onarchy under
which we live. They were songs in which the very kinsmen of the present
King were swept aside as usurpers. They were songs in which the actual
words "King George" occurred as a curse and a derision. Yet they
were played to celebrate his very Coronation; played as promptly and
innocently as if they had been "Grandfather's Clock" or "Rule Britannia"
or "The Honeysuckle and the Bee."

That contrast is the measure, not only between two nations, but between
two modes of historical construction and development. For there is not
really very much difference, as European history goes, in the time that
has elapsed between us and the Jacobite and between us and the Jacobin.
When George III was crowned the gauntlet of the King's Champion was
picked up by a partisan of the Stuarts. When George III was still on the
throne the Bourbons were driven out of France as the Stuarts had been
driven out of England. Yet the French are just sufficiently aware that
the Bourbons might possibly return that they will take a little trouble
to discourage it; whereas we are so certain that the Stuarts will never
return that we actually play their most passionate tunes as a compliment
to their rivals. And we do not even do it tauntingly. I examined the
faces of all the bandsmen; and I am sure they were devoid of irony:
indeed, it is difficult to blow a wind instrument ironically. We do it
quite unconsciously; because we have a huge fundamental dogma, which the
French have not. We really believe that the past is past. It is a very
doubtful point.

Now the great gift of a revolution (as in France) is that it makes men
free in the past as well as free in the future. Those who have cleared
away everything could, if they liked, put back everything. But we who
have preserved everything—we cannot restore anything. Take,
for the sake of argument, the complex and many coloured ritual of the
Coronation recently completed. That rite is stratified with the separate
centuries; from the first rude need of discipline to the last fine shade
of culture or corruption, there is nothing that cannot be detected or
even dated. The fierce and childish vow of the lords to serve their lord
"against all manner of folk" obviously comes from the real Dark Ages;
no longer confused, even by the ignorant, with the Middle Ages. It comes
from some chaos of Europe, when there was one old Roman road across four
of our counties; and when hostile "folk" might live in