ldiers; alms-houses, and other purely practical
benefits which afford nothing to gape at and not very much to talk about.
People infinitely prefer some huge ungainly statue or some indifferently
stained glass window, any seven-days' wonder in the way of marble,
granite, or glass. They would like the Cenotaph to fill St. James's
Park, and fondly believe that the "Glorious Dead" would find pride and
pleasure in such a monstrosity. But it seems to me that any memorial to
the dead heroes falls short of its ideal which does not, at the same
time, help the living in some real practical and unsectarian way. Heroes
didn't die so that the parish church should have a new window or the
market place a pump; they died so that the less fortunate of this world
should have a better chance, find a greater health, a greater happiness,
a wider space in the new world which the sacrifice of their fathers,
brothers, and chums helped to found.

_Always the Personal Note_

The longer I live the more clearly I perceive the extreme difficulty
reformers have to interest people in philanthropic schemes which do not
place their religion, their brand of politics, or they themselves in
prominent positions on the propaganda. It seems to be very much the
fashion among those who desire to help others that they do so in the
belief that they will thereby be themselves saved. So few, so very few,
help the less fortunate on their way without cramming their own religion,
or their own politics, or their own munificence down their throats at the
same time. They cannot be kind for the sake of being kind; they cannot
help others up without seeking to brand them at the same time with their
own pet views and beliefs. And then they wonder why the poor will not be
helped; why they are suspicious, or ungrateful, or allow themselves to be
helped only that they may help themselves at the same time--and to
something more than their individual share. Humility and tolerance--and
tolerance is, after all, but one aspect of humility--are the rarest of
all the human virtues. So much philanthropy merely means the giving of a
"bun" on the condition that he who takes the bun will also stop to pray,
to become Conservative, and to give thanks. Good is so often done for
the sake of doing good, not to right a social wrong--which should be the
end of all goodness. Even then, so many people are content to do good
from a distance; or if, perhaps, they do come among the