfelt because loud?

Sec. 5. MILITARISM

And yet beneath this joy, the tumultuous joy of this hour of respite
from a hope that in the end became harder to endure than despair, there
is perhaps not a single heart in this Empire which does not at moments
start as at some menacing, some sinister sound, a foreboding of evil
which it endeavours to shake off but cannot, for it returns, louder and
more insistent, tyrannously demanding the attention of the most
reluctant. Once more on this old earth of ours is witnessed the
spectacle of a vast people stirred by one ideal impulse, prepared for
all sacrifices for that ideal, prepared to face war, and the outcry of
a misunderstanding or envious antagonism. Whither is this impulse to
be directed? What minister or parliament is to dare the responsibility
of turning this movement, this great and spontaneous movement, to this
people's salvation, to this Empire's high purposes? How shall its
bounds be made secure against encroachment, its own shores from
coalesced foes?

Let me approach this matter from the standpoint of history, the sole
standpoint from which I have the right--to use a current phrase--to
speak as an expert. First of all let me say, that an axiom or maxim
which appears to guide the utterances if not the actions of statesmen,
the maxim that the British people will under no circumstances tolerate
any form of compulsory service for war, is unjustified by history. It
has no foundation in history at all. Nothing in the past justifies the
ascription of such a limit to the devotion of this people. Of an
ancient lineage, but young in empire, proud, loving freedom, not
disdainful of glory, perfectly fearless--who shall assign bounds to its
devotion or determine the limits of its endurance? I go further, I
affirm that the records of the past, the heroic sacrifices which
England made in the sixteenth, in the seventeenth century, and in later
times, justify the contrary assumption, justify the assumption that at
this crisis--this grave and momentous crisis, a crisis such as I think
no council of men has had to face for many centuries, perhaps not since
the embassy of the Goths to the Emperor Valens--the