odes's one small genuine
idea; and it is an Oriental idea.

Here we have evident all the ultimate idiocy of the present Imperial
position. Rhodes and Kitchener are to conquer Moslem bedouins and
barbarians, in order to teach them to believe only in inevitable fate.
We are to wreck provinces and pour blood like Niagara, all in order to
teach a Turk to say "Kismet"; which he has said since his cradle. We
are to deny Christian justice and destroy international equality, all in
order to teach an Arab to believe he is "an agent of fate," when he has
never believed anything else. If Cecil Rhodes's vision could come true
(which fortunately is increasingly improbable), such countries as Persia
or Arabia would simply be filled with ugly and vulgar fatalists in
billycocks, instead of with graceful and dignified fatalists in turbans.
The best Western idea, the idea of spiritual liberty and danger, of a
doubtful and romantic future in which all things may happen—this
essential Western idea Cecil Rhodes could not spread, because (as he
says himself) he did not believe in it.

It was an Oriental who gave to Queen Victoria the crown of an Empress
in addition to that of a Queen. He did not understand that the title of
King is higher than that of Emperor. For in the East titles are meant
to be vast and wild; to be extravagant poems: the Brother of the Sun and
Moon, the Caliph who lives for ever. But a King of England (at least in
the days of real kings) did not bear a merely poetical title; but rather
a religious one. He belonged to his people and not merely they to him.
He was not merely a conqueror, but a father—yes, even when he was
a bad father. But this sort of solid sanctity always goes with local
affections and limits: and the Cecil Rhodes Imperialism set up not the
King, but the Sultan; with all the typically Eastern ideas of the magic
of money, of luxury without uproar; of prostrate provinces and a chosen
race. Indeed Cecil Rhodes illustrated almost every quality essential to
the Sultan, from the love of diamonds to the scorn of woman.

THE ARCHITECT OF SPEARS

The other day, in the town of Lincoln, I suffered an optical illusion
which accidentally revealed to me the strange greatness of the Gothic
architecture. Its secret is not, I think, satisfactorily explained
in most of the discussions on the subject. It is said that the Gothic
eclipses the classical by a certain richness and complexity, at once
livel