regenerate themselves, what can
befall? What, when even Imperialism has been tried and failed, as fail
it must? What but that lower depth within the lowest deep?

That last dread mood
Of sated lust, and dull decrepitude.
No law, no art, no faith, no hope, no God.
When round the freezing founts of life in peevish ring,
Crouched on the bare-worn sod,
Babbling about the unreturning spring,
And whining for dead creeds, which cannot save,
The toothless nations shiver to their grave.

And we, who think we stand, let us take heed lest we fall. Let us
accept, in modesty and in awe, the responsibility of our freedom, and
remember that that freedom can be preserved only in one old-fashioned
way. Let us remember that the one condition of a true democracy is the
same as the one condition of a true aristocracy, namely, virtue. Let us
teach our children, as grand old Lilly taught our forefathers 300 years
ago--"It is virtue, gentlemen, yea, virtue that maketh gentlemen; that
maketh the poor rich, the subject a king, the lowborn noble, the deformed
beautiful. These things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can
overturn, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither
sickness abate, nor age abolish."

Yes. Let us teach our children thus on both sides of the Atlantic. For
if they--which God forbid--should grow corrupt and weak by their own
sins, there is no hardier race now left on earth to conquer our
descendants and bring them back to reason, as those old Jews were brought
by bitter shame and woe. And all that is before them and the whole
civilised world, would be long centuries of anarchy such as the world has
not seen for ages--a true Ragnarok, a twilight of the very gods, an age
such as the wise woman foretold in the old Voluspa.

When brethren shall be
Each other's bane,
And sisters' sons rend
The ties of kin.
Hard will be that age,
An age of bad women,
An axe-age, a sword-age,
Shields oft cleft in twain,
A storm-age, a wolf-age,
Ere earth meet its doom.

So sang, 2000 years ago, perhaps, the great unnamed prophetess, of our
own race, of what might be, if we should fail mankind and our own calling
and election.

God grant that day may never come. But God grant, also, that if that day
does come, then may come true also what that wise Vala sang, of the day
when gods, and men, and earth should be burnt up with fire.

When slaked